How to set up Google Ads for your business without wasting budget

How do you set up Google Ads for your business? Set up conversion tracking first, then check five settings Google turns on wide by default when you create a campaign: Search partners and Display Expansion, the location option "presence or interest", broad keywords without negatives, auto-applied recommendations, and a bidding strategy on conversions you do not measure yet. Leave them and you pay for clicks from people who will never buy.

This guide sets up a first Search campaign for a business selling a service, and adds what changes when you sell into several European countries from one account: languages, locations, currencies and consent. How Google Ads works for a local business is in how does Google Ads work for local businesses; what it costs per month and per click is in Google Ads cost.

How to set up a Google Ads account

Create the account at ads.google.com with a business email, not a personal one. Pick the billing country and the currency carefully: neither can be changed afterwards, and the currency you pay in is the currency your budgets are set in. Switch to expert mode when Google offers the simplified Smart campaign flow; Smart campaigns hide the search terms you pay for. Add your VAT number in the billing settings so Google invoices you correctly under EU reverse charge.

How to set up Google Ads conversion tracking

A campaign without conversion tracking optimises for clicks, and clicks do not pay invoices. Decide what counts: a submitted form, a click on your phone number, a call of at least a minute through a call asset. If you already use Analytics, import its key events; Google Analytics 4 setup shows how to create them. In the EU and the UK every tag waits for consent, and since 15 June 2026 Google Ads gets its data from Analytics only through consent mode; the background is in the consent mode change. Add a UTM code to links outside Google Ads so your sources stay apart.

How to set up a Google Ads campaign for beginners

1. Goal and type. A Search campaign with leads as its goal. Avoid "without a goal": you lose control over conversions.
2. Networks. Untick Search partners and the Display Network for the first weeks. First learn what Google Search itself returns.
3. Locations. Your sales area, and under options "Presence: people in or regularly in your included locations". Otherwise you pay for someone in Spain reading about Brussels.
4. Languages. The languages your customers search in. In Belgium that is Dutch and French, often English as well.
5. Budget and bidding. A daily budget you can sustain for a month, starting with "Maximise clicks" and a bid limit, or "Maximise conversions" once tracking works.
6. Keywords. One ad group per service with ten to twenty phrase or exact match keywords. Broad match only if you read the search terms every week.
7. Ad. A responsive search ad with up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, plus assets: call, sitelinks, location.
8. Landing page. Each ad group to the page of that service, never to your homepage.

The settings that waste budget

Since September 2026 Google has moved campaigns with campaign-level broad match into AI Max, and Dynamic Search Ads follow from February 2027. That shows your ad on queries outside your list with the same intent. It can work, but only if you read your search terms report every week; the details are in Dynamic Search Ads to AI Max.

Several EU countries and languages in one account

Pick one campaign per market and language once you spend more than a test budget. Belgium is the classic trap: Dutch and French speakers search in their own language, sometimes in English, and a campaign targeting "Belgium" in Dutch only reaches half the country. Landing pages per language matter for Quality Score as much as for the buyer; how to improve SEO covers how to set up those language versions.

Ads, assets and the end of call-only ads

A responsive search ad has up to 15 headlines of at most 30 characters and 4 descriptions of at most 90. Google combines them itself, so write headlines that each stand alone: the service with the place, a proof point, a price or lead time, a call to action. Add sitelinks to your key services, your location and a call asset with your number.

If you run call-only ads today, rebuild them. New call-only ads could not be created from February 2026, and existing ones stop showing in February 2027. A call asset on a responsive search ad takes over: on a phone it shows your number with a call button.

The first weeks after launch

The first two weeks mostly teach you what to exclude. Check the search terms report weekly, add what does not fit as a negative, and move budget to the ad groups that convert. What a normal click-through rate looks like differs by sector; see what is a good CTR in Google Ads. After a month with enough conversions you can switch to a conversion-based strategy or a target cost per conversion. Your cost per click falls as ads and landing pages match the query better, since Google rewards relevance with a lower price for the same position.

Five mistakes in a first campaign

1. One ad group for everything. Putting plumbing, bathrooms and heating in one group yields an ad that answers none of the three well. One group per service, each with its own landing page.
2. No negative keywords. Without a list you pay for job seekers, courses and do-it-yourselfers. Start the list on day one and add to it weekly.
3. Sending traffic to the homepage. Someone searching "repair gutters" wants the gutter page, with a price or lead time and a call button.
4. Judging too fast. Three days tell you little. Give a campaign two to four weeks on a steady budget before big changes.
5. Watching clicks only. Many cheap clicks without enquiries cost more than fewer, dearer clicks that call. Optimise for your key events.