Google Ads for small businesses: when it's worth it and how to start without wasting money

What Google Ads is and how it works

Google Ads is Google's advertising platform. In its most useful form for a local business, search ads, your ad appears when someone searches for something related to what you offer, marked as “Sponsored”.

• You pay per click, not for appearing. If nobody clicks, you don't pay.
• The price of each click comes from an auction between advertisers who want to appear for that search. In highly competitive sectors, such as legal services, a click can cost several euros.
• The highest bidder doesn't automatically win: Google also considers the quality of the ad and of the page it leads to.
• You decide the budget, the area, the schedule and the searches you want to appear for.

Google Ads versus SEO

Google Ads

Immediate results, full control over where and when you appear, and fast data on what works. In exchange, as soon as you stop paying, you disappear.

SEO

It takes months, but what you build stays: each visit has no direct cost. I explain it plainly in the hard truth about SEO.

They aren't mutually exclusive. Many businesses use ads at the start, while SEO builds up, or for specific services and peak seasons.

When it's worth it

• Services people search for urgently: locksmith, plumber, breakdown recovery, emergency vet. Whoever searches hires soon.
• High-value services, where a single client pays for many clicks.
• New businesses that need clients before SEO kicks in.
• Specific seasons or campaigns: tax season, summer, an opening.
• To test which services and messages work before investing in content.

And when it isn't advisable, for now: if your website doesn't turn the visits it already has into enquiries, ads will only send more people to a page that doesn't convince. First check why your website isn't getting clients.

How much budget you need

There is no mandatory minimum: you set an average daily budget. It's worth knowing how Google applies it: on a given day it can spend up to twice that budget, but over the month it won't charge more than 30.4 times the average daily budget.

To work out whether it pays off, do the maths backwards:

1. What is a client worth to you? Not just the first job, but also whether they come back or refer others.
2. How many enquiries do you need to win one client?
3. How many clicks do you need for one enquiry? That depends mostly on your website.
4. Multiply by the estimated cost per click. Google Ads' Keyword Planner gives an idea for your area.

Set aside a test budget you can afford to lose during the first few weeks while you fine-tune the campaign.

Source: Google Ads Help, why daily costs might exceed your average daily budget.

How to start without wasting money

1. Start with a search campaign and one or two services, not everything at once.
2. Choose specific searches that show intent to hire (“inheritance lawyer in Palma”, not “inheritance”).
3. Add negative keywords so you don't pay for searches you don't want: “free”, “course”, “jobs”, “what is”.
4. Limit the area and schedule to where and when you can serve clients.
5. Send each ad to a specific page for that service, not the home page. I explain how in how to create a service page that converts.
6. Track conversions: forms, calls and WhatsApp clicks. Without that, you won't know what works.
7. Review every week the actual searches that trigger your ads and adjust.

If you don’t have that page yet, here is what it costs to build: how much a landing page costs and what it should include ↗

Costly mistakes

• Accepting Google's suggested settings without reviewing them, with very broad matching or networks you don't need.
• Sending traffic to the home page, where visitors have to hunt for what they saw in the ad.
• Not tracking conversions and judging the campaign by clicks alone.
• Leaving the account in the agency's name: the account and its history should be yours, just like your domain.
• Giving up after a week. The first weeks are for learning and adjusting; judge with a bit more data.
• Competing on generic searches against large companies with far bigger budgets.

Common questions