How To Successfully Run Google Ads For Small Businesses (Full Guide)

Are you a small or local business trying to run Google Ads but are struggling to do so? Well, never fear for I am here. And in today' s video, we' re going to cover essentially how I would go about running Google Ads for small businesses. When we were first starting off our agency, this was essentially all of our clientele; we had smaller businesses, we didn' t have a ton of testimonials. So we had to take what we could get. And we were still successful with them. And in today' s video, I' m going to show you exactly how we ran our campaigns. So you can also be successful. I. m going to list all the things that really made our campaigns different from everyone else. And we' re able to succeed despite having a smaller budget.

I' m also going to be going over the two campaigns I would recommend for small businesses to start off on. Now, the first thing you want to do inside of Google Ads is set clear goals. So many companies don' t do this; they just go into Google Ads, they turn on a campaign, they start spending money, and they don' t really know what they' re going for. For a small business, you have a limited amount of money. So, you have to make sure every dollar spent counts. And the way we do this is by setting clear goals. Most small businesses want one of two things: One is either a phone call to their business from someone who' s interested in their service or a form submission on the exact same thing, someone interested in purchasing their product or service.

Now, how do we make sure all of this is set up correctly, and it' s very simple to do. However, most companies are not going to take the time to do this because it' s a big pain. And you know, I' m not going to take 30 seconds to set up conversion tracking. I have two entire videos on how to set up conversion tracking for both phone calls and form submissions. Very simple to do. I' ll link that up above. However, with conversion tracking, you' re going to see how many calls come through and how many form submissions happen. This allows you to figure out what keywords and campaigns and everything inside of Google Ads, what is working and what isn' t working.

This will then allow you to double down on the winners and get rid of the losers very, very quickly. This is something super important. And 99% of companies just will not take the time to do this. So please do yourself a favor, set up clear goals, what you want to achieve, what cost per lead, and then set up clear goals. And that' s what we' re going to do. And then we re going to set up the conversion tracking to actually track it this way. You can figure out pretty early on whether or not Google ads is going to be for you or not for you. Cause some companies, Google ads is just not for them. A lot of the time it' s very expensive and some companies, they just can' t run it.

It' s understandable. Their market may be super competitive. However, a lot of the time people are just not tracking these metrics and then they go, well, maybe it worked. Maybe it didn' t work. Let' s just spend more money on it, which is never a good place to be now moving forward. How do we actually go about optimizing these campaigns and making sure we Re getting the best results possible? And these are going to be more principles here. One is negatives. Negatives are going to be your best friend inside of Google Ads. And what I mean by negatives is essentially getting into your actual Google Ads campaign, coming over here to insights and reports, and then coming into search terms.

Now, this is going to generate a list based off all the actual search terms people have typed in and your ads have appeared for. Now you may not know this, but a lot of people actually don' t know the difference between a search term and a keyword in Google Ads. You can set keywords to essentially allow your ads to work. You can set keywords to essentially allow your ads to work. appear for. So if you type in pool installation near me, local plumber near me, fencing installation near me, you have that set as a keyword and your ads can appear for it. Now, what Google has done is they' ve essentially made those keywords a lot more lenient, regardless of the match type you' re using.

So exact match, phrase to match, broad match are all very lenient compared to what they used to be. And you can appear for different things. And this is kind of good for actual search volume. However, it' s not great for keyword quality in a sense, because now you can appear for things you may not want to appear for. And this is kind of good for actual search volume. However, it' s not great for keyword quality in a sense, because now you can appear for things you may not want to appear for. So what you need to do on a regular basis is come into the actual search term and go through these search terms, find out which ones are relevant to you and which ones are not relevant to you, add them as negatives and then go from there.

And then every day or every couple of days come back in here and keep adding the new negatives, new negatives, new negatives. And this will allow you to filter out a lot of the bad stuff and wasted ad spend. This will allow your campaign to thrive compared to so many other campaigns that are just not going to take the time to actually do this. Now, the next thing is making sure you' re using all of the available assets inside of Google Ads. It basically means that you' re going to use all of the available assets inside of Google Ads. And you want to make sure that you' re using all of the available assets inside of Google Ads. If Google gives you 20 headlines to use, use all 20.

