How to use Google advertising as a small business

If you’re serious about promoting your business, whether it be a local service, restaurant, or online store, and you’ve already created a Google Business Profile, it might be time to consider Google Advertising.

Paid search ads might sound expensive, but Google Ads offers an effective way to boost your sales, bookings, or enquiries within your budget. The platform’s granular targeting tools guarantee your ads will get shown to the right audience, helping you maximise the returns on every penny of your ad spend. 

From getting your head around the different pricing models to understanding which type of ad is best for you, navigating Google Ads can seem overwhelming for beginners. To help you get started, we uncover everything you need to know about the platform, including how it works, how much it might cost, and how to set up a successful campaign today.

Google Ads glossary

You’ll come across a crop of terms when setting up your adverts, and some may be less familiar than others. If you don’t know your CPCs from your CPLs yet, don’t worry. We break down all the Google Ads terms you need to know. 

CPC = Cost per click

This model only charges you when a user clicks on your ad. The metric is best for businesses aiming to drive up website traffic or direct leads.

CPM = Cost per 1,000 views

This represents the cost you pay for 1,000 (Mille) ad impressions. This model is particularly useful for businesses seeking to boost their awareness or bring a new product or service to the market. 

CPA = Cost per acquisition

CPA refers to the cost you pay each time a specific desired action is taken by a user, such as a purchase or a form submission. This metric is ideal for businesses with clear and measurable conversion goals.

CPL = Cost per lead

This metric measures how much a business spends to acquire a single lead. This ad model lends itself well to businesses operating on a lead generation model, like service providers.

ROAS = Return on ad spend

This is a profitability metric that calculates the revenue generated for each pound spent on advertising. This model is particularly useful for businesses that are able to precisely track their ad-attributable revenue. 

How much do Google Ads cost?

The cost of Google Ads varies heavily in the UK, with businesses paying anywhere from £0.40 to £5.00 per click. Since the costs vary depending on a range of factors, a small business can expect to pay anywhere from £750 to £7,500 per month for an ad campaign on Google. 

What factors affect your Google Ads cost?

No two businesses will pay the same amount for a Google Ads campaign. Here are the main factors that dictate the price of Google Ads:

• The competitiveness of your industry: highly competitive industries, like legal and financial services, are often charged higher CPC rates than less competitive industries like ecommerce or arts and entertainment.
• Competition for keywords in your area: if you’re targeting broad keywords like “Mechanic” in a large metropolitan area like London, your CPC rate will be much higher than businesses targeting niche keywords in less competitive locations. 
• Relevance of your ad and landing page: if your ads are relevant to search queries, have a high click-through rate (CTR), and you have a favourable Quality Score to prove it, you’ll receive a better ad position and CPC rate. 
• Targeting options: local ad targeting tends to be much more affordable than running nationwide campaigns. This is because there’s far less competition for local searches.
• Time of year: when you launch your ad campaign can influence costs. Peak seasons for specific industries, like Christmas for retail or summer for travel and tourism, can drive up the CPC rate.

How to set up your first Google Ads campaign (in 6 steps)

With the right guidance, setting up your first Google Ads campaign doesn’t have to be daunting. Here’s how to create a Google Ads campaign for a small business in six easy-to-follow steps. 

1. Set your goal

Start by clearly defining what you want your ads to achieve; is it generating online sales, increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your site, or something else? 

Then, make your goals specific and measurable. If you’re an online footwear retailer, an example of a goal could be “Increase sales of our new sustainable shoe line by 15% by April 2026.”

2. Choose campaign type (Search, Display, Video)

Next up, you’ll need to choose which ad format will best help you achieve your objectives.

The three main options will be search campaigns (text-based ads which appear in Google search results), display campaigns (visual ads which appear across Google’s vast Display Network), or video campaigns (video ads that appear on YouTube and other video platforms). 

3. Pick your location and audience

Effective targeting ensures your Google Ads are shown to the right audience. You’ll have to specify geographic areas under the platform’s “Locations” tab. This can be done by entering specific locations or using the “Radius” option to target a distance around a location.

To increase the precision of your ad campaign, you can also filter targeted users based on past user interactions and demographics like age, gender, and household income.

4. Choose keywords people might Google

Selecting the right keywords is a crucial way to connect your campaign with your target customers, especially for search campaigns. Start by researching what terms your ideal customer would search for on Google when looking for offerings similar to yours. 

We recommend selecting some long-tail keywords that indicate higher purchase intent, and using tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to help you discover keywords with high search volume and low competition. 

5. Set your daily budget

To avoid overspending on your campaign, establish a strict budget for how much you expect to pay every day. You can do this by opening up the “Campaigns” menu, selecting the pencil icon in the “Budget” column, and entering a new average daily budget. 

6. Launch the ad and review results regularly

Now, it’s time to reap the rewards of your hard work! Once your ad campaign is ready, launch it to the world by clicking “Start Now”. 

Once your ads are live, analyse the success of your campaign regularly using your Google Ads account. This can be done by monitoring click-through rates, conversion rates, or cost-per-conversion (CPA), depending on your chosen ad model. 

If something isn’t working, it’s important to be adaptable, too. It’s never too late to make tweaks to your campaign to increase the chances of it achieving its intended results.

Common mistakes to avoid

Launching a campaign with Google Ads can seem overwhelming, and due to the platform’s complexity, many things can go wrong. Here are some common missteps to be aware of, so you can avoid them. 

• Targeting too broadly: using generic, catch-all keywords like “pizza” instead of more specific ones, like “pizza takeaway in Bristol”, wastes budgets on irrelevant searches.
• Not checking how ads are performing: checking the wrong metric, or not checking performance at all, robs you of the opportunity to optimise your marketing campaign. 
• Letting underperforming ads run too long: know when to cut it off. Continuing to funnel money into poorly performing ads drains your budget. 
• Skipping mobile-friendly landing pages: the majority of users will find your ads on mobile, so cater to this audience (and Google) by ensuring your landing pages are fully responsive on mobile. 
• Not setting conversion tracking: without tracking your conversions, you won’t be able to know which ads, keywords, and audiences are leading to valuable sales.