Small Business Digital
When a Small Business Should Start Google Ads
1 October 2025
Google Ads can be the most effective paid channel for a local trades or service business. It can also be the fastest way to spend money without result. The difference is usually not the platform, the budget, or the campaign setup. It is the readiness of the business before the advertising starts.
Running Google Ads before the business is ready to convert the traffic it generates is one of the most common mistakes to avoid. Here is the readiness checklist I use before recommending any small business start paid search advertising.
The readiness checklist
Your Google Business Profile is complete and has reviews.
Google Ads can drive traffic to your website. But many people who click your ad will also search for your business name separately, and what they find there matters. A Google Business Profile that is incomplete, has no reviews, or shows stale photos undermines the credibility your ad worked to establish. Get the profile right before you pay for clicks.
Your website converts.
Before spending on traffic, understand what your current website does with the traffic it already gets. If your website has fifty visitors a month and generates zero enquiries, converting the traffic is the priority, because adding advertising traffic will produce proportionally more of the same. Fix the conversion problem first.
The conversion test is simple: ask someone who does not know your business to find your phone number on your website on a mobile phone and time them. If it takes more than ten seconds, the conversion problem is more pressing than the traffic problem.
You have a process for responding quickly to enquiries.
Google Ads generates enquiries from people who are actively looking for a service right now. A customer who submits a form or calls and hears nothing in the next two hours will call the next result. The lead has a very short lifespan.
Before advertising, define how enquiries will be handled. Who receives them, how quickly, and what the response looks like. A missed call from an advertising enquiry costs the full acquisition price of that click with zero return.
You know what a customer is worth.
Without knowing your customer lifetime value, you cannot know what a reasonable cost per acquisition is, which means you cannot know whether the campaign is working. If a customer is worth €500 to you in a single visit, paying €30 in advertising to acquire them is excellent. If a customer is worth €80, it is marginal. The calculation is different for every business.
Your service area is well-defined.
Google Ads targeting by location is most effective when the target area is specific. A business that works within a thirty-kilometre radius should advertise within that radius, not across a province. The more precisely the advertising matches the area you actually serve, the lower the proportion of clicks that come from people outside your reach.
When not to start yet
Do not start Google Ads if your website is not mobile-friendly, if you cannot respond to enquiries within a few hours, if you have no Google reviews, or if you do not have a minimum monthly budget to run a meaningful test.
Understanding what to spend is crucial. The minimum meaningful budget for a local trades campaign in most Irish categories is approximately €200-300 per month. Below that, the data volume is insufficient to optimise the campaign and the results are unreliable as a test of whether advertising works for your business.
The test approach
Start with a tightly scoped campaign: one to three ad groups, each targeting a specific service and a specific area. Run it for sixty days with daily monitoring of the search term report. Measure enquiries, not just clicks. If enquiries are coming in at a reasonable cost relative to your customer value, expand the campaign. If not, review the setup before increasing spend.
Maebh Collins works with small and micro businesses in Ireland on digital presence, local SEO, and business process automation.
Maebh Collins is a Chartered Accountant (FCA, ICAEW), Big 4 trained, with twenty years of experience building and running international businesses. She specialises in finance transformation, ecommerce operations, and digital strategy.