Running a Google ad is technically easy. You can open an account in a few minutes, enter your card details, and the ad is usually live by the next day. The hard part is knowing what your money is actually buying. Behind the sentence "I pay Google this much every month, but the phone isn't ringing" there usually isn't a bad ad. There's a report nobody has ever read.
In this post I'll explain how Google Ads works, the order in which you should set up your first campaign, and where the budget most often leaks. If you're setting it up yourself, this order will help you directly; if you're going to work with an agency, it shows you what to ask.
What sets search ads apart from other ads is intent. Someone scrolling Instagram isn't looking for anything at that moment; you have to remind them of their need. Someone who types "boiler repair Üsküdar" (Üsküdar is a district of Istanbul), on the other hand, has a broken boiler and is looking for someone to fix it. The ad lets you show up above the results for that search.
That's why the first thing to check is whether people actually type what you sell into Google. If they don't, even the best-built campaign won't find any searches to show up on. In that case, it makes more sense to put your money into another channel.
On Google, ad position is decided by an auction that runs again on every search, and that auction weighs not just your bid but also the quality of your ad and your landing page. The Ad Rank page in Google Ads Help (in Turkish) lists six factors: your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, Ad Rank thresholds, competition, the context of the search (such as location, device, and time), and the expected impact of your assets.
Here's what that means in practice. Spending more doesn't always get you a higher position; a competitor with a poor page can bid more than you and still land below you. And because position is recalculated on every search, there's no such thing as "we're always at the top." Don't trust anyone who promises that.
You run a Google ad by first deciding what counts as a conversion and setting up measurement, and only then choosing keywords, ad copy, and budget. Most people do it in reverse: they launch the ad first and leave measurement for "later."
Your first Google Ads campaign
Decide what counts as a sale
A form, a phone call, a WhatsApp message, or a checkout payment? Don't build a campaign before you write this down. Google's automated bidding learns what to aim for from this definition.
Open the account in your own name
The ad account should be opened with your email, and the payment method should be your card. If you're working with an agency, you invite them as administrators.
Set up conversion tracking and test it
Install the conversion tag or link GA4, then fill out a form yourself and check whether it's actually counted.
Keywords and match types
Pick searches that carry buying intent, choose match types deliberately, and add a negative keyword list from day one.
Ad copy and landing page
The promise your ad makes should be visible on the first screen of the page it opens. The phone number should be callable with one tap on mobile, and the form should be short.
Budget, launch, and the first weeks
Set the daily budget and go live. Don't change settings every day in the first weeks; once a week, read the search terms report and clean it up.
Step one is the most skipped step, and I think it's the one that decides the account's fate. An account that counts page visits as "conversions" is telling Google, "bring me people who land on the page." And Google does exactly that. Even if you're going to work with a Google Ads agency, you need to write this definition together in the first meeting; an agency can't guess what you count as a sale.
Before an ad goes live, it goes through Google's review. According to Google Ads Help, most ads are reviewed within one business day (in Turkish); more complex reviews can take longer. If it goes past two full business days, Google recommends checking its status, and if it goes past a week, contacting support.
Google Ads has no required minimum budget; you set the daily budget, and click costs determine how much gets spent. Click costs vary a lot by industry, region, and competitors' bids, so giving a single number like "Google Ads costs this much per month" would be misleading.
There's one rule you need to know, because it surprises people on their first monthly bill. According to the budget page in Google Ads Help (in Turkish), a campaign can spend up to twice its average daily budget on some days. But the amount you pay over a month won't exceed 30.4 times your average daily budget.
If you want an estimate for your own keywords, you can check Google's free Keyword Planner tool. The click cost shown there is only an estimate, but it beats picking a budget out of thin air. Here's how I'd think about it: when you divide your daily budget by the estimated click cost, how many clicks a day does that give you, and how many of those clicks do you expect to turn into a phone call or a form? That calculation answers the question "will I see meaningful data within a few weeks?"
And don't mix these two up. The ad budget you pay Google and the management fee you pay an agency are two separate line items. The first should go directly from your account to Google.
