Last Updated: February 2026
You have a business. You have heard that Google Ads can bring in customers. You have probably also heard that it is complicated, expensive, and easy to screw up. All three of those things are true, to varying degrees. But the reason most businesses fail at Google Ads is not that the platform is too complex. It is that nobody explains the fundamentals honestly.
Every Google Ads tutorial on the internet walks you through 47 steps to set up your first campaign, complete with screenshots of every dropdown menu. That is fine if you enjoy spending 20 hours learning software before seeing your first result. But what if you just want customers? What if you want to understand the core ideas behind Google Ads without drowning in settings panels?
That is what this guide is for. We are going to explain Google Ads from absolute zero, assuming you have never created a campaign, never bid on a keyword, and have no idea what "Quality Score" means. We will cover what Google Ads actually is and how it works, what realistic results look like, how much you should expect to spend, the fundamental decisions you need to make, the mistakes that waste the most money, and the different paths to managing your campaigns, including the option to skip the learning curve entirely.
No jargon without explanation. No fluff. No screenshots of menus you can find yourself. Just the honest, strategic thinking that separates businesses that make money on Google Ads from businesses that burn through cash and quit.
Google Ads is a system that lets you pay to appear at the top of Google search results when someone searches for something related to your business.
That is it. At its core, that is all it is.
When someone types "plumber near me" or "best project management software" or "women's running shoes size 8" into Google, the results page shows a mix of organic results (free listings that Google's algorithm ranks) and paid results (ads that businesses pay to display). Google Ads is how you get into those paid spots.
The critical concept to understand is this: people searching on Google already want something. They are actively looking for a product, service, or solution. This is fundamentally different from advertising on social media, where you interrupt someone scrolling through photos of their friend's holiday to show them an ad for your product. On Google, you are showing up exactly when someone is looking for what you sell. This is called "intent-based advertising," and it is the single most powerful form of online marketing that exists.
Google processes roughly 8.5 billion searches per day. Some fraction of those searches are directly relevant to your business. Google Ads is the mechanism that puts you in front of those searchers at the exact moment they are looking for you.
Every time someone types a search into Google, an auction happens in milliseconds. Google looks at all the advertisers who want to show an ad for that search, evaluates each one, and decides who gets to appear and in what order.
Here is the part most beginners get wrong: the highest bidder does not always win. Google uses a formula that considers two main factors.
Your bid is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click. If you set a bid of $5, you are telling Google you will pay up to $5 when someone clicks your ad. You do not pay $5 every time. You pay just enough to beat the advertiser below you, often significantly less than your maximum bid.
Your Quality Score is Google's rating (on a scale of 1 to 10) of how relevant and useful your ad is to the person searching. It is based on three things: how likely people are to click your ad (expected click-through rate), how relevant your ad text is to the search query (ad relevance), and how useful your landing page is to someone who clicks (landing page experience).
Google multiplies your bid by your Quality Score to create something called Ad Rank. A higher Ad Rank means a better position on the page. This means an advertiser with a $3 bid and a Quality Score of 9 (Ad Rank: 27) will beat an advertiser with a $5 bid and a Quality Score of 4 (Ad Rank: 20). In other words, writing a more relevant ad and having a better landing page can literally make your clicks cheaper than your competitors' clicks.
This is not just a nice theory. It is how the system actually works, and understanding it is the single most important insight for keeping your costs down as a beginner.
Here is what industry data from 2025 tells us about average Google Ads performance. These are benchmarks, not guarantees, but they give you a realistic baseline for what to expect.
The average cost per click across all industries is $5.26. But this varies enormously. Arts and entertainment advertisers pay around $1.60 per click. Restaurants and food businesses pay about $2.05. Legal services pay $8.58. Dentists and home improvement businesses pay around $7.85. The cost you pay depends almost entirely on how competitive your industry is and how valuable a customer is.
