"How do I advertise on Google?" gets typed into Google about 1,300 times a month in the US. Many of the people typing it run something small: a cleaning business, a tutoring service, a shop that sells online. Google's own guide for new advertisers answers with Performance Max, a campaign that can show your ads almost everywhere Google sells space.
Our answer is narrower. Your first dollar belongs to the people already searching for what you sell. Everyone else, the curious, the someday, the not-yet, can wait until those first searches are bringing in steady conversions.
This chapter shows why, using real searches from the kinds of businesses in this guide, and where each type of Google campaign fits.
A Parent Searching "Dyslexia" Isn't Hiring Yet. A Parent Searching for a Tutor Near Me Is.
Take one of the 12 small businesses we studied for this guide: an online reading and dyslexia tutor. Think about the path a parent walks before they hire one.
At first they don't know anything is wrong. Their child just doesn't like reading. That parent is unaware, and unaware people don't search for a solution, because they don't know they have a problem.
Then a teacher says something, and the parent searches "dyslexia." In the US that word gets about 246,000 searches a month. This parent is problem aware: they're learning what the problem is.
Later they learn that tutoring helps, and they search "reading tutor" (about 2,400 a month). Now they're solution aware.
Then they narrow it down: "orton gillingham tutor," a specific method, or "dyslexia tutor near me" (about 1,600 a month each). They're service aware, comparing providers.
Last, they search the tutor's own name. They're most aware, and close to booking.
Each stage has its own marketing job. At the top you create awareness. Then you build interest, then help someone decide, then get them to act. Companies with national budgets pay for all five stages together. A small business can't, and doesn't need to, because the bottom of that ladder is where the money changes hands.
Notice what happens as the parent moves down. The searches get fewer. "Dyslexia" gets more than 150 times the searches of "dyslexia tutor near me." And they get pricier, which tells you something.
Advertisers Pay Up to 6 Cents for "What Is Matcha" and $3.28 for "Loose Leaf Tea." The Price Shows Who Is Buying.
Keyword Planner, Google's free keyword tool, shows a "top of page bid" range for every search. Google defines that high end as the level roughly four in five past top-of-page bids for the search came in under. It is not what you will pay, but it is a useful signal: advertisers tend to bid up the searches that turn into sales and leave the rest cheap.
Look at the tutor's ladder again. The high-end bid for "dyslexia" is $3.29. For "reading tutor" it's $17.50. For "dyslexia tutor near me" it's $19.70. Advertisers pay six times as much for the parent who is ready to hire.
The same pattern shows up for an online store. One of the stores in our sample sells loose leaf tea. When we seeded Keyword Planner with its website, one of the biggest ideas Google suggested was a misspelled "whatis matcha," with 165,000 searches a month. Keyword Planner shows the same numbers for "what is matcha": about 165,000 searches, with a top-of-page bid from 2 cents to 6 cents. Compare "loose leaf tea": 90,500 searches, with a top bid of $1.13 to $3.28.
Both searches involve tea. One person wants a definition. The other wants to buy something. Advertisers worked that out with their own money long before you got here.
That is the trap for a small budget: the cheapest clicks are cheap for a reason. A hundred dollars at the top bid buys well over a thousand "what is matcha" clicks, or about 30 "loose leaf tea" clicks. Most of the first group came for an answer, not a tin of tea.
For a store, the ready-to-buy searches are usually product searches: the name of the tea, the kind of candle, the type of sign. The Ecommerce guide's chapter on product searches goes deeper on how stores should sort them.
"Handyman Near Me" Gets Nine Times the Searches of "How to Fix a Leaky Faucet."
Local service businesses get better news. For them, the ready-to-buy search is often the biggest search there is.
Across the US, about 110,000 people a month type "handyman near me." "How to fix a leaky faucet," the do-it-yourself version of the same need, gets about 12,100. The same holds for most local services we checked:
- House cleaning: "house cleaning services near me" about 60,500 a month, against about 390 for "how to clean a house fast."
- Yoga: "yoga classes near me" about 201,000, against about 14,800 for "yoga for beginners."
