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Start with the words your customers actually type

Before you spend a penny on search advertising, spend half an hour writing down the phrases a customer would type when they need what you sell. Not the words on your van, and not the jargon your trade body loves. The words a stressed person types at 7am when the shower has stopped working or the shop website has gone blank.

A useful exercise is to imagine three kinds of customer and note what each one would search for:

• The urgent one: "emergency electrician near me", "same day drain unblocking", "boiler repair today".
• The considered one: "how much does a new boiler cost", "wedding photographer prices", "best value wood flooring".
• The local one: "accountant in Shrewsbury", "dog groomer Chester", "office cleaning Manchester city centre".

Free research is everywhere. Start typing your service into a search box and watch the suggestions appear. Read the "people also ask" questions and the related searches at the bottom of the results page. Then do the most valuable thing of all: read your last twenty enquiries and write down the exact words customers used. Those phrases are gold, because they are already proven to bring you business.

Group similar keywords into tight themes

Once you have a list, resist the temptation to dump it all into one campaign. Group phrases by the job the customer wants done, not by how similar the words look. Aim for themes of three to ten keywords that share the same intent.

Take a small gardening business. "Hedge cutting", "lawn mowing" and "garden clearance" are three separate themes, even though they all involve a van and a pair of secateurs. Somebody searching for a one-off clearance is a different customer from somebody wanting fortnightly mowing.

• Keep each theme in its own group so the advert can repeat the phrase back to the searcher.
• Write one advert per theme rather than one advert for everything.
• Include the town or region in themes where the customer is clearly local.

Relevance pays. When your advert matches the search closely, more people click, and the platforms reward that with lower costs per click. A tidy structure is not admin for its own sake; it is money saved.

Build a page that answers each theme

Do not send every click to your homepage. If your advert promises emergency boiler repair, the page it opens should be about emergency boiler repair: the price range, how quickly you can attend, the areas you cover, and a phone number near the top that is easy to tap on a mobile.

Work through each theme and check that your page:

• Uses the phrase naturally in the page title, the main heading and the first paragraph.
• Answers the obvious questions, including rough costs, without making people hunt for them.
• Names the towns, boroughs or counties you genuinely serve.
• Shows a short form or a phone number, and asks for nothing more than a name, a contact detail and a sentence about the job.

One good page per theme beats a scattershot page trying to cover everything. If two themes are close, they can share a page, but keep at least a section that speaks directly to each one.

Decide what a click is worth before you bid

Every theme has a different value. A leaking tap might be worth £5 to you in profit. A full bathroom refit might be worth £600. Bidding the same amount for both is how small budgets vanish.

Work out a sensible maximum cost per click for each theme: the amount you can spend knowing that, across a month, the enquiries still leave you in profit. Then protect that budget with negative keywords, the words you never want to pay for.

• "Free", "cheap" and "DIY" if you sell a professional service.
• "Jobs", "vacancies", "training" and "courses" if you are not hiring.
• Places you do not cover, and any competitor names you are not prepared to bid on.

A modest daily budget of £10 to £20 goes much further when it is aimed at three or four well-chosen themes rather than sprayed across forty loose phrases.

Check the search terms report every week

The report showing what people actually typed before clicking is your best teacher. Set aside fifteen minutes each Monday and read it properly.

• Add any wasted phrase to your negative keyword list.
• Move any surprise winner into its own theme, with its own advert and page if it keeps performing.
• Pause anything spending steadily without producing calls or form fills.
• Note the enquiries that turned into paying work, not just the clicks.

Do this for six weeks and you will know more about your customers' language than any report could tell you. Small businesses win at search advertising by being specific, not by being big. Start with the phrases people genuinely use, group them by need, answer each group with a page that delivers, and check the numbers often enough to keep yourself honest.