How to Run Google Ads

Do the tracking before the campaign

This is the step everyone skips and the one that determines whether the next six months work. Google's automated bidding optimises toward whatever you define as a conversion. Define it wrongly and the algorithm will confidently spend your budget pursuing the wrong outcome, doing its job correctly on bad instructions.

Get these right before a single ad runs:

• A conversion action that fires on a genuine enquiry, not on a page view
• Deduplication, so a refresh of the thank-you page does not count three leads
• Call tracking, because in Pakistan a large share of high-intent enquiries arrive by phone or WhatsApp
• Where you have a CRM, offline conversion import so Google learns which leads actually closed

Structure the account so you can control it

The purpose of structure is control over bids and messaging. Group keywords by the intent behind them, not by what is convenient.

A workable default: one campaign per service line, one ad group per tight theme, and enough separation that you can raise the bid on the terms that convert without also raising it on the terms that do not. If an ad group contains keywords whose ideal landing page differs, split it.

Keep brand and non-brand in separate campaigns, always. People searching your company name were already coming to you. Blending those conversions into your prospecting reports makes the campaigns look far better than they are and hides which activity is actually generating new demand.

Match types, in plain terms

• Exact. Tightest control, lowest volume. Where your proven converting terms belong
• Phrase. A middle ground. Reasonable for controlled expansion once you have negatives in place
• Broad. Widest reach, and dangerous without disciplined negative keyword management. Useful as a discovery mechanism to find search terms you had not thought of, provided you actually read the search terms report

A common approach is to run broad or phrase for discovery, harvest the queries that convert into exact match ad groups with their own bids, and negate everything that spends without converting.

Negative keywords are the ongoing job

The search terms report is where accounts are won and lost. Every week, look at which queries actually triggered your ads. You will find searches with no commercial relevance to you at all, and you are paying for them.

Common categories worth negating early: job seekers, students looking for courses, people looking for free versions, DIY searches, and competitor brand names unless you are deliberately targeting them. Neglect this and even a well-built phrase match campaign drifts steadily into irrelevance.

Write ads for the query, and land them properly

The ad should reflect the specific search that triggered it. Generic ads across a broad ad group are why relevance scores drop and costs rise. If the keyword is specific, the headline should be too.

Then send the click somewhere purpose-built. Sending paid traffic to your homepage is one of the most expensive habits in the channel: someone searching for one specific service arrives at a page about everything and leaves. Each campaign deserves a page with a single conversion goal that matches the promise in the ad.

Let it settle before judging it

Automated bidding needs conversion volume before it performs well, and every significant edit resets the learning period. Accounts that are constantly tinkered with never exit learning and therefore never perform.

Expect first conversions within a fortnight and stable performance in six to twelve weeks. Judging week one is judging noise.

Choosing a bidding strategy

Google offers several and the right one depends mostly on how much conversion data you have.

• Manual or enhanced CPC. Sensible at the very start, when there is no conversion history for automation to learn from
• Maximise conversions. A reasonable default once conversions are arriving consistently and tracking is trustworthy
• Target CPA. Useful when you know what a lead can cost. Set the target from real data, because an unrealistically low target simply suppresses delivery
• Target ROAS. For ecommerce with reliable revenue values passed back to Google

The common error is switching to a smart bidding strategy before conversion tracking is reliable. The automation then optimises confidently toward a signal that does not reflect reality, and it will do so very efficiently.

A weekly routine that keeps accounts healthy

• Read the search terms report and add negatives. This is the highest-value recurring task in the account
• Check spend pacing against budget so nothing is quietly capped or overspending
• Review which keywords converted and which only consumed budget
• Look at ad-level performance and pause the clear losers, once there is enough data to call it
• Check landing pages still load properly and forms still submit. Broken forms are more common than anyone expects

Resist the urge to make large changes daily. Every significant edit resets the learning period, and accounts that are constantly adjusted never reach stable performance.