Paid advertising for small business
Paid Advertising for Small Business: A Beginner's Guide to Google Ads, Meta Ads & AI
The platforms will happily spend your money. Strategy is what decides whether those clicks become customers.
The honest beginning
Paid Advertising for Small Business should be simple. It is not.
If you have ever tried to set up a Google Ads campaign and thought, “Surely this should be simple...” please accept my condolences. Paid Advertising for Small Business can look easy from the outside, but the strategy behind it matters long before the first advert goes live.
You were optimistic.
Adorable, even.
I recently set up a Google Search campaign for a client, and somewhere between the sitelinks, AI settings, business name limits, tracking confusion, and Google's cheerful insistence that I hand over the steering wheel, I announced that I would rather get a hot bikini wax and immediately soak in a bath of lemon juice than build another Google Ads campaign from scratch.
I stand by that statement.
The repeated theme
Start with the strategy, not the software.
If you have read my other articles, you will notice a recurring theme. Whether I am talking about SEO, AI, websites, accessibility or now paid advertising, I keep coming back to the same idea.
Over time, the tools will change. Google will redesign its interface. Meta will introduce another AI feature. ChatGPT will become even smarter.
Through all of those changes, one thing remains constant: understanding your customer.
That is the part no algorithm can do for you. This article is not just about Google Ads. It is about how to think strategically before you spend a single advertising dollar.
Paid ads are not magic
Paid advertising is not buying clicks.
In other words, you are buying opportunities. Good strategy determines whether those opportunities become customers. Bad strategy simply buys expensive visitors.
Fix the destination first
Before you spend money, build a website worth visiting.
First, before you even think about Google Ads or Meta Ads, ask yourself one question.
If the answer is “probably not”...
Do not buy advertising yet.
Therefore, fix the website first.
Your landing page needs to answer questions, build trust, demonstrate expertise and guide visitors towards the action you want them to take. Advertising will not fix a poor website. It will simply send more people to it. Before a visitor ever contacts you, your digital presence is already interviewing for your business.
If you are still working on that foundation, I recommend reading my guide to SEO for Small Business first. SEO is not just about rankings. It is about creating a website that both Google and your customers understand. Paid advertising works best when it is built on top of good SEO, not used as a substitute for it.
Audience clarity
Know exactly who you are trying to reach.
The campaign I was building was not aimed at everyone interested in genealogy.
That would have been far too broad.
It was aimed at Americans actively searching for professional genealogy education.
As a result, that one decision changed everything.
The right keywords
The search terms had to match serious education intent.
Headlines with a job to do
The message needed to speak to a specific goal.
Descriptions that qualify the right visitor
Paid Advertising for Small Business copy has to filter out poor-fit clicks before they cost you money.
Assets that support the customer journey
Images, sitelinks and landing-page content all had to support the same customer journey.
Most failed advertising campaigns do not fail because of bad adverts. They fail because they were shown to the wrong people, or because the offer was never explained clearly enough. If the messaging itself needs work, start with Every No Is a Script: How to Pitch Your Product Like a Pro.
Why search worked here
Why search intent matters so much.
Google would happily have expanded my campaign onto Display placements, partner websites and additional automated locations. For some businesses, that is exactly the right strategy.
For this campaign, it was not.
Search advertising is different. When somebody types a phrase into Google, they have already told you what they are looking for. That is called search intent.
By comparison, someone scrolling social media, watching YouTube or reading the news is in a very different mindset. One person is actively looking. The other is being interrupted.
Search campaigns let you answer questions people are already asking. For niche businesses, that is incredibly valuable.
More is not always better
Bigger reach does not always mean better results.
One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is assuming more reach automatically means more customers.
It does not.
Google continually encouraged me to expand the campaign: more placements, more automation, more recommendations, and more opportunities.
For a billion-dollar company, that makes perfect sense. After all, if a multinational retailer spends thousands of dollars while Google's algorithms learn what works, that is simply part of doing business.
However, for a small business with a daily budget of $5 or $10, that same experimentation can destroy an entire month's advertising budget.
Precision beats popularity every single time.
Automation with limits
AI Max is not evil. It just was not the right tool.
Meanwhile, one recommendation appeared throughout the campaign.
Turn on AI Max.
Google positions AI Max as a way to expand your reach, discover new opportunities and improve campaign performance through automation. For some businesses, that may be exactly the right choice.
If you are selling thousands of products nationwide with a significant advertising budget, Google's AI has room to learn, experiment and discover profitable opportunities.
But this campaign was not trying to reach everyone. It was trying to reach one very specific audience.
Those objectives often overlap. However, they are not identical. That distinction matters.
Automation works best when it has enough data and enough budget to learn. Without those things, you may simply be paying for Google's AI to experiment with your advertising budget.
Useful, not automatic
Google's recommendations are not instructions.
Of course, Google wants successful advertising. Meta wants successful advertising too. Successful advertisers keep spending.
