Google Ads for small business

Google Ads for small business works best when you start narrow: one campaign type, a short list of services, a clear area and proper tracking. The goal of the first two months is not to dominate Google. It is to learn which searches bring paying customers and what each one costs you, so you can spend more on what works.

This starter guide walks through the order I follow when I build a first account for a small Canadian business: what to prepare, how to structure a Search campaign, which settings to check twice and how to judge the first 30 days. If you have already tried and given up, skim to the section on settings; that is where most first attempts go wrong.

Before you open an account

Google makes it easy to start spending in ten minutes. Resist that for one more day and prepare four things:

• A clear offer per service. "Bathroom renovations in Mississauga, free on-site estimate" beats "quality renovations".
• A page that matches the ad. One focused page per service usually converts better than your homepage.
• A way to count enquiries. Calls, forms and bookings tracked as conversions. Without this, you are judging ads by feel.
• Someone who answers. A lead that waits a day often goes to the next advertiser.

Also decide your monthly budget in advance and plan to hold it for at least two or three months. If you are unsure whether paid search or organic search should come first, my comparison of SEO and Google Ads may help.

Pick the right first campaign

Google offers Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, Video and more. For a local service business, a Search campaign is nearly always the right first step. People who type "emergency plumber Hamilton" have a problem today, and your text ad answers it directly.

Search also gives you the most visibility into what is happening. You can see the actual searches that triggered your ads, exclude the bad ones and move budget between services. Automated campaign types hide much of that, which is fine for experienced accounts with lots of conversion data but risky for a new one.

Structure: one campaign per service, tight ad groups

A clean structure saves money later. A simple pattern that works for most small businesses:

1. One campaign per main service (or per city, if you serve very different areas). This lets you set a separate budget for each.
2. A few ad groups inside each campaign, grouped by intent: "drain cleaning", "water heater repair", "sump pump installation".
3. Ten to twenty keywords per ad group, all close variations of the same need.

The tighter the group, the easier it is to write an ad that matches the search, and relevance lowers your cost per click.

Keywords and match types

Start with phrase match and exact match for your core keywords. Broad match can work well with smart bidding and solid tracking, but on a fresh account it tends to wander. Look for searches that show buying intent: service plus location, "near me", "cost", "quote", "emergency".

Build a negative keyword list on day one: jobs, careers, salary, free, DIY, course, training, used, and anything unrelated your business name might attract. My full guide to negative keywords has a starter list by type.

Writing your first ads

Responsive search ads let you add up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, and Google mixes them. Write them so any combination still makes sense. Include:

• the service and the area,
• a concrete reason to choose you (licensed, same-day, upfront pricing, years in business),
• a clear next step (call now, get a quote, book online).

Add assets too: sitelinks to key pages, callouts, a call asset with your phone number and your location if you have a Google Business Profile. They make the ad larger and give people more ways to act.

Settings to check twice

These four settings cause most of the waste I find in small accounts:

• Location targeting. Choose "presence" (people in or regularly in your area), not "presence or interest". Otherwise someone in another province reading about your city can trigger your ad.
• Networks. For a Search campaign, untick the Display Network. Mixing them muddles your data.
• Ad schedule. If no one answers the phone at night, consider pausing or lowering bids after hours.
• Bidding. With good tracking, Maximize conversions is a reasonable start. Without conversions recorded, you have little to optimize toward; fix tracking first. Here is how to set up conversion tracking in Google Ads.

My Google Ads checklist is a printable version of these steps.

The first 30 days

Week one: check that ads are approved, calls ring through and conversions record. Week two: open the search terms report and add negatives. Weeks three and four: pause keywords that spend without results, test one new headline idea, and compare cost per enquiry between services.

Do not judge the account by clicks or impressions. Judge it by enquiries and, a little later, by customers. Ask every new caller how they found you and write it down; that simple habit closes many gaps that tracking misses.

A note on language and areas

Canada adds two twists to a first campaign. If you serve Quebec, or bilingual areas like Ottawa–Gatineau or parts of New Brunswick, plan separate English and French ad groups or campaigns with ads written in each language, not machine-translated. Google matches ads to the user's language settings and the search, so a French search deserves a French ad and a French page. In Quebec, French on your ads and landing pages is not optional for most businesses.

The second twist is distance. A service area that looks small on a map can cover very different towns. If you drive to some places happily and to others reluctantly, set them up as separate locations so you can bid differently or exclude them later.

When to get help

Some owners enjoy this work and do it well. Others find that the hours spent learning would be better spent on the business. If you want to weigh it honestly, I wrote about running Google Ads yourself or hiring someone. If you want to keep control but learn faster, Google Ads training one-on-one is another route, billed at my consultation rate of $70/hour. And the first 30-minute call is free either way.