The first time you open Google Ads, the setup interface asks you a series of questions and makes several suggestions that are not necessarily in your interest. Default settings favour broad campaign types, automated everything, and bid strategies that spend budget quickly on maximum reach. For a small business running its first campaign, accepting all defaults typically produces results that are worse, and more expensive, than a more deliberately configured setup.
This walkthrough covers each decision point in a first campaign setup, explains why the default is often not the best choice, and tells you what to select instead. It assumes a local service business with a daily budget of 10-40 EUR and a goal of generating phone calls or contact form enquiries.
Before you touch the interface: prepare three things
The most common reason first campaigns underperform is that the advertiser opens Google Ads and starts building before thinking through what they actually need. Preparation outside the interface saves significant money inside it.
First: decide your daily budget and the maximum you are willing to pay per enquiry. If you spend 300 EUR per month and want at least 10 enquiries, you need a maximum cost per conversion of 30 EUR. This number helps you evaluate whether your campaign is performing or whether you need to adjust.
Second: write down the specific searches that represent your ideal customer's query at the moment they are ready to hire you. Not "plumber" but "boiler replacement Amsterdam," "emergency plumber tonight Noord." You need 5-10 specific phrases. These are your starting keywords.
Third: make sure the page you are sending traffic to has your phone number visible, a clear statement of your service, and a contact form or booking option. Sending 30 EUR of clicks per day to a page that does not make it easy to contact you is a reliable way to get zero results.
Creating the campaign: skip the guided setup
When you click "New campaign," Google presents two paths: a guided setup that walks you through simplified options, and a more detailed setup that gives you full control. For a first campaign where you want to understand what you are configuring, the detailed setup (choose "Create a campaign without a goal's guidance") is the right choice. The guided setup makes decisions for you that you should make yourself, including campaign type, bidding strategy, and search partner inclusion.
Campaign type: choose Search. This targets people who are actively typing queries into Google. Not Display (banner ads on third-party sites), not Shopping, not Performance Max. Search is the most direct and most controllable option for a local service business first campaign.
Bidding: choose Manual CPC for your first campaign. Uncheck "Enhanced CPC" for now. This gives you direct control over how much you bid per keyword while you learn what the market looks like. After 30+ conversions, you can test automated bidding.
Budget: enter your daily budget. Google will show it as a daily cap but may spend up to twice the daily budget on a given day, with the excess offset by lower-spend days to hit your monthly total. Set the daily budget you are comfortable with on a monthly average.
Location and language
Under location, click "Enter another location" and type your city or set a radius around your business address. Remove any pre-filled broad locations. For most local service businesses in the Netherlands, a 10-20km radius around the business address, or specific city targeting, is the right starting point.
Scroll down to "Location options" and make sure "Presence or interest: People in or regularly in your targeted locations" is selected under the Targeting dropdown, not "Presence, interest, or search intent." The latter targets people who are searching about your location but may not be in it. A tourist researching Amsterdam plumbers from abroad is not your customer.
Language: Dutch and English for a Netherlands-based business. Adding English captures both local residents who search in English and expats who may need services but prefer English language results.
Ad groups and keywords
Create one ad group to start. Give it a clear name describing the service theme. Add your 5-10 keywords in phrase match format (wrapped in quotation marks when you enter them: "emergency plumber Amsterdam"). Phrase match means your ad shows when the search query contains your keyword phrase, in order, possibly with additional words before or after it. It is more controlled than broad match but less restrictive than exact match.
Do not mix different service types in one ad group. If you offer both boiler installation and drain unblocking, create separate ad groups for each so your ad copy can match the specific service the person searched. Mixed ad groups produce lower Quality Scores because the ad relevance component reflects how well your ad matches the keywords in the group.
Before finishing the ad group, add your negative keywords. At minimum add: "free," "DIY," "how to," "jobs," "course," "training," "images," "video." These prevent basic irrelevant categories from consuming budget from day one.
Writing the ad
Create a Responsive Search Ad with at least 8 headlines and 2 descriptions. Write headlines that mirror your service and location (not just your business name). Include a specific service mention, a location mention, and at least two headlines that address urgency or availability if your service suits it. Include at least one description that handles a common objection or provides the next piece of information a prospective customer needs.
Add a call extension with your business phone number and enable call reporting. Add callout extensions for two or three specific selling points. Add sitelinks pointing to relevant pages on your site (contact page, specific service page, pricing page if you have one).
After launch: what to check in the first two weeks
This guide cannot pre-empt the decision of whether to keep running or adjust a live campaign. That depends on results you do not have yet. What you should look at within the first two weeks: the Search Terms report (which actual queries are triggering your ads), the conversion recording status (are calls and/or form submissions being tracked), and your daily spend versus budget. The most common early-stage issue is either spending budget too fast on irrelevant searches (add negatives, tighten match types) or not spending at all (bids may be too low, or keyword volume is lower than expected).
Giving a first campaign at least four weeks of data before making significant structural changes is more reliable than reacting to the first few days. Early impression and click patterns are noisy. Trends that persist over 3-4 weeks are the ones worth acting on.
What this guide does not cover
This walkthrough gets a first campaign running in a sensible configuration. It does not cover the ongoing work of keyword expansion, quality score improvement, landing page testing, or bid strategy evolution. Those are separate disciplines. Getting a first campaign live with correct tracking, tight location targeting, phrase or exact match keywords, and meaningful negative keywords puts you in a position to learn from real data. What you do with that data in weeks five through twelve is where the real optimisation begins.
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