The average click-through rate across all industries is 6.66%. This means roughly 7 out of every 100 people who see your ad will click on it. Some industries see much higher rates. Arts and entertainment average over 10%. Others, like legal services, sit below 2%. A higher CTR generally means your ads are relevant and well-written.
The average conversion rate is 7.52%. This means roughly 7 to 8 out of every 100 people who click your ad will take the action you want, whether that is making a purchase, filling out a form, or calling your business. This is where things get tangible. If you pay $5 per click and 7.5% of clickers convert, your cost per lead is roughly $67. The average cost per lead across all industries is actually $70.11.
The average return on ad spend is around $2 for every $1 invested. The top 10% of advertisers achieve 4x or higher returns. The difference between average and excellent is almost always down to how well campaigns are structured, targeted, and optimised.
These numbers should do two things. First, they should help you set realistic expectations. If someone promises you $5 leads in an industry where the average is $70, they are either lying or confused. Second, they should show you that Google Ads works. The average business doubles its money. The question is whether you can be above average, and the answer to that depends on the decisions you make next.
Until recently, there were really only two options for running Google Ads. Learn to do it yourself, which takes months of study and painful experimentation. Or hire an agency, which typically costs $1,500 to $3,000 per month on top of your ad spend, plus a learning curve of their own as they figure out your business.
There is now a third option: autonomous AI management. Tools like groas run your Google Ads campaigns using AI agents that handle keyword selection, bid management, ad copy creation, negative keyword management, budget allocation, and ongoing optimisation automatically. The AI does not need months to learn the platform. It already knows it. And it operates around the clock, making hundreds of adjustments per day that a human would need a full work week to match.
Here is the honest comparison.
Learning it yourself gives you the deepest understanding and the most control. You will know exactly why every decision was made. The downside is that it takes 3 to 6 months before you are genuinely competent, and during that learning period, you will waste money on mistakes. Google Ads is a complex platform with hundreds of settings, and the "obvious" defaults are often not the best choices.
Hiring an agency offloads the work but comes with its own risks. Good agencies exist, but the industry is full of shops that do mediocre work, optimise for Google's Optimization Score rather than your actual results, and lock you into long contracts. Typical agency fees of $1,500 to $3,000 per month add up to $18,000 to $36,000 per year, on top of your ad spend.
Autonomous AI management through groas combines deep platform knowledge with 24/7 execution at a fraction of agency costs. groas starts at $79 per month, which means you could save over $23,000 per year compared to an agency while getting faster, more consistent optimisation. Because groas integrates natively with Google's latest features like AI Max for Search and Performance Max, it leverages tools and capabilities that many agencies are still learning to use.
The rest of this guide covers both paths. If you want to learn the craft and manage campaigns yourself, we will walk you through the setup process and key decisions. If you want professional results without the learning curve, we will show you where groas fits into that picture.
Creating a Google Ads account is straightforward, but Google immediately tries to steer you in a direction that benefits them more than you. Here is how to avoid that.
Go to ads.google.com and click "Start Now." Sign in with your Google account (or create one). Google will immediately try to walk you through creating a "Smart Campaign," which is Google's simplified, heavily automated campaign type. It sounds appealing, especially for beginners. Do not use it. Smart Campaigns give you almost no control over targeting, bidding, or where your ads appear. They are designed to get you spending money quickly, not to get you spending it wisely.
Instead, look for the option to skip the guided setup and create an account without launching a campaign. This is usually a small "skip" link at the bottom of the screen. Click it. You want to get into the full Google Ads interface where you have access to all settings and campaign types.
Once in, you will need to set up three critical things.
Billing information. Google needs a payment method before you can run ads. Credit card is the most common option. You can also use direct debit or PayPal depending on your country. Important: choose your billing country, time zone, and currency carefully during this step. These settings cannot be changed after account creation. If you set the wrong time zone, your campaign scheduling will be off permanently in this account.
