Questions to ask before you spend a penny on Google Ads
There are three questions I'd encourage any business to sit with honestly before they spend anything on Google Ads. They're not complicated, but the answers matter more than most people realise.
Is your website ready for paid traffic?
There's a difference between a website that looks good and a website that's built to convert paid visitors into enquiries.
When someone clicks a Google Ad, they've actively searched for something and chosen to find out more. That's a warm prospect. But if they land on a page that's slow to load, hard to navigate, or doesn't clearly answer the question they were searching for, they'll leave — and your budget goes with them.
Before running ads, it's worth asking:
Does the page your ad sends people to match exactly what you're advertising?
Is it clear within a few seconds what you do, who you do it for, and how to get in touch?
Is your contact form easy to find, or buried at the bottom of a page full of other content?
Do you have a thank you page after the form is submitted? (Without one, there's no way to track whether the form is actually working.)
A good-looking website and a website that's ready for paid traffic aren't always the same thing. Fixing this before you run ads is one of the most valuable things you can do.
Do you have time to manage your ads?
Google Ads isn't a set-and-forget channel. An account that isn't being actively managed will drift — costs creep up, irrelevant searches start eating into the budget, and the settings Google defaults to aren't designed with small budgets in mind.
At a minimum, active management means checking search term reports regularly to make sure your ads are showing for the right searches. It means reviewing what's working and what isn't, making adjustments, and keeping an eye on where the budget is actually going.
If you're managing your own ads, be honest about whether you have the time to do this properly alongside running your business. A campaign that gets set up and left alone is very likely to underperform — and it can be hard to tell whether the problem is the strategy or the lack of attention.
If you're working with someone to manage your ads, it's worth understanding what active management looks like for them and how often they're reviewing the account. Good management isn't just setting things up. It's an ongoing process.
Is your budget realistic for your market?
Google Ads is an auction. How much you pay per click depends on how competitive the search terms you're targeting are, and that varies enormously depending on your industry and location.
A local trades business might pay very little per click. A business in a competitive professional services market could pay significantly more. Before you set a budget, it's worth getting a rough sense of the cost-per-click landscape in your market so you're going in with realistic expectations.
Budget also affects how quickly data builds. A smaller budget means fewer clicks per day, which means the campaign takes longer to gather the information it needs to improve. There's no magic number, but going in too thin — spending so little that meaningful data barely accumulates — can mean a slow start that's hard to read.
This doesn't mean you need a large budget to run Google Ads. It means your expectations should match what your budget can realistically achieve, and ideally, the keyword strategy should reflect the budget you have rather than trying to be everything to everyone on limited spend.
Running through the checklist
If you've answered these three questions honestly and feel confident about all of them, Google Ads is likely worth exploring. If one or more of them gave you pause, it's worth addressing those things first — because starting ads before the foundations are in place tends to be expensive and inconclusive.
This isn't about putting barriers in the way. It's about making sure that when you do spend money on Google Ads, you're giving it the best possible chance to work.
If you're not sure where you stand on any of these, get in touch — I'm happy to have an honest conversation about whether now is the right time for your business to run Google Ads, and what would need to be in place before it is.
