Determine your budget - ​Google ads works on an auction system meaning you bid on the keywords you'd like your ads to show up for . So if you're a plumber, you'd probably start with a few that look something like - plumber near me, plumber in my area etc.  Knowing your budget is vital before starting any google ads campaigns because you need to make sure you have enough money to "play" in the auction for your industry. It's not uncommon for inexperienced business owners to throw a few hundred bucks into Google Ads each month and claim "it doesn't work" when they don't get a single lead . Every industry's estimated cost per click is unique and relative to the profit they receive for a sale of their service. If your average revenue per sale is of higher value then what you're willing to invest on your entire monthly marketing budget you'll likely have some problems with your campaign. Determine your budget based on the revenue you will generate per sale including customer life time value - but more on that below. 

Have a plan - ​before building anything you need to plan out what exactly your objective with the campaign is. Are you trying to promote a certain service over another. Do you need to generate customers for a specific location, or maybe your primary goal is meeting a certain cost per lead, regardless of the goal you need to have an idea of what you want to achieve with your marketing, what's the purpose of your campaign?  This includes researching keywords, competitors, cpc estimates, understanding what kind of customers are most valuable for your business and what aligns most with your company goals.

What are your SUCCESSFUL competitors doing - ​​​ a lot of business owners get extremely hung up on their competitors and needing to beat them. The truth is, more than half of new businesses fail during the first year so this should tell you something very important, you want to copy and compete with successful competitors, never ones that are running a failing business. So how do you tell? We'll a few signs that a competitor is successful  is a lot of positive of google reviews, well written ad copy with detailed descriptions & ad extensions and a good together website with easy navigation and clear calls to action. 

What's your Customer lifetime value -  ​​​customer lifetime value or CLTV is an awesome marketing metric that is used to understand the entire value of gaining a new customer not just the profit from the initial sale. There's many perks from closing a good lead outside of the net financial gain, such as potential referrals and reoccurring work. It's very important to understand the customer lifetime value of your clients so you can understand how much is makes sense to invest in a google ads ppc campaign.