Creating Your First Google Ads Campaign: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

Before You Start: The Page the Clicks Will Land On

We'll go step by step, but let's start with what 90% of tutorials leave out: Google Ads bills you for the click, not the result. If the landing page is slow, ambiguous, or the form asks for twelve pieces of information, you'll be paying for visitors who leave.

Before creating your account, check three things:

1. You have a page dedicated to the offer you want to push — not your homepage
2. That page loads in under three seconds on a phone on 4G
3. The way to contact you is visible without scrolling, and the form asks the minimum: name, phone, need

If that's not the case, fix it first. A dedicated landing page starts at €990 and often costs less than a month of badly converted ad budget: web development.

Step 1: Create Your Google Ads Account

1.1 Sign-up

1. Go to ads.google.com
2. Sign in with a Google account, ideally a dedicated business one
3. Click "Start now"

1.2 Switch to Expert Mode Immediately

Important: don't follow the simplified wizard. It will have you create a badly configured campaign before you even have conversion tracking.

1. Look for the "Switch to expert mode" link at the bottom of the page
2. Choose "Create an account without a campaign"
3. Check the basics: country, time zone, currency

Be careful: currency and time zone cannot be changed afterwards. Take thirty seconds to verify.

1.3 Set Up Billing

In Billing, add a payment method and note your billing threshold: Google charges when you hit that threshold or on a fixed date, whichever comes first.

Step 2: Install Tracking (Before Anything Else)

Without measurement, you can't know which keyword makes you money. This step is not optional, and it's the one beginners skip most often.

2.1 Install Google Tag Manager

1. Create an account at tagmanager.google.com
2. Create a container for your site
3. Install both snippets provided: the main script in the head tag, the fallback fragment right after the opening body tag

If your site runs on WordPress or a CMS with a dedicated field, use it rather than editing the theme by hand.

2.2 Create the Conversion Action in Google Ads

1. Goals, then Conversions, then "New conversion action"
2. Choose "Website"
3. Name it clearly: "Quote form", "Phone call", "Purchase"
4. Enter a value: the actual amount for a purchase, an estimated value for a lead. Without a value, you'll never be able to calculate return on ad spend
5. Counting: "one" for a lead, "every" for e-commerce

2.3 Place the Tags in GTM

1. Create a Conversion Linker tag firing on all pages. It's what preserves attribution; without it you'll lose conversions
2. Create the Google Ads conversion tracking tag with the ID and label provided
3. Set the trigger: form submission, thank-you page view, click on the phone number
4. Publish the container

2.4 Enable the Options That Recover Signal

• Enhanced conversions: sends hashed first-party data, recovers otherwise invisible conversions
• Consent Mode v2: mandatory in the European Economic Area. Misconfigured, it makes part of your conversions disappear from reporting

2.5 Verify Before You Spend

Use Google Tag Assistant, make a test conversion, and check it appears in Google Ads. Allow up to 24 hours. Don't launch a budget before you've seen a test conversion arrive.

Step 3: Find Your Keywords

3.1 Start From Your Customers' Language

List what your customers actually type, not your industry vocabulary. A customer searches "water heater leak", not "sanitary plumbing intervention". Your inbox and your inbound calls are the best keyword source that exists.

3.2 Use the Keyword Planner

1. Tools, then Planning, then Keyword Planner
2. "Discover new keywords"
3. Enter your base terms and your area
4. Look at three columns: monthly volume, competition, top-of-page bid range

3.3 Select

Criteria:

• Sufficient volume, not necessarily high: 100 highly qualified monthly searches beat 5,000 vague ones
• Commercial intent: "price", "quote", "near me", "emergency" rather than "how to"
• A bid compatible with your budget

Example grouping:

Group: Emergency plumbing Melun
[plumber melun]
[emergency plumber melun]
"plumbing repair melun"
"plumber melun price"

One group = one theme = one ad = one page. If a keyword can't be addressed by the same ad as the others, it belongs in a different group.

Step 4: Create the Campaign

4.1 New Campaign

1. "New campaign"
2. Objective: Leads or Sales
3. Type: Search network
4. Enter the URL of your dedicated page

4.2 Settings

Naming — adopt a convention from the start:

[Type] - [Service] - [Area] - [Match]
Example: SEARCH - Repair - Melun 25km - Exact

Networks: tick only the Google Search Network. Untick Search Partners and the Display Network: they're on by default and will dilute your budget on lower-quality traffic.

