To advertise on Google, you create a Google Ads account, choose the campaign type based on your goal, set the area and daily budget, write the ads, and set up conversion tracking before turning the campaign on. The order matters: whoever launches before measuring pays to learn something they could have already known.
Before creating the account, decide what counts as a sale
It sounds like a bureaucratic step, but it’s the one that changes the outcome the most.
If your business closes deals through WhatsApp, the conversion is the started conversation. If it closes through a form, it’s the submitted form. If it’s an online store, it’s the purchase with its value. Defining this upfront avoids the most common scenario: a campaign running for three months with nobody able to say what it actually brought in.
Choose your campaign type based on the problem, not on convenience
Google offers several formats, and they are not interchangeable.
Search shows up for people who typed in what you sell. It’s the format that generates sales fastest, because the intent is already there. For almost every service business, it’s where you should start.
Performance Max distributes your ad across all of Google’s channels at once. It tends to show nice numbers because it also captures people who were going to buy anyway. It works best when there’s already conversion history in the account.
Demand Gen targets people who aren’t searching for you yet. It’s meant to create demand, not to harvest it.
Starting with Performance Max without any history is the most expensive mistake you’ll see, because there’s no way to know what actually worked.
Structure your account by separating intent
Create separate campaigns for people searching for your brand, for your product, and for the generic category term.
If everything is lumped together, the generic term, which is more expensive and converts less, will eat up the budget that should be serving people who were already searching for you by name.
- Brand campaign: cheap, converts well, protects your name
- Product or service campaign: the heart of the operation
- Generic campaign: more expensive, only use it once everything else is working
Set your area and budget realistically
Set the location to where you actually serve customers, and uncheck the option that includes people who merely show interest in the region, if your service is in-person.
As for budget, Google accepts as little as R$5.00 a day in Brazil, but a campaign with too low a budget enters “limited” status and disappears for part of the day. Our guide on how much Google Ads costs has the practical floor by industry.
Write ads that match your landing page
The ad promises and the page delivers. When the two don’t match, the visitor leaves and you still pay for the click.
Use the same word the person typed in your headlines. Include a concrete differentiator, like turnaround time, city, or a real guarantee. Avoid generic adjectives that any competitor could also use.
Set up conversion tracking before you launch
This is the step that separates a campaign that learns from a campaign that just spends.
Install Google Tag Manager, set up GA4, create your conversion event, and import it into Google Ads. Only then launch the campaign.
Launching before that means the first days of spend teach the algorithm nothing, and that’s money you don’t get back.
The first two weeks
Don’t touch everything every day. Let data volume build up and check the search terms report every two or three days, cutting whatever is clearly not a potential customer.
After that, the work becomes ongoing. That’s when most people either give up or hire someone.
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