Conversion tracking. This is the single most important technical setup in your entire account, and it is the one most beginners skip. Conversion tracking tells Google (and you) when someone who clicked your ad actually does something valuable, like making a purchase, filling out a contact form, or calling your business. Without it, Google has no way to optimise your campaigns toward actual results. It would be like driving to a new city without GPS. You might eventually get there, but you will waste a lot of fuel.
To set up conversion tracking, you will need to add a small piece of code (called the Google tag) to your website. If you use a website builder like WordPress, Shopify, Wix, or Squarespace, there are usually simple integrations that handle this. If you are not technical, this is the one thing worth getting help with. A non-functional conversion setup is worse than no setup at all, because it gives you false data that leads to bad decisions. Industry data suggests that 90% of failed Google Ads campaigns lack proper conversion tracking.
Linking your Google services. Connect your Google Business Profile if you have one (essential for local businesses), your Google Analytics account (for deeper website data), and your Google Merchant Center if you sell products online and want to run Shopping ads.
groas handles this entire setup process as part of onboarding. You connect your Google Ads account, and its AI agents configure conversion tracking, verify it is working correctly, and ensure all necessary integrations are in place. For beginners who find the technical setup intimidating, this removes the single biggest barrier to getting started.
Before you touch a single campaign setting, you need to answer five questions. Getting these right matters more than any technical optimisation.
This sounds obvious, but most beginners get it wrong by being too broad. "I sell shoes" is not specific enough. "I sell women's trail running shoes in the $80 to $150 range" is. The more specific you are, the more targeted your campaigns can be, and the less money you waste on people who are not your customer.
Start with your best-selling product or service, the one with the highest profit margin, the most satisfied customers, or the strongest competitive advantage. Do not try to advertise everything at once. Pick one or two offerings and build your initial campaigns around them. You can expand later once you have data.
Google Ads lets you target people based on what they are searching for (keywords), where they are located (geographic targeting), and what device they are using (mobile, desktop, tablet). For beginners, the first two are the most important.
Keywords are the search terms you want to trigger your ads. If you sell emergency plumbing services in Denver, your keywords might include "emergency plumber Denver," "burst pipe repair near me," and "24 hour plumber." You are telling Google: when someone searches for these phrases, show them my ad.
Location targeting lets you restrict where your ads appear geographically. If you serve customers in a specific city or region, set your location targeting accordingly. Critically, change the default from "Presence or interest" to "Presence" only. The default setting shows your ads to people who are "interested in" your location but might not actually be there. A person in New York researching Denver restaurants for a future trip does not need to see your Denver plumber ad.
Google Ads works on a daily budget model. You set a maximum daily spend for each campaign, and Google will try to spend up to that amount (though it may exceed it by up to 20% on some days, averaging out over the month).
The right budget depends on your industry's average CPC and the volume of searches available. A useful formula: start with enough budget to generate at least 10 to 15 clicks per day. If your industry's average CPC is $5, that means $50 to $75 per day, or roughly $1,500 to $2,250 per month.
Why 10 to 15 clicks? Because you need data. Google's bidding algorithms cannot optimise your campaigns without sufficient data, and you cannot make informed decisions about what is working without a meaningful sample of clicks and conversions. Spending $10 per day in an industry with $5 clicks gives you just two clicks per day, which is not enough to learn anything useful.
If your budget is below $500 per month, you can still run Google Ads, but you should be extremely focused, targeting only your most commercially valuable keywords in the tightest geographic area that makes sense for your business. Spread thin budgets across too many keywords and you will get insufficient data everywhere.
Google offers several campaign types: Search, Shopping, Display, Video, Performance Max, and Demand Gen. As a beginner, start with a Search campaign. Here is why.
Search campaigns show text ads to people who are actively searching for something on Google. This is the highest-intent advertising available, the closest thing to someone walking into your store and asking for help. Display campaigns show banner ads on websites across the internet, which is more about awareness than direct response. Shopping campaigns are specifically for ecommerce product listings. Performance Max runs across all Google channels using AI, but without conversion data and experience, it is hard to control.
