How Not to Use Google Ads as a Small Business

April 8, 2025
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Lessons learned

We had a simple-sounding goal: reach small business owners who needed to file a new government report. We had a product, a website, and a deadline. So we fired up Google Ads, crossed our fingers, and waited for traffic to roll in.

We weren’t going in blind—we’d actually done some early market testing. We ran Google Ads to a waitlist landing page, and the results were pretty good: decent click-through rates, strong sign-up rates, and an early signal that people were interested. So we expected that when we launched the full product and started directing ads to our actual landing page, we’d see the customers roll right in.

And we did—kind of. Clicks were high. Conversions were nonexistent. People bounced off the landing page in seconds. Most of the traffic came between midnight and 4 a.m., and most of our budget was spent by morning. We were spending money, but not making any progress.

So we started digging into my favorite thing: all the data. We looked at everything—impressions, clicks, keywords, search terms, demographics, devices, time of day, where the ads were being shown. We used Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Amplitude, and Microsoft Clarity to try to piece together what was going on and how to fix it.

What we eventually figured out was that Google Ads is an incredibly powerful tool—just not one built for tiny teams with niche products and tight budgets. Here's what we learned the hard way.

1. The Google Ads Defaults Aren’t Built for Small Businesses

Google Ads is made for big spenders. Their default settings are built for scale—giant budgets, broad audiences, and lots of data. That’s not us or most other small businesses.

  • Display network and search partners were on by default, so our ads ended up as popups and banner ads on crypto and gaming forums. Not ideal when you’re targeting small business owners.
Check out all that $ going to search partners and display network. Is that right?? Nope
  • Time-of-day targeting? Also not configured by default, which is how we ended up blowing most of our budget between midnight and 4 a.m.
Most of our budget spent in the middle of the night. Is that right?? Nope

If you’re a small business, the defaults are not your friend. You’ve got to basically start from scratch everything and configure it all yourself. There are some great Youtube videos, like this one, which really helped us configure basic ads without defaults, and this one, which helped us focus our keywords and headlines / descriptions better.

2. Bad Traffic Can Still Look Good on Paper

Our click-through rate was over 5%, and our cost per click was well under $1. Seems ok? But behind the numbers was a pile of accidental clicks, irrelevant users, and zero intent to convert.

At first glance, everything looked like it was working. But when we actually watched what people were doing on the site (thanks, Clarity!), it was obvious: we were getting the wrong people, at the wrong time, from the wrong places.

3. Intent Is the Only Metric That Matters

Eventually, we reset:

  • No more display network or search partners

  • Ads only ran between 5 a.m. and 11 p.m.

  • We excluded the 18–24 age group. They weren’t our buyers, but the did accidentally click on our ads in the middle of the night in their crypto forums.

  • We focused on specific, high-intent search terms and corresponding headlines and descriptions

After that, things got better. People spent more time on the site. Bounce rates dropped. It finally felt like we were finding our actual audience. But we’d already lost weeks of time—and a good chunk of our budget.

4. It’s a Platform for Large Scale, Not Small Scale

Even with a professional marketer helping us, we found Google Ads really hard to tune. Why? Because the platform assumes you’re running thousands of impressions a day and letting the algorithm learn from the data. But if you’re a niche business with limited spend, there’s not enough data for the algorithm to learn and be at all useful.

So you have to handcraft your whole setup. It’s totally doable—but only if you know that going in and are willing / able to configure outside of defaults (see Youtube recs in #1). 

5. AI Helped—But It Didn’t Save the Funnel

We used ChatGPT a lot—for ad copy, screen shots of Google Ads for diagnosing performance issues, for getting a second opinion on landing pages. It was incredibly helpful.

But even the best use of AI can’t save a campaign if the traffic is all wrong. You’ve got to fix the upstream problems first.

Final Thoughts: Build It Yourself

Here’s what we found: Google Ads can work for small businesses, but you have to take full control. The defaults are built for big enterprises. The algorithms need tons of data. And no one’s going to configure the campaign for your specific goals—except you.

So:

  • Skip the defaults

  • Watch your placements and dig through your data at least daily

  • Test and narrow your keywords

  • Build different ads for different intents (ex: looking for info vs. looking to buy)

We learned all of this the hard way. Hopefully, you don’t have to.

We shut down SnapFile not long after these lessons sank in. But if there’s one upside, it’s that we now know how to approach paid marketing as a small team in a smarter, way more intentional way. I’m currently helping small business friends with basic digital ads, and we are doing our best to apply what SnapFile learned the hard way.