How to Run Google Ads in 2026

The short version

Set up Google Ads in Expert Mode and start with one focused Search campaign: one service, one market, tight keyword themes and a landing page that matches the search.
Track the actions that are real leads, such as form submissions, calls and WhatsApp clicks, before you launch. Smart Bidding and every later decision depend on that data.
Run a separate campaign for each country you target, and check the search terms report regularly so you can add negative keywords and cut wasted spend.

Setting up Google Ads takes an afternoon. Setting it up so it does not waste money takes more thought. Here is the order we would do it in for a small business.

If your question is how much to spend, read how much a small business should spend on Google Ads. If you are still choosing between paid and organic search, start with SEO vs Google Ads. Google changes its interface often, so menu names may differ from what you see here, but the decisions stay much the same.

What You Need Before You Start

A Google account the business owns, so access does not leave with an employee.
One clear offer. A single service in a single market is far easier to test than everything at once.
A landing page for that offer that matches what people searched for and makes the next step obvious.
A way to measure leads: Google Analytics 4 or the Google tag on your site, a trackable phone number and, if customers message you, a WhatsApp button you can measure.
A rough idea of what a lead is worth, so you know what you can afford to pay. Our guide to digital marketing costs covers how to think about this.
Business and payment details. Google may also ask you to complete advertiser verification.

Step 1: Set Up Your Account

Sign in at ads.google.com. The setup flow usually pushes you to create a campaign straight away, and the main decision is between two modes:

Smart Mode is a simplified version built around Smart campaigns. You choose a goal and Google handles most targeting and optimisation.
Expert Mode gives you every campaign type and setting, including keyword match types, the search terms report, negative keywords and bidding strategies.

Smart Mode is quick, but it gives you little control over which searches you pay for. For a business that wants to manage its cost per lead, we recommend Expert Mode. Look for the option to switch to Expert Mode during setup; it also lets you create the account without a campaign, so you can set up tracking before spending anything.

Choose your billing country, currency and time zone carefully. Then link the account to your Google Analytics 4 property and make sure auto-tagging is on, so you can import GA4 key events as conversions later.

Step 2: Choose the Right Campaign Type

Google offers several campaign types, each built for a different job (Google Ads Help):

Search: text ads in search results, triggered by keywords, for people actively looking.
Performance Max: one campaign across Google's channels, with Google's AI deciding where ads appear.
Demand Gen: image and video ads on YouTube, Discover, Gmail and other Google surfaces, for people who are not searching yet. Google has announced that Display campaigns are moving into Demand Gen, so the options in your account may vary.
Video and Display: ads on YouTube, and image ads across websites and apps.
Shopping and App: for retailers with a product feed, and for app installs.

For a small service business, Search is usually the right first campaign. It reaches people who have typed what they want and shows you exactly which searches you paid for. Performance Max depends heavily on good conversion data and a full set of assets, and shows you less about where the money went, so it usually makes more sense as a second step.

Step 3: Set Up Your Targeting

Keywords and match types

Group keywords into tight themes, with one ad group per service, each with its own ads and landing page. Google offers three match types (Google Ads Help):

Broad match, the default, can show your ad on searches related to your keyword, including ones that don't contain its words.
Phrase match, in quotation marks, covers searches that include the meaning of your keyword.
Exact match, in square brackets, covers searches with the same meaning or intent.

Broad match reaches the most searches with the least control. Without conversion data, phrase and exact match make it easier to keep spend on relevant searches. Favour searches that show intent to buy, such as "accountant for small business", over informational ones such as "what does an accountant do".

Locations

Google offers two location options (Google Ads Help). Presence or interest, which Google recommends as best practice for Search, reaches people in your targeted locations and people showing interest in them. Presence reaches only people in your targeted locations. If you can only serve a particular area, such as a clinic or a home-services business, Presence is often the safer choice.

Targeting more than one country

If you sell internationally, run a separate campaign for each country, or for each group of countries that share a language and an offer. One campaign covering the USA, UK and Australia lets the budget drift towards whichever market is cheapest or busiest. Separate campaigns let you set a budget and see results per market, write ads with local spelling, prices and phone numbers, schedule ads around local working hours and pause one market without touching the others.

Also check the Networks setting: Search campaigns can include Google search partners and the Display Network. Many advertisers start on Google Search only, so they know where results came from.