In a first campaign, budget usually leaks through irrelevant searches: because match types weren't chosen deliberately and no negative keyword list was added, the ad also shows up on searches that will never bring in business. The way to see this is the search terms report.
boiler repair üsküdar
matched keyword: boiler repair (phrase)
boiler repair job openings
matched keyword: boiler repair (broad)
how to reset a boiler
matched keyword: boiler breakdown (broad)
boiler pressure low what to do
matched keyword: boiler breakdown (broad)
boiler maintenance price üsküdar
matched keyword: boiler maintenance (exact)
The leak in this scene comes from match types. Google Ads has three match types: broad, phrase ("in quotation marks"), and exact ([in square brackets]). According to Google's match type options page (in Turkish), broad match is the default; in other words, when you add a keyword without any symbols, you start with the widest option. There's nothing wrong with broad match itself; with good measurement and regular cleanup, it can work well. But starting with broad match when you have no measurement means handing your budget over to Google's guesswork.
Check one more setting. Google Ads offers a feature to auto-apply recommendations (in Turkish). Some recommendations are useful, but you need to know which ones are being applied to your account automatically. If you've just opened your account, open this setting once and see what's selected.
If people are already searching for what you sell, start with Google Ads; if your product is something that sparks desire when people see it but isn't searched for yet, Instagram ads are the better starting point. These two reach the same customer at different moments.
Instagram ads
Google Ads
Let me be frank: for most small businesses, I think the first question should be "how many channels can my budget cover?" Which one is better comes after that. If your budget covers one channel and people are searching for you, start with Google. You can find the step-by-step setup for the Instagram side in the guide to running Instagram ads; if you'd rather outsource that work, our related service is on the Instagram ads agency page.
Google Ads and SEO aren't rivals either. Ads capture today's demand; SEO lets you show up on the same searches later without paying for clicks. If you want to run more than one channel under a single plan, that's usually called a digital marketing agency service.
You can tell whether your account is healthy by checking whether measurement works and which searches your money is going to. You can check the items below from inside your account.
Google Ads account check
0/8Check off the items; where your budget is leaking will most likely become clear.
The first two items aren't technical, but I think they're the most important. It's no coincidence that "google ads agency scam" shows up so often in searches. Cases where the account was opened in the agency's name and left with them, historical data and all, when the client walked away really do happen. If the account is in your name, that risk is closed off from the start.
If you're a small local business working with a handful of keywords, you can run it yourself, as long as you set up measurement correctly and read your search terms once a week. The hard part isn't so much the setup as the regular upkeep.
If you're dealing with several campaigns, a large number of products, or Shopping ads, or if you can't spare even an hour a week for this, working with a Google Ads agency can save you time and budget. When choosing an agency, the first thing to ask is whose name the account will be opened in, and whether the agency fee is listed separately from the ad budget. If the answers to those two questions aren't clear, there's no need to discuss the rest.
There's no required minimum budget; you set the daily budget. Your monthly cap is 30.4 times your average daily budget. How much you need for a meaningful test depends on the click cost of your keywords; you can get a rough estimate with Keyword Planner.
According to Google, most ads are reviewed within one business day and go live once approved. Seeing what actually brings in sales takes weeks, though, because the bidding system needs time to learn and enough conversions need to accumulate.
The ad budget goes to Google and is spent as your ads are shown or clicked. The agency fee pays for setting up, measuring, and regularly managing the campaign. The two should be on separate lines in a proposal.
It sets up and tests conversion tracking, defines keywords and the negative list, prepares campaigns and ad copy, cleans up search terms every week, and reports every month on what brought in sales. A good agency makes sure the account stays in your name.
With deciding what counts as a conversion. Then open the account in your own name, set up measurement, and test with a small budget for a few weeks. Ad copy and keyword choices only start to mean something once that foundation is in place.
Last updated: September 27, 2026. I update this guide as Google Ads rules change.
On September 24, 2026, Google cut Demand Gen's Shorts and Gmail image ads down to a single tap and announced a Business Agent beta for YouTube. Why you should be cautious about the 40% Gmail figure, and what to do today.
October 5, 2026: starting October 12, Google Ads will automatically add the coupons and discounts on your website to Search and Performance Max ads with a location asset. Who is affected and how to turn the setting off.
October 14, 2026: Google Ads now lets you rank channels as High or Low priority and cap the low-priority channel's share of budget; in Search campaigns with Display turned on, the old spend distribution goes away in February 2027.
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