Sometimes, yes. Sometimes it is the fastest way a local business can lose money. The difference is rarely the adverts themselves. It is whether people are searching for what you sell, whether a customer is worth enough to pay for, and whether you can see what your money actually brings in.
How you pay
Google Ads is pay per click, often called PPC. Your advert shows when someone searches for something you have chosen, and you pay Google when they click it. You set an average daily budget. Google may spend more than that on a busy day and less on a quiet one, but across a month it will not charge you more than your daily budget times 30.4, which is roughly a month of days.
When it tends to work
- People search for it when they need it. A boiler repair, a solicitor, a mobile mechanic, a cafe nearby. Someone typing that into Google wants it now, and your advert is in front of them at the right moment.
- A customer is worth enough. If one job, booking or regular customer is worth far more than a few clicks cost, the sums can work even when only some of the clicks turn into business.
- You can answer quickly. Ads bring enquiries. If the phone goes to voicemail all day, that money is wasted.
When it usually does not
- Nobody searches for what you sell yet. A brand new kind of product needs people to discover it first. Search adverts only catch demand that already exists.
- The budget is too small to learn from. We usually suggest around £500 a month of ad spend as a starting point for a local business, though it depends on your trade, your competition and where you work. Much less than that and there are rarely enough clicks for the campaign to learn who your customers are.
- You cannot see what it brings in. This is the big one.
Check the counting first
Google Ads learns from whatever your account tells it counts as a result, called a conversion. If the account counts the wrong thing, such as a page anyone can load, or one enquiry counted twice, Google cannot tell. It goes looking for more of the wrong thing, and it gets very good at finding it.
The adverts can look healthy the whole time, with plenty of clicks at a fair price. That is why we always check the tracking before we touch the adverts. When we checked Patrick’s own Google Ads account, we found faults that meant it had been counting the wrong things.
The questions to ask before you start
- What is one new customer worth to you, over the first year?
- What will count as a result: a call, a form, a booking, a visit?
- Can you see, every month, how many of those came from the adverts?
- Is your website or Google Business Profile ready to turn a click into a call?
If you can answer all four, Google Ads is worth testing. If not, sort those first.
How we can help
Our Google Ads service starts with a Tracking Audit for £100 to £300, a fixed price, which checks what your account is really counting and tells you plainly what is wrong. Monthly management is £325 to £500 a month, and it is never a percentage of your ad spend, which you always pay to Google directly. If you are not sure whether Google Ads is right for you yet, ask us. If it is not, we will say so.