How Do You Set Up a Google Ads Account?

To get started, head to ads.google.com and click Start Now. If you do not already have a Google account, you will need to create one. Once you are logged in, Google may try to push you straight into a simplified campaign setup. Resist that. Switch to Expert Mode before you do anything else. Expert Mode gives you full control over your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, targeting options, and bidding strategies. The simplified setup strips most of that away and tends to produce disappointing results.

Once your account is set up, link it to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. This is not optional if you want to understand what is actually happening after someone clicks your ad. You need to see how visitors behave on your site, which pages they visit, and whether they take the actions that matter to your business. Set up conversion tracking from day one. Without it, you are flying blind.

Which Type of Google Ad Campaign Should You Choose?

Before you write a single word of ad copy, you need to decide where your ads should appear. Google offers several different campaign types, and the right one depends entirely on what you are trying to achieve.

Search campaigns are the classic option and the best starting point for most businesses. These are the text ads that appear in Google’s search results when someone types a keyword related to your product or service. If you want to reach people who are actively looking for what you offer and ready to take action, search campaigns are where to start.

Display campaigns use visual banner ads that appear across millions of websites, apps, and YouTube. They are less effective at capturing purchase intent but useful for building awareness and staying visible to audiences who have already shown some interest in your business.

Shopping campaigns show product images, prices, and descriptions directly in search results. If you run an ecommerce store, these are extremely valuable for reaching people at the point of purchase intent.

Video campaigns run on YouTube. Whether it is a short six-second pre-roll or a longer brand story, video is currently one of the most effective formats for capturing attention and generating awareness at scale.

Performance Max campaigns let Google handle the placement across all its channels automatically. They can work well once you have solid conversion data, but they require careful setup and monitoring.

Local campaigns are designed to drive footfall to a physical premises, appearing on Maps, Search, and other Google properties.

At Delivered Social, our Google PPC service starts from £399 and includes a dedicated account manager who will help you identify the right campaign type for your goals before a single pound is spent.

How Do You Structure a Google Ads Campaign Properly?

Campaign structure is one of the most overlooked parts of Google Ads, and getting it wrong is one of the most common reasons campaigns underperform. A well-structured campaign gives you more control, cleaner data, and far less wasted spend.

Each campaign contains ad groups, and each ad group should focus on a specific product, service, or theme. If you are a plumber, do not lump everything into one ad group. Create separate groups for boiler repair, bathroom installation, emergency callouts, and so on. Each group should have its own tailored keywords and ads that speak directly to what the person searching is actually looking for.

This structure makes your ads more relevant to the searcher, which improves your quality score, which in turn means you pay less per click for a better position. It also makes it considerably easier to identify what is working and what is not when you review your performance data.

One of the most common things we do when we take over an existing Google Ads account at Delivered Social is clean up the campaign structure. Accounts that have been set up without proper organisation are almost always spending more than they need to and getting less than they should in return.

How Do You Choose the Right Keywords for Google Ads?

Keywords are the foundation of any search campaign. They are the words and phrases people type into Google, and your ads only appear when those searches match what you have told Google you want to target. Getting this right is one of the most commercially important parts of the whole setup process.

There are three match types to understand. Broad match gives you the widest reach, allowing your ads to show for searches that are loosely related to your keyword. This generates volume but can include irrelevant traffic if you are not careful. Phrase match is more targeted, showing your ads when someone searches using your phrase or something very close to it. Exact match is the most specific, only triggering your ad when someone types your exact keyword or a very close variation.

Google’s Keyword Planner is a free tool that helps you discover keyword ideas, check search volumes, and understand how competitive individual terms are. Use it at the research stage before committing to any keywords in your campaign.

Negative keywords are just as important as the keywords you target. These tell Google which searches you do not want your ads to appear for. If you offer premium services, add terms like “cheap” and “free” as negatives. If you only serve the UK, exclude searches from other countries. A well-maintained negative keyword list is one of the quickest ways to reduce wasted spend.

