Google Ads
account setup

Why the first setup matters so much

A Google Ads account remembers. The conversion data, audiences and history you collect in the first months train automated bidding for years. If the account starts with broad keywords, no negatives and “page view” counted as a lead, Google learns to buy cheap, useless traffic, and that's hard to unlearn. A careful Google Ads account setup costs a little more time at the start and saves a lot of budget later.

Ownership matters just as much. I regularly meet business owners who can't access their own ad account because an agency or a former employee created it. I always set up the account under your business email, with billing on your card, and connect to it from my manager account. If you ever stop working with me, you remove my access and keep everything.

What I check before building

Before writing a single ad, I look at four things:

1. Demand. How many people in your area search for your services, and what clicks roughly cost. If volume is tiny, I'll tell you.
2. The landing page. Does it load quickly on a phone, show a phone number, explain the offer and have a working form? Paid traffic exposes weak pages fast.
3. Competitors. Who else advertises, what they promise and where you can stand out.
4. Tracking options. Whether calls can be tracked with a forwarding number, how forms are submitted and whether a CRM is involved.

Conversion tracking done properly

This is where most DIY accounts go wrong. I set up separate conversion actions for calls from ads, calls from the website, form submissions and chat or WhatsApp clicks. Each one is tested on the live site before launch. Only real leads count as primary conversions; things like scroll depth stay out of bidding. If you use a CRM, I plan for importing closed deals later, so Google can learn which leads turned into revenue. For a complete measurement foundation across all channels, the GA4 and Tag Manager setup is a separate $650 service.

The first campaign

For most local businesses, I launch one well-structured Search campaign with ad groups per service, phrase and exact match keywords, and a negative list that blocks jobs, DIY, free and irrelevant searches. Location targeting covers people actually in your service area. Ads include your area, a concrete benefit and a clear call to action, plus call, location, sitelink and callout assets. For online stores, the first campaign is usually Shopping.

You approve the ad copy before launch. I run campaigns in English only; if your customers are in Quebec, where French-language rules apply, French campaigns are outside my work, so we talk about that before setup.

After launch

The first two weeks after launch are when most of the learning happens. If you continue with monthly management, I take care of search terms, bids and ads from there. If you prefer to run it yourself, the handover call shows you exactly what to check. My free Google Ads checklist is a good companion either way.

Common setup mistakes I fix in inherited accounts

When I take over an account someone else built, the same problems show up. Search partners and the Display Network are switched on inside a Search campaign, quietly spending on sites nobody chose. Location is set to people “interested in” the area, so clicks come from across the country. Auto-applied recommendations rewrite ads and add broad keywords without anyone noticing. Several conversion actions count the same lead twice. None of these is visible on the overview screen, which is why I go through settings line by line during setup.

Setup costs $650, one-time, in Canadian dollars. With Meta ads launched together it's $1,200, and the Growth package adds a website and analytics from $4,300. Ad budget is always separate; about $1,000 a month is the starting point I usually recommend. For the full picture of what I run in Google, see the Google Ads services page.