Step 4: Write Your Ads

Responsive search ads

Search campaigns use responsive search ads: you write several headlines and descriptions, and Google tests combinations. You can add up to 15 headlines of up to 30 characters and up to 4 descriptions of up to 90 characters, with a minimum of 3 headlines and 2 descriptions (Google Ads Help).

Cover the service in the words people search with, the market you serve, proof you can back up, what makes you different and a clear next step. You can pin a headline to a fixed position, but every pin reduces the combinations Google can test, so pin only what must appear. Ad Strength is a useful check on variety; your conversion data is the real test.

Assets

Assets, formerly called extensions, add sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, a call button, your location, images, lead forms and, in some accounts, message assets that open WhatsApp or SMS. Add the relevant ones, but expect Google to show them only some of the time.

Ad policies

Every ad is reviewed against Google's advertising policies. Categories such as healthcare, financial services and gambling are restricted and may need certification or only run in some locations. If that applies to you, read the policy before writing ads, and make sure your landing page works and makes the same claims as the ad.

Step 5: Set a Budget and Choose a Bidding Strategy

Budgets are set as an average daily amount per campaign. For a first campaign, treat the budget as a controlled test: large enough to buy a meaningful number of clicks on your core keywords, small enough that you can afford to learn. Concentrate it on one service and one market, decide in advance how long the test runs, and fund each country campaign separately. Our article on Google Ads budgets covers setting the figure itself.

Google's Smart Bidding strategies (Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value) use conversion data to set bids in each auction. They need conversion tracking, and Google suggests judging performance over periods with at least 30 conversions, or 50 for Target ROAS (Google Ads Help). Until you have reliable data, avoid tight cost-per-acquisition targets, and do not change strategy every few days.

Step 6: Set Up Conversion Tracking

Without conversion tracking you see clicks and costs, but not which keywords produced customers. Google Ads can record conversions from your website, phone calls, apps and uploaded offline data, using the Google tag or conversions imported from Google Analytics (Google Ads Help).

Forms: track the submission itself, or a thank-you page that only loads after a successful submission. Visits to your contact page are not leads.
Calls: Google Ads can track calls from call assets, calls to a Google forwarding number on your website and taps on your number on your mobile site (Google Ads Help). Set a minimum call length so accidental calls are not counted.
WhatsApp: track clicks on your WhatsApp button through the Google tag or a GA4 event. A tap is not a conversation, so keep a simple record of which chats came from ads and became customers. With a CRM, you can later upload offline conversions so Google learns from qualified leads.

Google Ads lets you set conversion actions as primary, used for bidding, or secondary, reported only. Make real leads primary. Our article on the numbers that matter explains why cost per qualified lead is the figure to watch.

Step 7: Optimise With Search Terms and Negative Keywords

The search terms report shows the actual searches that triggered your ads. In a new account it is the most useful report you have: check it every few days at first, then at least weekly. When a search could not produce a customer, add it as a negative keyword. Common candidates are job searches ("salary", "hiring"), learning searches ("course", "free template"), services you do not offer and places you do not serve.

Negative keywords have their own match types, which behave differently from normal keywords (Google Ads Help), so check the effect after adding them. Keep account-wide exclusions in a shared negative keyword list, and do not overdo it, or you will block searches you want.

Then look at which keywords and ads produce conversions, conversion rate by landing page, and results by device, location and time of day. Review Google's recommendations one by one rather than auto-applying them. Change one thing at a time and give each change long enough to show an effect.

Common Mistakes

Staying in Smart Mode by accident, then finding you cannot see search terms or add negatives.
Launching without conversion tracking, or counting page views as conversions, so Smart Bidding optimises towards the wrong thing.
Broad match with no negatives and no data, which can spend a test budget on loosely related searches.
One campaign for several countries, so you cannot see or control what each market costs.
Sending every ad to the homepage instead of a page that matches the search.
Leaving defaults unchecked, such as location options, networks and auto-applied recommendations.

When to Hire Help

You can run a small account yourself if you have a few hours a week, a simple offer and one market. Help is worth considering when wasted clicks have become a real cost, when you are advertising several services or countries at once, when tracking spans calls, WhatsApp and a CRM and you are not sure the numbers are right, when you are in a restricted category, or when results have levelled off and you do not know why.

Whoever you hire, make sure the account belongs to your business, you keep admin access, and reports show cost per qualified lead rather than clicks. Our Google Ads management service works that way, and our guide to choosing a digital marketing agency lists the questions to ask any provider.

How to Run Google Ads in 2026: A Step-by-Step Guide for Small Businesses