Advertising on Google: how to get started

1. The account

You create the account at ads.google.com. Google will first steer you into a Smart campaign with few options. Choose “Switch to Expert Mode,” or you’ll get little visibility into which searches you’re paying for.

• Currency and time zone can’t be changed later. Choose NOK and Oslo.
• The account should be owned by the business. If you use an agency, the agency should get access to your account, not run the ads from an account they own. That way you keep the history if you switch.
• Link Google Analytics 4, and Merchant Center if you have an online store (see Google Shopping).

2. Tracking before the first krone

Smart bidding optimizes toward whatever you count as a conversion. If you count the wrong thing, Google learns the wrong thing. Count what you actually want to pay for: submitted forms (ideally via the thank-you page), bookings, and purchases with value if you sell online.

• One conversion per click for leads. If the setting is “Every,” the same person can be counted several times. We’ve seen that in one of our own accounts.
• Only what you want to pay for should be a primary conversion. Phone number clicks, page views and YouTube subscribers should be secondary, or Google will optimize toward them.
• Test it yourself. Submit your own form and check that the conversion shows up in Google Ads within a day. For online stores: check that the value in Google matches the order, and whether it includes VAT (25% Norwegian VAT) or not.

Tracking that overcounts is more common than you’d think. When we started with Leid.no, the tracking counted far more purchases than actually happened.

3. Keywords

Start narrow, with searches that mean someone is ready to buy: service plus location (“takvask bergen” (roof cleaning Bergen), “flyttevask oslo” (move-out cleaning Oslo)) or product plus attribute. Use phrase match and exact match at the start. Broad match can work once the campaign has conversion data to steer by, but not in the first week.

Negative keywords from day one: “jobb” (job), “lønn” (salary), “selv” (DIY), “gratis” (free), “kurs” (course), “brukt” (used) and the names of competitors you don’t want to pay for. Put branded searches in a separate campaign, so you can see what the ads do for new customers.

Make sure your campaigns don’t overlap. If two campaigns have the same keywords, you’re bidding against yourself. We learned that in one of our accounts in August: a test campaign got 0 leads from 71 clicks, partly because six of its keywords overlapped with the main campaign. We turned it into a Google Ads experiment instead.

4. Ads and landing page

A search ad (RSA) has room for 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Use the keyword and the location in the headlines, and include what sets you apart: fixed price, guarantee, number of reviews, how fast you can get there. Add sitelinks, callouts and a phone number.

Send people to the page for the service they searched for, not the homepage, and make the form visible without scrolling on mobile. For Utvendig Renhold, we’re currently testing local landing pages per region against one national page in a Google Ads experiment, because we don’t want to guess what converts best.

5. Budget and bid strategy

Start with “Maximize conversions” without a target. Once the campaign has around 15–30 conversions in the last 30 days, you can set a target CPA close to what the leads actually cost. Change the target in small steps, and let it work for a week or two before you change it again.

Big jumps often backfire. When we raised target CPA from NOK 200 to NOK 260–300 in one of our accounts, the cost per click rose from NOK 18.5 to NOK 27 with no more leads, and we set the target back after eleven days. How much budget you need, and what clicks and leads cost, is covered in What does Google Ads cost?.

The first 30 days

• First week: check every day that conversions are coming in and that the search terms are the ones you wanted. Add negative keywords right away.
• Weeks 2–4: review the search terms every week. Keywords that have spent two to three times what a lead should cost without producing anything get paused or narrowed.
• Turn off auto-applied recommendations under “Recommendations.” Some suggestions are good, but many are about spending more or going broader.
• After 30 days: look at cost per lead by campaign and region, and move budget to where it’s cheapest. Don’t change bid strategy, landing page and ads in the same week, or you won’t know what worked.

When you shouldn’t advertise on Google

If almost nobody searches for what you sell (check in Keyword Planner in Google Ads), or your margin can’t absorb what a lead costs, the money does more good elsewhere. Then Meta is often a better place to start.

If you’d rather have someone else do the work, this is what we do.