The reason for this is you' re essentially gonna give Google a whole bunch of data to play with. They' re just gonna keep A-B testing this, A-B testing this, and then find a winner for you. A lot of companies are gonna put five headlines in. They will never test them again. And sometimes they' re winners, sometimes they' re losers. More often than not, they' re losers. And then you' re just going to see a very low click-through rate. This will hurt your quality score. It makes clicks more expensive. It makes your leads more expensive. And it makes your overall Google ad success not as great because you' re just wasting money on low- quality scores, which you shouldn' To be because you should be testing all of these ads.

And these are very, very simple to do. All you have to do is come in here to an actual ad group, come over here to your actual ads and assets. And as you can see, we have a whole bunch of ads in here. Make sure you use three out of three ads in every single campaign. And then you come in here and you can see this should be filled out 15 out of 15 headlines and four to four descriptions. Yeah, nope, we didn' t use all of them. You should, don' t do what I did in this example. This should have four out of four. And then you should be able to just A, B test this, A, B test this, A, B test this and see much better results.

Once you see that an ad isn' t being effective anymore, Google will normally just pause this ad or see very, very few views or impressions over the month or two. You can then go in, pause it and then create a new ad and try to beat the current champion, which is somewhat time- consuming. But again, you' re trying to beat the current champion. You' re always trying to get a better click- through rate. You' re always trying to get better results in your Google ads. And month two, three, four, you' ll see this compile and the results will speak for themselves. Now, I don' t know if you Redoing this or not, but some companies will actually use the display campaign despite having a very limited budget.

And this is not somewhere where you want to be. The display campaign inside of the actual search campaign, I should say the display network is the more proper term, essentially just uses excess budget, puts it towards a display campaign, which you have zero control over for the most part, and then just wastes additional ad spend. It' s not somewhere where you want to be. And I would highly recommend turning it off if you have a small budget. All you have to do is come over here, do settings, click your campaign, and then it should pop up. My internet. A little slow today, but it should pop up. And as you can see, we have networks here. And this sometimes is checked off. This is not somewhere where you want to be.

And this also includes the search network. If you' re struggling for search volume, by all means, you can use the search network, A-B test to see if it works well for you. 99% of the time, right off the bat, we normally start without the search network just because we find the lead quality is not as good. Again, you have a very small budget, so you have to make sure where you' re spending. The actual ad spend is at its most effective point. And that' s normally not using the search network. And that' s definitely not using the display network. So, make sure both of these are off. Sometimes use the display network, but more often than not, don' t use it. And never use the display network unless you have a display campaign.

In that case, completely fine. But in a search campaign, please do not use the display network. It' s completely useless. Now, here is a massive thing you will want to consider. And that is running Google ads only on certain days or only when you can respond to phone calls and form submissions as quickly as possible. Once a form submission or phone call, is left for, you know, five, 10, 15, 25 minutes, an hour, two hours, the likelihood that that person converts into an actual sale decreases drastically. The reason for this is people have other options and they' re just going to go somewhere else. They can click on another ad. So, you need to respond to them quickly. If you can' t respond to them quickly, maybe don' t run those hours.

Maybe don' t run those days. It' s very, very simple to change. All you have to do is come over here to your actual campaign, hit ' Add Schedule', and then you can adjust this to whatever you want. Normally, we find Mondays to Fridays service-based businesses to work the best. However, you can always test weekends, but more often than not for service-based businesses, people have a lot of free time on their hands on weekends. They can look around for a quote and we find the results just aren' t as good on Saturday and Sunday, as opposed to if someone has an emergency or needs to contact you on a Tuesday; chances are they' re not looking around as long.

So highly, highly recommend making sure when you' re running ads, you can respond to them quickly and making sure that you' re selecting the proper hours and proper days for your actual business. Now, another thing that is going to be interesting is the actual keywords. One thing I would recommend is starting off rather small. Don' t start off with 500 ad groups with a thousand keywords in each. Normally you want to start off with three to five ad groups, five to ten keywords in each, and then go from there. You' re going to see what keywords are working, what ad groups are working. And as you can see, I' m just going to come over here for an example, just so it' s a little easier to see.

In this, we have fiberglass pool installation. You can see all the exact match. This should probably be phrase match for this example, but you' re going to see a whole bunch of data coming here. You re going to see impressions, clicks, conversion, conversion rates. If after, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 clicks, you start seeing the cost per lead on one of these keywords, just sky high. It may be worth turning this off, just coming in here, hitting pause. And you' re going to find certain ad groups significantly outperform other ad groups. An entire fleet of keywords will outperform another entire fleet of keywords. And then in certain actual ad groups, a certain keyword will substantially beat another keyword. And if you have a ton of search volume, by all means, turn off those loser keywords as quickly as possible.