That does not make either platform dishonest. It simply means their priorities and yours are not always identical.
Budget
Increase your spend.
Placements
Expand where ads appear.
Automation
Turn on AI features.
Assets
Create more campaign materials.
Audience
Broaden targeting.
Some recommendations are excellent. However, others are not right for your business.
AI as assistant
Why I used ChatGPT.
Throughout this campaign I worked alongside ChatGPT.
Notice I did not say ChatGPT built my campaign.
It did not.
I did.
ChatGPT became my assistant. That is a very important distinction.
Think about hiring a new employee. You would not hand them your business on their first day and disappear for the afternoon. Instead, you would ask them to research, organise information, proofread documents, offer suggestions, give another opinion, and save you time.
Similarly, that is exactly how I use ChatGPT.
- Brainstorm headlines.
- Rewrite descriptions.
- Analyse screenshots.
- Question Google's recommendations.
- Think through customer journeys.
- Spot potential problems.
But every strategic decision remained mine.
The tiny Done link
Why I shared screenshots instead of asking generic questions.
There was a very practical reason I worked this way.
The last time I built a Google Ads campaign from scratch, I spent hours carefully choosing keywords, writing headlines, refining descriptions, creating sitelinks and selecting assets. Everything was finished.
Or so I thought.
When I clicked the very obvious “Next” button, Google quietly discarded almost everything.
Why? Because hidden at the very bottom of the page was one tiny little “Done” link that I had not clicked first.
That experience taught me something important. Google Ads is not just complicated. It is constantly evolving.
Buttons move, menus are renamed, settings shift, features appear, features disappear, and entire workflows are redesigned.
As a result, a tutorial that was perfectly accurate six months ago may already be partially out of date.
Why screenshots made the process easier to manage.
So this time I did something different. Instead of asking ChatGPT generic questions like, “How do I build a Google Ads campaign?” I took screenshots of every stage and asked for guidance based on exactly what I was seeing.
Consequently, that changed everything. Instead of relying on memory or outdated tutorials, we worked through the campaign together one screen at a time.
When Google moved a setting, we found it. If Google quietly enabled another AI feature, we discussed whether it was actually appropriate. And when Google hid another tiny “Done” link inside the sitelinks editor, we caught it.
Without that second pair of eyes, I could easily have repeated exactly the same mistake.
Importantly, that is not because ChatGPT is magic. It is because even experienced professionals benefit from another set of eyes when working inside software that changes constantly.
Sometimes the most valuable thing your assistant does is not solving the difficult problem. Instead, it spots the tiny detail that saves you three hours of rebuilding everything from scratch.
Still needs judgement
ChatGPT still got things wrong.
Also, here is something else that often surprises people.
Even after working with ChatGPT for the past six months, after teaching it my businesses, my writing style, and my marketing philosophy, it still got things wrong.
At times, it misunderstood Google's interface. Occasionally, it suggested keywords I did not agree with. It also recommended approaches that sounded good until they were viewed through the lens of real business strategy.
And that is perfectly okay. Because I was not expecting it to replace me. Instead, I expected it to help me think.
Ultimately, that is exactly what happened.
The decisions matter
Google Ads is not difficult because the buttons are hard to click.
It is difficult because the decisions matter. Search or Display? AI Max or manual control? Broad audience or precise targeting? Trust the recommendation or override it? Those are strategic questions.
Do not outsource judgement
The platform is not your business partner.
Google does not know your profit margins. Meta does not know which enquiries become customers. ChatGPT does not know your long-term business goals.
Ultimately, you do.
That is why no platform should ever replace your judgement.
Use the tools. Do not surrender your strategy.
Final thought
Buttons will keep moving. Your strategy should not.
Technology will continue to evolve. Google will redesign its interface again. Meta will release another AI feature. ChatGPT will become even smarter.
Buttons will move. Menus will change. Meanwhile, the technology will never stop evolving.
Your customers will not.
Understanding your audience, understanding search intent, knowing when to trust automation, and knowing when to override it are skills that do not become obsolete.
ChatGPT helped me build this campaign faster. Google gave me plenty of options. Meta has its own recommendations. However, none of them replaced the most important part of the process.
Knowing exactly who we wanted to reach.
Because once you know your customer, Paid Advertising for Small Business tools become incredibly powerful.
Until then, they are just very expensive buttons.
And if you have reached this point and decided you would rather endure the bikini wax and lemon juice than build your own paid advertising campaign, I completely understand.
That is exactly why Banba Creations exists.
Keep reading
More Banba Creations posts on digital strategy
Why paid ads work better when your website and search foundations are already clear.
AI oversight AI quality controlHow to use AI without letting it replace human judgement.
Social strategy Small business social mediaWhy random posting is not a marketing plan.
Messaging Every no is a scriptHow clearer product pitches help customers understand why your offer matters.
Website trust Your digital presenceWhat your website says before a customer ever contacts you.