How Do You Write Google Ads That People Actually Click On?

Google gives you three headline slots of up to 30 characters each, and two description fields of up to 90 characters. That sounds restrictive, but it is enough to make a strong case for why someone should click if you use the space well.

Include the keyword in at least one of your headlines. This signals to the searcher that your ad is directly relevant to what they are looking for, which increases the likelihood of a click. Make your offer clear and specific. “Book a free consultation today” is more compelling than “find out more.” Tell people exactly what to do next and make that next step sound worth taking.

Here is a simple example for a digital marketing agency running ads for Google PPC services:

Headline 1: Google Ads That Actually Work Headline 2: Managed PPC From £399 Per Month Headline 3: Talk to Our Team Today

Description: Award-winning PPC management for UK businesses. No wasted budget, no guesswork. Your dedicated account manager handles everything.

Use ad extensions wherever possible. Call extensions let people ring you directly from the search results. Sitelink extensions give you additional links to specific pages. Location extensions display your address. Each extension gives your ad more real estate on the page and more ways for potential customers to engage.

How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Google?

This is almost always the first question businesses ask, and the honest answer is that there is no single figure. Google Ads operates on an auction model, and the cost per click depends on your industry, the competitiveness of your keywords, and the quality of your ads and landing pages.

You set a daily budget that you are comfortable with. Google will not spend more than that. You are charged per click, so the cost is directly tied to how many people actually engage with your ad rather than just how many people see it.

The most important concept to understand here is quality score. Google rates each of your ads on a scale of one to ten based on how relevant the ad is, how well the landing page matches what the ad promises, and how your expected click-through rate compares to other ads targeting the same keyword. A higher quality score means you pay less per click and appear in a better position. In other words, a well-crafted, highly relevant ad will consistently outperform a poorly written one with a bigger budget.

Bidding strategies determine how Google uses your budget. Manual CPC lets you set the maximum you will pay per click for each keyword. Maximise Clicks tells Google to get you as many clicks as possible within your budget. Maximise Conversions optimises for actions like form submissions or purchases rather than just traffic. Target CPA and Target ROAS are more advanced options that optimise towards a specific cost per acquisition or return on ad spend, and they work best once a campaign has enough conversion data to learn from.

At Delivered Social, our Google PPC management starts from £399 per month. We monitor bidding strategies closely and adjust them regularly based on performance data, so your budget is always being used as efficiently as possible.

Does Your Landing Page Matter as Much as Your Ad?

Yes, and in some ways it matters more. Getting someone to click your ad is just the beginning. What happens when they arrive on your site is what determines whether that click turns into a customer or simply costs you money.

A high-performing landing page loads quickly, matches the promise made in the ad, and gives the visitor a clear and obvious next step. If your ad offers a free consultation, your landing page should lead with that offer prominently. If your ad promotes a specific product, send people directly to that product page, not your homepage.

Avoid the very common mistake of sending all ad traffic to your homepage regardless of what the ad says. If someone has searched for “emergency boiler repair Portsmouth” and your ad promises exactly that, but they land on a generic homepage with no obvious route to emergency services, most of them will leave. You have paid for that click and received nothing in return.

The landing page and the ad should feel like part of the same conversation. Consistent messaging, a single clear goal, and a fast mobile experience are the three things that matter most.

How Do You Know If Your Google Ads Are Working?

Launching a campaign is the beginning, not the end. Once your ads are live, the real work starts. Monitoring performance data and making informed adjustments is what separates campaigns that consistently improve from ones that plateau or deteriorate.

Click-through rate tells you whether your ads are compelling enough for people to act on. A low CTR usually means your headlines need more relevance or your targeting needs tightening.

Cost per click shows you what you are paying for each visitor. High CPCs in competitive industries are normal, but if your CPC is higher than it needs to be, improving your quality score is the most effective lever to pull.

Conversion rate tells you whether the people clicking your ads are actually taking the actions you want them to take. If traffic is strong but conversions are low, the problem is usually the landing page rather than the ad.