Google's 2025 recommendation is a "Power Pack" approach: Performance Max for broad reach, AI Max for Search for high-intent targeting, and Demand Gen for awareness. This makes sense for experienced advertisers. For beginners, a focused Search campaign is the right starting point because it gives you the most control, the clearest data, and the most direct path to understanding how Google Ads works.
Before launching, define what a successful outcome looks like. Is it a phone call? A form submission? An online purchase? A booked appointment? Define one primary conversion action and make sure your conversion tracking is set up to measure it.
Then set a target cost per conversion. If your average customer is worth $500 to your business, paying $50 to acquire them is excellent. Paying $400 might not be sustainable. Work backwards from your unit economics: what is a customer worth to you over their lifetime, and what percentage of that value are you willing to spend on acquisition?
With those five decisions made, here is how to build your first campaign.
Campaign settings. Name your campaign something descriptive (e.g., "Search - Emergency Plumbing - Denver"). Select "Search" as the campaign type. For networks, uncheck "Google Search Partners" and uncheck "Display Network." Both of these expand where your ads appear in ways that dilute performance for beginners. You can test them later.
Bidding strategy. For a new campaign with no conversion data, start with Maximize Clicks with a maximum CPC bid limit. Set the limit at a level you are comfortable with based on your industry benchmarks (e.g., if average CPC is $5, set the limit at $7 to $8 so you are competitive but not overspending). This gets you traffic and data. Once you accumulate 30 or more conversions, switch to a conversion-based bidding strategy like Maximize Conversions or Target CPA. Smart Bidding strategies need data to work. Giving them to a brand new campaign with zero conversion history is like hiring a race car driver who has never seen the track.
Ad groups. Organise your keywords into tightly themed ad groups. Each ad group should contain keywords that share the same intent. "Emergency plumber Denver" and "burst pipe repair Denver" can live together. "Emergency plumber Denver" and "bathroom remodelling Denver" should be in separate ad groups because the intent is completely different.
Keywords and match types. Start with phrase match and exact match keywords. Phrase match (wrapped in quotation marks) shows your ad when someone's search includes your keyword in the right context. Exact match (wrapped in brackets) shows your ad only for searches that closely match your keyword. Avoid broad match for now. Broad match tells Google to show your ads for any search it considers related to your keyword, which can be extremely loose. A broad match keyword of "plumber Denver" might trigger your ad for "Denver plumbing school" or "plumber salary Colorado." Without sufficient conversion data, broad match will waste your budget on irrelevant traffic.
Negative keywords. This is one of the most overlooked steps for beginners and one of the most important. Negative keywords are terms you tell Google to never show your ads for. Add obvious negatives from day one: "free," "jobs," "salary," "DIY," "how to become," "school," "training," and "cheap" (if you are not a budget brand). These prevent your ads from showing to people who have no intention of becoming your customer.
Ad copy. You will create Responsive Search Ads (RSAs), which let you write up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Google then mixes and matches them to find the best combinations. Write at least 10 headlines covering different angles: your service, your location, your unique selling point, a call to action, social proof (e.g., "500+ Five-Star Reviews"), and pricing or promotions. Write 3 to 4 descriptions that each stand alone as a complete, persuasive statement.
Landing page. Send ad clicks to the most relevant page on your website. If your ad is about emergency plumbing, land people on your emergency plumbing page, not your homepage. The landing page should directly address the search intent, include a clear call to action (call now, book online, get a quote), and load quickly on mobile. Roughly 60% or more of Google searches now happen on mobile devices. If your landing page is not mobile-friendly, you are wasting money.
After auditing hundreds of new Google Ads accounts, the same mistakes appear over and over. Here are the seven that cost beginners the most.