That way, you can save money and budget, and it' s going to make you a lot more money in the long run, because you' re going to be able to double down on those winning keywords and get rid of those losers very, very quickly. Now, the final real tip I wanted to mention before I get into the actual campaign types I would recommend using is the actual AI. Now, Google' s AI used to be absolutely terrible, and I would have said never, ever use it. But over the past few years, it has become an amazing asset, and really any highly successful campaign is now using it because it is so successful. So what essentially want to do with every single campaign is start it off and maximize clicks, target impression share, even manual CPC.

You want to collect as much data as possible. And then after about 20 to 30 conversions, you want to switch it over to target CPA or maximize conversions. This will allow Google' s AI to really bid on the keywords it knows are going to get you conversions as opposed to just a spray and pray method like a shotgun just going off. That' s not somewhere we want to be. We want to make sure we' re dialed in. We' re going after every single keyword that' s converting, every search term. And Google' s AI has a lot of data on people and it So, I' m able to figure out who' s going to convert and who' s not going to convert for your campaign.

So it is a super important tool you must use in order to have successful campaigns in Google Ads nowadays. Now I' m going to get to the two campaigns I recommend. The first one is the Google Ads call campaign. We' ve talked about this since the very foundation of this channel. It still runs very well. It' s still an amazing asset for a lot of campaigns, and they' re super simple to set up. It only does one thing: it only generates you calls. And it' s absolutely one of my favorite ads. This is what it looks like. It' s very, very simple. It' s very small. All it allows you to do is to call the actual individual. Again, super simple to set up.

I have an entire tutorial on our channel on how to set them up properly if you want to do this. Completely free. We also have a course on it. We also, you know, this is what we do. We' re very, very good at lead generation. And this is one of our favorite ads. And we like to use these in combination with actual search campaigns just to get more calls for your business. Most companies love calls. So if you can do something where you' re only getting calls and you Re not focusing on, you know, location extensions and, you know, AI chatbots and stuff like that where they might help your bottom line at the end of the day, but more often than not, you' re going to want to double down on the types of leads you want as opposed to just going after everything.

Like a spray and pray method in Google Ads is just not effective nowadays. You need to know exactly what you want. Like I said at the beginning, set clear goals on what you want. This type of campaign does one thing, does one thing very well, and that' s getting you calls. The next type of campaign is the actual search campaign. Again, we have a full tutorial on this channel. I' ll link it up below. But this allows you to essentially build out a much bigger campaign. If you' re struggling with search volume, search campaigns are the way to go. And essentially they allow you to take over a massive chunk of Google' s organic search if you do them well.

You can put in extensions, you can put in more headlines, more descriptions, and it allows you to A-B test stuff a lot quicker and also allows you to have a much bigger ad. With these that are more complex, you do need a set of landing pages or a website to essentially send traffic to, make sure the conversion tracking is set up properly on them. But it is very, very effective if you do take the time to do this. If you don' t take the time to do this, you might want to revert back to the call-only campaign. But if you do have enough time and you do want to see better results, and more often than not, they do outperform the call-only campaign.

However, if they were, work together, they do generally see better results, both of them. But if you want to see the best possible results for lead generation and for small businesses, normally the search campaign is the way to go. It' s just, it' s tried, tested. It' s an amazing type of campaign. Now for both of these campaigns, you will need to optimize them. And I have a completely free Google Ads optimization checklist. The link is down below. It walks you through what to do on a weekly, monthly, and three -month basis. It also allows you to jot down all of your results so you can see your improvement month over month. And like I said, these campaigns have to be you have to put in negatives.

You have to be A -B testing these headlines and descriptions. All of this stuff is very important for overall account success. Week one, week two, you' re not going to notice this stuff. But by the end of month two, month three, you' re going to see your account performance so much higher than your competition just because they didn' t take the time to do this. And really, that' s what we' re aiming for. We want success long-term. We don' t want just instantaneous success. Although it would be nice, the way to beat out your competition in Google Ads is normally by outlasting them. And you want to play the long game here. You want to make sure everything is set up. The ads are firing on all cylinders and everything is going well. And optimization is key for that. So again, the link for that is down below, completely free. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns regarding running small businesses on a smaller budget or limited budget, let me know in the comment section down below. I respond to just about every comment, though there are a lot of comments as of late, so it might take me a day or two to get back to you. I wish you all a wonderful day and take care. For a free guide, visit our homepage.