- Hair: "hair salon near me" about 1.5 million, against about 165,000 for "hair color ideas."
When someone types "near me," they want a business, not a lesson. For a local service, most of the searching happens at the bottom of the funnel.
Those are national numbers. In your own town, the ready-to-buy pile is much smaller: a few hundred to a few thousand searches a month, which is still more than a small budget can buy in full. Chapter 3 does that math. And if you serve a set area, the Local Businesses guide covers how to keep your ads inside it.
Search Ads Reach People Ready to Buy. YouTube Reaches People Who Haven't Started Looking.
Each campaign type Google offers lands at its own spot on that ladder.
Search campaigns show text ads when someone types a search you chose. They reach the bottom of the funnel: service aware and most aware people, typing what they want. This is where a small business starts.
Demand Gen shows picture and video ads to people who are scrolling rather than searching, on YouTube, Gmail and Google's other feeds. They reach people before they search: the unaware and problem aware. That is a good place to grow, later.
Performance Max campaigns reach across all of it at once. In Google's telling, one campaign can buy every placement it sells, from Search and Maps to YouTube and Gmail. One budget, every stage, with Google deciding most of where the money goes.
The rule we follow: start at the bottom, unless the budget is large enough to fund more than one stage properly. For most small businesses, it isn't.
Google's Sign-Up Steers New Advertisers Into Performance Max. Search Ads Suit a Small Budget Better.
Google doesn't present it that way when you sign up. Its own guide for new users is titled "Guide to getting started with Performance Max (for new users)," and walks through "creating your first Performance Max campaign," where "you can only choose one goal." And for accounts created from a manager account, Google says you "will be prompted to provide assets to create your first Performance Max campaign."
For a brand-new account with no conversion history, that is a campaign with every placement turned on and almost nothing to learn from. We hold Performance Max back until roughly 30 quality conversions come in each month; Chapter 10 explains why.
You can avoid starting there. Google's sign-up page recommends creating the account before creating a campaign, and says that at the business-information step "you also have the option to create an account without a campaign." Google's page on creating accounts from a manager account limits that option to advertisers with more than $1,000 of past spend who are in good standing, so you may not see it. If it isn't offered, finish setup with the campaign Google builds, pause it before it spends, and build your own Search campaign next.
This isn't a knock on Performance Max. It's a question of order. A campaign that can spend anywhere needs a clear signal of what a customer looks like, and that signal comes from the tracking in Chapter 1 plus a few months of real conversions from Search.
YouTube Ads Are Step Four. Your Account Needs About 30 Quality Conversions a Month First.
Starting at the bottom isn't the whole plan. It's the first step. Accounts grow by working back up the funnel, reaching people earlier, once the bottom is working. It feels backward, since traditional marketing starts at the top, but the growth comes on the way up.
Here's the order we use, with the gate for each step:
- Month one: exact-match Search keywords, every bid typed in by hand. We call this the Isolation campaign (BrandRocket's name, not a Google setting). Add a small campaign for your business name.
- Then broad match with a target cost per lead, which we call Exploration. What unlocks it is about 30 quality conversions landing in one month. That is usually months two or three; a busier account gets there sooner, and many small accounts take longer.
- Then Performance Max, usually around months six or seven, once about 30 quality conversions a month hold steady.
- Then Demand Gen on YouTube. Google advises budgeting at least 10 times the target cost per conversion when a Demand Gen campaign bids to a target, another reason it comes last.
A small account may stay at step one or two for a long time, and that's fine. A business that books steady work from a handful of ready-to-buy searches has a working account, not an unfinished one.
Next: What Google Ads Costs per Month Depends on the Price of Your Click.
You know where your first dollar goes. Chapter 3 works out how many dollars that takes: what a month of the searches in this chapter costs at your own click prices, and what a customer has to be worth to make it pay.
Every chapter, from tracking to bidding by hand, Google's ad credits and when to hire help, is on the guide's home page.
When we take on an account through Google Ads management, campaign one covers only the few searches that have already brought the business customers. Doing it yourself? Write down the five searches your best customers would type the day they're ready to buy. That list is your first campaign.
