Google Ads works well for businesses where people actively search for what you sell. It works badly for businesses where nobody is searching yet, and no amount of optimisation fixes that mismatch.
Before spending anything, check that people are typing something into Google that you can answer. If they are, here is how to spend the first budget without wasting most of it.
What a realistic budget looks like
The mistake is spreading a small budget across many keywords, which produces a handful of clicks on each and no data anyone can learn from.
A workable starting point for a Pakistani service business:
- Minimum useful monthly budget: around 40,000 to 60,000 PKR. Below this you cannot gather enough clicks to know what is working.
- Concentrate it. Five to fifteen keywords that describe exactly what you sell, not fifty that describe the category.
- Expect the first month to be tuition. You are buying data. Month two is when it should start paying.
Cost per click in Pakistan varies enormously by sector: consumer services are often cheap, while legal, financial, property and software services are considerably more expensive because the value per customer is higher and so is the competition.
The five settings that waste most of the budget
1. Search partners and the Display Network left on
New campaigns default to including these. Display in particular will spend a large share of a small budget on impressions across random apps and websites with almost no intent behind them.
Turn both off for your first campaigns. Run Display separately, later, if you have a reason.
2. Broad match without negatives
Broad match now interprets intent loosely, which means bidding on “software house” can serve you to someone searching for how to become a software engineer. That is not your customer and you are paying for the click.
Start with phrase and exact match. Then check the search terms report weekly and add negative keywords for everything irrelevant. This one habit is the difference between a campaign that improves and one that quietly leaks.
3. Location targeting set to interest rather than presence
The default includes people who have shown interest in your area rather than only people in it. For a business serving Rawalpindi and Islamabad, that can mean paying for clicks from anywhere.
Set it to people in or regularly in your target locations.
4. Sending every ad to the homepage
Someone searching for a specific service should land on a page about that service, not on a homepage that lists nine things. This single change frequently improves conversion rate more than any bidding adjustment. See our note on what a converting landing page contains.
5. Running without conversion tracking
Without it you are optimising for clicks, which Google will happily deliver forever. Set up conversion tracking before the first rupee is spent: form submissions, phone calls from the ad, and WhatsApp clicks.
For most Pakistani businesses, calls and WhatsApp are the real conversions and forms are the minority. Track them all, and if calls matter, use call tracking so you know which campaign produced them.
Campaign structure that works
Keep it simple. Complexity is the enemy of a small budget.
- One campaign per service line, not per keyword.
- Tight ad groups: a small set of closely related keywords, with ad copy that repeats the search phrase.
- A dedicated landing page per ad group where possible.
- Sitelinks, callouts and call extensions enabled. Free additional space in the result and they materially improve click through.
- Manual or maximise clicks bidding at the start, switching to conversion based bidding once you have a reasonable number of recorded conversions. Smart bidding without conversion data has nothing to learn from.
What to check weekly
- Search terms report. What people actually typed. Add negatives. This is the highest value fifteen minutes of the week.
- Cost per conversion by campaign, not cost per click.
- Which keywords spent money and produced nothing. Pause or reduce them.
- Whether the leads are qualified. Ask sales. A campaign with cheap leads that never close is worse than an expensive one that does.
How to know within a month whether it works
By the end of month one you should be able to answer: how many enquiries, at what cost each, and how many were genuinely relevant.
If cost per qualified enquiry is below what a customer is worth to you, it works and you should spend more. If it is far above and not improving, the problem is usually one of three things: the landing page, the offer, or the fact that nobody is searching for this. Adjusting bids will not fix any of them.
When Google Ads is the wrong channel
- Nobody is searching for it. A new category needs demand creation, which is a social and content problem, not a search one.
- Your margin cannot support the click price. If a click costs 300 PKR, you convert one in twenty, and your margin per sale is 2,000, the arithmetic does not work.
- You cannot answer quickly. Paid enquiries go cold fast. If nobody responds within the hour, you are buying leads for your competitors.
For businesses where search demand is thin, our breakdown of what produces qualified enquiries by channel ranks the alternatives.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I spend on Google Ads in Pakistan?
Around 40,000 to 60,000 PKR a month as a realistic minimum for a service business, concentrated on a small keyword set rather than spread thin.
Why am I getting clicks but no enquiries?
Usually the landing page or the match between the search and the page. Check the search terms report first, then the page the ad points to.
Should I use broad match?
Not at the start. Phrase and exact give you control while you learn what converts. Broad match can be introduced later with a strong negative keyword list.
Do I need a landing page or is my website enough?
A specific service page is enough if it is focused. A homepage listing everything you do is the most common reason paid traffic does not convert.
Ezitech runs paid media for service businesses alongside the websites behind them. See our paid media services or tell us what you sell.