Mistake 1: No conversion tracking. We covered this already, but it bears repeating. Without conversion tracking, you are flying blind. Google cannot optimise for conversions if it does not know what a conversion is. You cannot evaluate whether your campaigns are working. This one mistake invalidates everything else you do.
Mistake 2: Starting with broad match keywords. Broad match before you have conversion data is the fastest way to burn through your budget. Google will show your ads for wildly irrelevant searches, and without conversion data to guide Smart Bidding, there is no mechanism to course-correct. Start with phrase and exact match. Expand to broad match only after you have at least 30 conversions per month.
Mistake 3: No negative keywords. Every irrelevant click costs you money. If you are a luxury furniture store and someone searches "cheap furniture," that click costs the same as someone searching "designer sofa." Negative keywords prevent the first type of click. Build your negative keyword list from day one and expand it weekly as you review your search terms report.
Mistake 4: Sending all traffic to your homepage. Your homepage exists to introduce your business. Your ads are targeting people with specific intent. Those two jobs are different. Someone searching "emergency plumber" needs to land on a page about emergency plumbing services, with a phone number prominently displayed, not a page that talks about your company history and lists all your services in a navigation menu. Landing page relevance directly affects your Quality Score, which affects your cost per click. Bad landing pages make your ads more expensive.
Mistake 5: Using the wrong bidding strategy for your data level. Target CPA and Target ROAS are powerful strategies, but they require historical conversion data to function. Setting a Target CPA of $50 on a brand new campaign with zero conversions gives the algorithm nothing to work with. Start with Maximize Clicks (with a cap), accumulate data, then transition to smart bidding.
Mistake 6: Setting it and forgetting it. Google Ads is not a set-and-forget platform. New search terms appear daily, competitor behaviour changes, seasonal patterns shift, and ad copy gets stale. At minimum, review your campaigns weekly: check the search terms report, adjust bids, add negative keywords, and evaluate ad performance. Accounts that are actively managed outperform neglected accounts by a wide margin.
Mistake 7: Expecting instant profitability. Google Ads requires data to optimise. The first week is about gathering information, not making money. The first month is about refining. Genuine, consistent profitability typically takes 4 to 8 weeks of active management for a well-structured campaign, longer for highly competitive industries. If someone tells you Google Ads will print money from day one, they are setting you up for disappointment.
groas prevents all seven of these mistakes by default. Its AI agents set up conversion tracking during onboarding, start with conservative match types and expand intelligently as data accumulates, build and continuously expand negative keyword lists using real-time search terms analysis, route traffic to the most relevant landing pages using Google's Final URL Expansion, select the right bidding strategy based on available data and automatically transition as conversion volume grows, actively manage campaigns around the clock, and set realistic performance expectations with transparent reporting. For beginners, groas effectively eliminates the learning curve where most of the money gets wasted.
Understanding the typical trajectory of a new Google Ads campaign helps you avoid two common pitfalls: panicking and shutting things off too early, or assuming mediocre results are as good as it gets.
Week 1 to 2: Data gathering. Your campaign is live, but it is essentially collecting information. You will see clicks, you might see a few conversions, but the primary purpose of this period is generating the data Google's algorithms need to start optimising. Do not make dramatic changes during this phase unless something is clearly broken (like ads showing for completely irrelevant searches). Do review your search terms report daily and add negative keywords for any obvious junk.
Week 3 to 4: Early optimisation. By now you should have enough data to start making informed adjustments. Pause keywords that are generating clicks but no conversions. Increase bids on keywords that are converting well. Refine your ad copy based on which headlines and descriptions are performing. If you have accumulated 30 or more conversions, consider transitioning from Maximize Clicks to a conversion-based bidding strategy.
Month 2: Meaningful patterns. You can now see real trends. Which keywords drive your best customers? Which ad messages resonate? What does your cost per lead or cost per sale actually look like? This is when you start expanding what works (more budget to winning campaigns, new keywords similar to winners) and cutting what does not.
