The most common thing I hear from BC small business owners about Google Ads: “I tried it and it didn’t work.”
Almost always, the same things went wrong. Broad targeting that burned through the budget on irrelevant clicks. A landing page that sent people to the homepage. No conversion tracking, so nobody knew what was actually happening. A campaign that ran for three weeks, spent $800, and generated zero enquiries — so they turned it off and concluded Google Ads doesn’t work.
Google Ads works. The question is whether it’s set up correctly for your specific business and budget.
The Myth: You Need a Big Budget
There’s a persistent belief that Google Ads is only for companies with thousands of dollars to spend each month. It’s not true — but it’s also not quite as simple as “just start a campaign.”
What you need isn’t a big budget. You need a correctly structured campaign focused on a narrow, high-intent audience. A $500/month campaign targeting the right keywords in a specific geographic area can consistently generate qualified leads. The same $500 spent on poorly targeted broad keywords generates nothing.
Budget matters less than targeting precision.
What Actually Works on a Small Budget
Highly Specific Keywords
Google Ads works on a keyword auction. You bid to show your ad when someone searches specific terms. The key word is specific.
“Electrician” is a terrible keyword. It’s expensive, it’s broad, and it attracts people who might be looking for anything from a career change to an electrician in another province.
“Electrician Roberts Creek BC” is a good keyword. It’s cheaper because fewer people are competing for it. And every person who searches it is, by definition, looking for exactly what you offer in exactly the area you serve.
The mistake most small business owners make — and most automated campaign tools make on their behalf — is starting with broad keywords because they have more search volume. That volume is mostly irrelevant traffic.
Location Targeting That’s Actually Tight
Google will let you target “British Columbia.” For a Sunshine Coast business, that’s mostly wasted spend. Refine it to the specific communities you serve. Exclude areas outside your service radius. If you only serve Gibsons to Halfmoon Bay, target only that area.
Every dollar you spend showing ads to someone in Prince George is a dollar not spent on someone in Sechelt.
A Landing Page Built for One Thing
Most small business Google Ads campaigns make the same critical mistake: they send ad traffic to the homepage.
Your homepage is designed to explain everything you do to someone who might want several different things. A Google Ads landing page should do one thing: convince the person who clicked your specific ad to contact you right now.
That means: headline that matches the ad, a clear explanation of the specific service, social proof (reviews, credentials), and one call to action. Nothing else.
Conversion rate on a well-built service-specific landing page is typically 3–5x higher than sending traffic to a homepage.
Conversion Tracking From Day One
This is non-negotiable. If you don’t know which keywords and which ads are generating phone calls, form submissions, and bookings — you’re flying blind. You can’t improve what you can’t measure.
Setting up conversion tracking in Google Ads takes a few hours. Without it, you’re guessing. With it, you can see exactly which $10 in spend generated a lead and which $100 generated nothing.
Most campaigns I audit have no conversion tracking at all, or have tracking that’s set up incorrectly. This is almost always why business owners conclude Google Ads “doesn’t work” — they couldn’t see the leads it was generating, or they couldn’t see that it wasn’t.
Starting Small and Iterating
A $300/month campaign with tight targeting and proper tracking will teach you more than a $2,000/month campaign with broad targeting and no tracking. Start narrow, measure everything, expand what works.
The goal in the first 60 days is to find one or two keywords and ad combinations that consistently generate leads at a cost you can sustain. Then scale those.
What Doesn’t Work
Broad match keywords without significant budget. If Google decides “electrician” means someone asking about electrical engineering jobs, you’re paying for that click. Broad match requires a big enough budget to absorb the wasted spend while Google’s algorithm learns.
Smart Campaigns / Performance Max without existing data. Google’s automated campaign types are good at spending your budget. They’re not good at generating results without enough historical data to learn from. Small accounts with no prior data need manual, tightly controlled campaigns first.
Sending traffic to a slow website. Google measures landing page quality as part of your Ad Quality Score. A slow website with a poor mobile experience increases your cost-per-click and decreases your ad position. Fix your website first.
Running campaigns without a clear offer. “Contact us for a quote” is a weak call to action. “Book a free estimate — we’ll be there within 48 hours” is a real offer. Ads that make a specific, concrete offer consistently outperform generic ones.
What Realistic Results Look Like
For a Sunshine Coast service business with a $500–$800/month Google Ads budget, correctly set up:
- 8–20 clicks per day on highly relevant keywords
- 10–20% conversion rate on a purpose-built landing page
- 2–5 new enquiries per week consistently
- Cost per lead in the $30–$80 range depending on the service
These are achievable numbers. They require correct setup, not a bigger budget.
If your Google Ads account isn’t performing anywhere near this, let’s take a look. A 45-minute audit usually reveals the same three or four fixable problems.