Locations: select your real service area, then open advanced options and choose "Presence: people in your targeted locations" rather than the default that includes interest. It's one of the most profitable settings in this tutorial.

Budget: daily budget. Google can spend up to twice that amount on a given day, rebalancing across the month. Budget €20-30 a day for a healthy start in a moderately competitive sector.

Bidding: start with "Maximise clicks" with a capped max CPC while you collect data. Move to "Maximise conversions" once you reach around twenty conversions. Don't start on target ROAS: the algorithm will have nothing to learn from.

4.3 The Ad Group and Match Types

[plumber melun]          → exact: the query matches the keyword
"plumber melun"          → phrase: the query contains the meaning
plumber melun            → broad: Google interprets loosely

Start with exact and phrase. Broad match on a small budget is the fastest way to spend on unrelated queries.

4.4 Writing the Ads

Responsive search ads take up to 15 headlines (30 characters) and 4 descriptions (90 characters). Google combines the elements.

A structure that works:

• 2 or 3 headlines containing the main keyword
• 2 or 3 headlines carrying a concrete benefit: timing, area, speciality
• 1 or 2 headlines with a call to action
• Pin the headline carrying your core promise to position 1, let Google test the rest

Example for a tradesperson:

Headline 1: Plumber in Melun
Headline 2: On Site Within 2 Hours
Headline 3: Free Quote by Phone
Headline 4: Local Trade, 25km Radius
Description 1: Leaks, water heaters, drains. Fast call-outs in Melun and surrounding area. Call now.
Description 2: Clear quote before any work. Melun-based trade, available weekdays and Saturdays.

Two rules to follow absolutely:

• Never advertise a guaranteed result or a figure you can't prove. It's grounds for ad disapproval, and a legal risk
• Every promise in the ad must appear word for word on the landing page, otherwise your quality score drops and your click costs more

4.5 Extensions

They increase your ad's surface area at no extra cost. The priorities:

1. Sitelinks (4 minimum): your services, your pricing, your past work, contact
2. Callouts (4 minimum): "Free quote", "Reply within 24h", "Local trade"
3. Structured snippets: a list of your services
4. Call extension: essential for local businesses, the number becomes tappable on mobile
5. Location extension: link your Google Business Profile

4.6 Negative Keywords, From Day One

Create a shared account-level list before your first impression:

-free
-jobs
-hiring
-training
-internship
-salary
-tutorial
-diy
-pdf
-wikipedia

Step 5: Launch, Then Optimise

5.1 Pre-Launch Checklist

• Test conversion visible in the interface
• Search Partners and Display unticked
• Location targeting set to "Presence"
• At least two ads per group
• Extensions filled in
• Negative list in place
• Landing page tested on a phone

5.2 The First Days

Days 1 to 3: touch nothing. Just check impressions are coming in. Every edit restarts the learning phase.

Days 4 to 7: open the search terms report. It's the most important document in your account: it shows the actual queries that triggered your ads. Add anything irrelevant as a negative.

5.3 The Optimisation Rhythm

Every week:

• Search terms report, then negative keywords
• Spot low click-through ads and rewrite them
• Check how spend is distributed across groups

Every month:

• Calculate cost per lead, then cost per customer
• Test new headlines
• Reallocate budget towards what converts
• Review performance by device and by hour

The calculation method is detailed here: calculating your return on ad spend.

The Six Beginner Mistakes That Cost the Most

1. Launching without tracking. You'll never know what worked.
2. Leaving Search Partners and Display ticked. They're on by default and consume your budget with no purchase intent.
3. Using broad match too early. You pay for unrelated queries.
4. Sending traffic to the homepage. The most common mistake, and the most expensive.
5. Editing the campaign daily. Every change restarts learning; nothing ever stabilises.
6. Cutting after ten days. Allow 4 to 6 weeks before judging. Stopping earlier throws away the data you just paid for.

Going Further

This tutorial covers a clean first launch. For full account structure, automated bidding strategies, and Performance Max campaigns, see the complete Google Ads guide. If your budget is tight, the strategy changes: Google Ads on a small budget.

We've managed over €10M in advertising budgets and worked with 40+ clients, with an average return on ad spend of 3.4x. What we see consistently: the accounts that take off are the ones whose website was ready to receive the traffic.

Would you rather have it done once, properly? Describe your project in two minutes, we reply in under 24 hours: start my project.