Month 3: Genuine optimisation. Your campaigns have real performance history. Smart Bidding has enough data to work effectively. You can start testing more aggressive expansion strategies like broad match (with the conversion data to back it up), new ad copy angles, and additional campaign types. This is also when you can meaningfully evaluate whether your Google Ads investment is generating a positive return.
The timeline above applies whether you manage campaigns yourself, use an agency, or use autonomous AI. The difference is that with manual management, much of the early period is spent learning the platform and fixing beginner mistakes. With an agency, there is an onboarding period where they learn your business. With groas, the AI already knows the platform and begins optimising from day one, which compresses the timeline significantly. Campaigns managed by groas typically start showing meaningful optimisation patterns within the first two weeks rather than the first month.
Not everyone should manage Google Ads the same way. Here is how to choose the approach that matches your situation.
If you have more time than money and genuinely enjoy learning new skills, managing Google Ads yourself makes sense. Plan to spend 5 to 10 hours per week on campaign management, plus an initial learning investment of 20 to 40 hours understanding the platform. Use Google's free Skillshop courses, industry blogs, and the tactical advice in this guide. Budget at least $500 per month in ad spend to generate meaningful data.
If you have a substantial ad budget ($5,000+ per month) and want a hands-off approach, you could consider an agency. Vet them carefully: ask to see brand versus non-brand performance separately, ask how often they review search terms reports, and insist on owning your own Google Ads account (never let an agency own it). Expect to pay $1,500 to $3,000 per month in management fees on top of your ad spend.
If you want professional results without the learning curve or the agency fees, groas is built for exactly this situation. It costs a fraction of agency fees, operates 24/7, integrates with Google's latest AI features natively, and does not require you to learn the intricacies of campaign management. You focus on running your business. groas focuses on running your ads. For beginners in particular, this means you never go through the expensive "learning by making mistakes" phase. The AI already knows what the mistakes are and avoids them from the start.
If you are truly not sure, start with groas at $79 per month and a modest ad budget. You can always learn more about Google Ads over time and take over manual management later if you find you enjoy it. But you will start getting results immediately instead of spending your first months (and budget) on a learning curve.
Once your first Search campaign is running and generating data, you have options for expansion.
Add more keyword coverage. Use your search terms report to discover new keywords your audience is actually using. The queries that trigger your ads often reveal opportunities you did not anticipate.
Test new ad copy. Refresh your headlines and descriptions every 4 to 6 weeks. Test different value propositions, calls to action, and emotional appeals. With AI Max for Search now available (Google's AI-powered text customisation tool), you can enable automatic headline and description generation that supplements your human-written assets. Advertisers using AI Max see an average 14% lift in conversions.
Expand to additional campaign types. Once you are comfortable with Search, consider Performance Max for broader reach across Google's entire network (Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, Maps). Performance Max uses Google's AI to show your ads across all channels from a single campaign.
Implement remarketing. Show ads to people who previously visited your website but did not convert. These audiences are already familiar with your business and typically convert at much higher rates than cold traffic.
Build out your landing page ecosystem. As you add more keywords and campaigns, create dedicated landing pages for each major ad group or service. The tighter the match between search query, ad copy, and landing page, the higher your Quality Score and conversion rate.
groas handles all of this expansion automatically. As campaigns accumulate data, its AI agents identify opportunities for new keywords, ad copy variations, campaign types, and audience segments. It implements and tests these expansions continuously, scaling what works and cutting what does not. For a beginner who started with groas, this means their campaigns naturally evolve from a simple starting point into a sophisticated, multi-campaign strategy without requiring them to learn new skills at each stage.