Impression share shows how often your ads are appearing compared to all the times they could have appeared. A low impression share suggests either your bids are too low or your budget is being exhausted too quickly in the day.

Test different versions of your ads regularly. Small changes to headlines, descriptions, or calls to action can produce meaningful differences in performance. Keep refining your keyword list, adding negative keywords, and reviewing search term reports to understand exactly what queries are triggering your ads.

Google Ads is not a set-and-forget system. It rewards consistent attention and a willingness to act on what the data tells you.

How Do You Advertise Your Business on Google for Free?

Not every result on Google requires a paid ad, and if budget is a constraint, the free options are worth taking seriously. Learning how to advertise on Google for free involves a different set of tactics to paid advertising, but they can be just as effective over time.

Your Google Business Profile is the most immediately valuable free tool available. A fully optimised Business Profile means your business appears in local search results and on Google Maps when people search for businesses like yours in your area. If you have not claimed and set up your profile yet, do it today. It is one of the highest-return actions any local business can take.

Organic SEO is the other major route to free Google visibility. It takes longer than paid advertising to show results, but the traffic it generates does not stop when you stop paying. A properly built website with strong technical foundations, well-researched content, and a solid backlink profile can generate consistent organic traffic for years. At Delivered Social, our SEO service works hand in hand with our Google PPC offering, so businesses can benefit from both immediate paid visibility and long-term organic growth.

Google Search Console is a free tool that shows you exactly how your website is performing in organic search, which queries are bringing people to your site, and where there are opportunities to improve. If you are not using it, you are missing genuinely useful data.

Content creation through blog posts, guides, and videos brings in search traffic naturally over time. The more genuinely useful content your website contains, the more queries it can rank for, and the more free traffic you generate. This is a longer game than paid ads, but the compounding effect over twelve to twenty-four months is significant.

What Mistakes Do Most Businesses Make With Google Ads?

Even well-intentioned campaigns go wrong when a few basic principles are ignored. Here are the most common mistakes we see when we audit existing Google Ads accounts.

Running one generic campaign for everything is the single most common problem. When all your keywords and ads are lumped together regardless of how different the products or services are, relevance suffers across the board.

Skipping conversion tracking means you have no idea which ads are generating real business results. Without it, you are optimising for clicks rather than outcomes, which is rarely the same thing.

Writing vague or generic ad copy that could apply to any business in your sector. Specificity wins. Telling someone exactly what you offer, what it costs, and what to do next consistently outperforms broad claims.

Sending all traffic to the homepage rather than to relevant, purpose-built landing pages. This is one of the most reliably expensive mistakes in pay-per-click advertising.

Ignoring mobile performance. The majority of searches happen on mobile devices. If your landing page is slow or hard to use on a phone, you are losing a significant proportion of the people your ads are reaching.

Setting campaigns live and then leaving them alone. Google Ads requires active management. Without regular review and adjustment, performance deteriorates over time as market conditions change and competitors adapt.

If any of these sound familiar, it might be time to have someone take a proper look at what is happening with your account.

Is It Worth Using a Google Ads Agency?

Managing Google Ads properly takes time, expertise, and consistent attention. For many businesses, the question is not whether Google Ads works but whether they have the in-house resource to manage it to the standard required to make it worthwhile.

A good Google Ads agency brings three things that are genuinely difficult to replicate without significant experience. They understand which campaign structures work in your specific industry. They know how to read performance data and respond to it in a way that improves results over time. And they have a track record you can verify.

At Delivered Social, our Google PPC management service is built for UK businesses that want results without the guesswork. From campaign setup and keyword strategy through to ad copy, landing page advice, and ongoing performance monitoring, we manage the whole process. You get a dedicated account manager, regular reporting, and a team that genuinely understands how to make your budget work harder.

Our PPC services start from £399 per month, which for most businesses represents considerably better value than the cost of the learning curve involved in managing it themselves. If you would like to talk about what a managed Google Ads campaign could look like for your business, contact us and let’s have that conversation.