How to set up a Google Ads account

What do you need before you create the account?

You need three things: a Google account (a work email you control, not a staff member's personal Gmail), access to your website so you or your developer can install tracking, and a credit card or debit card for billing. If your business runs on Google Workspace, use an address on your own domain so the account stays with the business if people change roles.

It is also worth deciding upfront who will own the account. The business should always create and own its own Google Ads account, even if an agency manages it. An agency can be granted access later; you should never run ads from an account you cannot log into yourself.

• A Google account on an email address the business controls
• Access to edit your website (for the conversion tracking tag)
• A payment card and your correct billing details
• A clear goal for the account, such as phone calls, form enquiries, or online sales

Step 1: Create the account and switch to Expert Mode

Go to ads.google.com and click the button to start. Sign in with your Google account, and Google will begin walking you through creating your first campaign immediately. This is the Smart Mode onboarding flow, and the single most important move in the whole setup is to step out of it.

Look for the small link that says something like 'Switch to Expert Mode' or the option to create an account without a campaign. The wording changes as Google updates the interface, but the option is always there, usually in small text near the bottom of the screen. Choosing it gives you a full Google Ads account with every setting exposed, and it does not force you to launch a campaign before you are ready.

Smart Mode is not just a simpler interface; it is a different product. It limits your keyword control, hides search term data, and makes broad automated decisions on your behalf. Almost every underperforming small business account we audit in Auckland started life in Smart Mode and was never switched. If you have already created a Smart Mode account, you can convert it to Expert Mode in the settings, and you should.

• Go to ads.google.com and click Start Now, then sign in with your Google account
• When Google starts building a campaign for you, find the link to switch to Expert Mode
• Choose the option to create an account without a campaign
• Confirm your business name and website URL when asked

Step 2: Set your billing country, time zone, and currency carefully

Before your account is finalised, Google asks for your billing country, time zone, and currency. For a New Zealand business that means New Zealand, the Auckland time zone, and NZD. Take thirty seconds to double-check these, because two of them are permanent: once the account is created, the time zone can only be changed once in limited circumstances and the currency can never be changed at all.

Getting these wrong is more painful than it sounds. A wrong currency means every budget, bid, and report is in the wrong units for the life of the account, and the only fix is to close the account and start again, losing all history. A wrong time zone means your reporting days do not line up with your actual trading days, and ad scheduling fires at the wrong hours.

• Billing country: New Zealand
• Time zone: (GMT+12:00) Auckland
• Currency: New Zealand Dollar (NZD)

Step 3: Add a payment method in Billing

With the account created, open the Billing section from the left-hand menu and go to billing setup. Enter your organisation's legal details, your GST-relevant business information, and your card details, then submit. Most New Zealand accounts run on automatic payments, where Google charges your card after the ads have run, either when you hit a billing threshold or at the end of the month, whichever comes first.

Use a business card rather than a personal one, and make sure the billing profile matches the entity that should receive the invoices, since Google issues its documentation to the billing profile you set here. If billing is not completed, your ads simply will not serve, so it is worth finishing this step even if you do not plan to launch for a few weeks.

One warning: adding billing means the account is live and able to spend. If you experimented with the Smart Mode flow earlier and a draft campaign exists, check the Campaigns tab and make sure everything is paused or removed before your card is attached.

Step 4: Set up conversion tracking before you spend a dollar

This is the step most businesses skip, and it is the one that separates accounts that improve over time from accounts that burn budget. A conversion is the action that actually matters to your business: a contact form submission, a phone call, a booking, or a purchase. Without conversion tracking, Google Ads can only tell you about clicks, and clicks pay no invoices.

In the account, go to the Goals or Conversions section and create a conversion action for each outcome you care about. For most NZ service businesses that means a form submission conversion and a phone call conversion at minimum. Google gives you a tag to install on your website; you can place it directly, through Google Tag Manager, or by importing goals from Google Analytics 4. Tag Manager is usually the cleanest option because it keeps all your tracking in one place.

Once installed, test it. Submit your own form, then check that the conversion shows as verified in Google Ads (it can take a few hours to move out of pending). Only when you can see a test conversion recorded should you consider spending money, because Google's bidding systems learn from conversion data, and an account that launches without it teaches the algorithm nothing.

• Create a conversion action for each valuable outcome: forms, calls, purchases, bookings
• Install the tag via Google Tag Manager or import goals from Google Analytics 4
• Fire a test conversion yourself and confirm it is recorded before launching
• Mark your genuine business outcomes as primary conversions, not vanity actions like page views

Step 5: Link Google Analytics and set up account access

Two housekeeping tasks round out a proper setup. First, link your Google Analytics 4 property to Google Ads under the linked accounts settings. This lets you import audiences and goals, and it lets you see how paid visitors behave on your site compared with organic ones.

Second, sort out access. In the Admin section, under access and security, you can invite other users by email and set their permission level. If you work with an agency, invite them as an admin or standard user from here, or accept a link request from their manager account. Keep the list short, remove people when they leave, and enable two-step verification on the Google account that owns everything.

• Link Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads in linked accounts
• Invite your agency or team via Admin, then Access and Security
• Turn on two-step verification for the owning Google account
• Review the access list every few months and remove anyone who no longer needs it

What should you do after the account is set up?

With the foundation in place, you can build your first campaign properly: a Search campaign around the exact services people look for, tightly themed ad groups, location targeting set to the regions you actually serve, and ads that point to relevant landing pages rather than your homepage. Start with a modest daily budget you can sustain for at least a month, because Google's systems need time and conversion data to optimise.

For a lot of Auckland and wider New Zealand SMEs, the setup above is where things quietly go wrong: Smart Mode never gets switched off, tracking never gets verified, and the account spends for months with no way to tell which keywords produce enquiries. If you would rather have someone check the setup before real budget goes through it, an independent audit of your account, tracking, and landing pages is a cheap insurance policy.

Related services

Sources and further reading

• Google Ads Help Centre
• Google Ads official site
• Google Analytics Help