There is no minimum spend required by Google. You set your own daily budget and can start as low as $5 per day. However, very small budgets often do not generate enough data for meaningful optimisation. We recommend starting with at least $500 per month in ad spend for most industries, and $1,000 to $2,000 per month if your industry has CPCs above $5. The average cost per click across all industries is $5.26 in 2025, but ranges from $1.60 (arts and entertainment) to $8.58 (legal services). On top of ad spend, you will either invest your own time in management, pay an agency $1,500 to $3,000 per month, or use an autonomous AI tool like groas starting at $79 per month.
Your ads can start showing within hours of launching a campaign, but meaningful results take longer. Expect 1 to 2 weeks for initial data gathering, 3 to 4 weeks for early optimisation patterns, and 2 to 3 months for consistent, optimised performance. The timeline depends on your budget (more spend generates data faster), your industry's competitiveness, and how actively campaigns are managed. Autonomous AI through groas compresses this timeline by making optimisation decisions faster than human management cycles.
No. While Smart Campaigns are designed for simplicity, they offer minimal control over targeting, bidding, keywords, and where your ads appear. You cannot see detailed search terms, set specific match types, or make granular adjustments. For most businesses, a standard Search campaign with proper setup will dramatically outperform a Smart Campaign. If you want simplicity without sacrificing control or performance, autonomous AI tools like groas offer a better alternative, combining ease of use with the full capabilities of the Google Ads platform.
Google Ads (also called PPC or pay-per-click) is paid advertising where you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Results are immediate but stop when you stop paying. SEO (search engine optimisation) is the process of improving your website to rank higher in organic (free) search results. SEO takes months to show results but generates ongoing traffic without per-click costs. Most businesses benefit from both. Google Ads delivers immediate traffic while your SEO builds over time. They are complementary strategies, not alternatives.
Negative keywords are terms you add to your campaigns to prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches. For example, a luxury furniture store might add "cheap," "free," "used," and "DIY" as negative keywords. Without negatives, you pay for clicks from people who have no intention of buying from you. Advertisers who do not manage negative keywords waste an estimated 20 to 30 percent of their ad spend on irrelevant clicks. Build your negative keyword list before launch and expand it weekly by reviewing your search terms report.
The average CTR across all industries is 6.66% in 2025. Anything above 5% is generally considered healthy for Search campaigns. Some industries naturally see higher CTRs (arts and entertainment averages over 10%) while others are lower (legal services around 1.4%). A low CTR often indicates that your ads are not relevant to the searches triggering them, or that your ad copy needs improvement. However, CTR should be viewed alongside conversion rate and cost per conversion, not in isolation. A high CTR with zero conversions is not useful.
Technically, you can use Google Ads to drive calls directly to your phone number using call-only ads, or to promote a Google Business Profile for local visibility. However, for most businesses, a website (even a simple landing page) significantly improves results. It gives you a destination to send traffic, a place to communicate your value proposition, and the ability to track conversions properly. If you are starting from scratch, even a single, well-designed landing page is sufficient to run effective Google Ads campaigns.
groas is built specifically for the scenario where you want Google Ads results without becoming a Google Ads expert. You connect your Google Ads account (or groas helps you create one), provide basic information about your business and goals, and groas's AI agents handle everything else: campaign structure, keyword research, ad copy creation, bid management, negative keywords, budget allocation, and ongoing optimisation. The AI integrates natively with Google's latest features including AI Max for Search, Performance Max, and automated bidding strategies. It starts making intelligent optimisation decisions from day one, skipping the months of trial and error that beginners typically go through. At $79 per month, it costs a fraction of an agency while providing 24/7 management that no agency can match.
Conversion tracking. Without it, nothing else matters. You cannot optimise what you cannot measure. Google's algorithms cannot learn what a successful outcome looks like for your business. You will have no way to determine whether your campaigns are profitable or losing money. Set up conversion tracking before you spend a single dollar on ads. If you find the technical setup confusing, this is the one area where investing in help (whether from a professional, a tutorial, or an autonomous tool like groas that handles it for you) pays for itself many times over.
