Here's how 3 founders used Google Ads to grow their startup
Google Ads is one of the most effective paid channels: it reaches 90% of internet users worldwide and 65% of all high-intent searches result in an ad click.
If you’re thinking about experimenting with Google Ads, here are 3 actionable tips from successful entrepreneurs.
1. Audit your search terms frequently
Stagetimer is a remote-controlled countdown timer that’s grown to $10k+ MRR by Liz Hermann and Lukas Hermann.
To avoid paying for clicks that have nothing to do with your product, Liz recommends regularly auditing your search terms.
Check the average cost of search terms to see the most expensive queries your ads have been served to.
Then create a negative keyword list, apply it to all your campaigns, and update it weekly to exclude terms that bring in irrelevant traffic.
2. Set a target CPA limit
Howuku is a website heatmap and behavior analytics platform.
Donald Ng grew it to over 3K paid users using Google Ads as a key driver.
Donald’s strategy—bidding for competitor and intent-specific keywords—drove significant traffic to their platform.
However, he made mistakes along the way: "If you're running ads bidding on Maximize Conversions always set a Target CPA limit. That is if you don't want Google to charge you $200 for 9 clicks. (Based on true story)"
3. Focus on high value keywords
Nick Freiling is the non-tech founder of PeopleFish, a website for building and launching surveys. He grew it to $1.6M revenue within his first five years.
He focuses on the keywords that are yielding the highest of value clients, not just the most clients. He spent significant time identifying the customer segment and messaging that resonated with high-purchase intent customers.
After many iterations, he reported a Google Ads ROI of 183%.
Thanks for the artical about tips on using google ads! Its quite surprising that google charged 200$ for 9clicks!
Yeah I was surprised as well! Budget can go out of control retry quickly.
Good short writeup! Auditing search terms is especially good advice because tbh, many early-stage founders are so desperate to rank for any keywords that they undervalue user intent. If traffic does start rolling in eventually, they usually forget to go back through and do audits.
A corollary to this is launching (and other distribution strategies). I see so many founders paying top dollar for services promising to "launch your product on 100+ platforms." But like… 95% of that traffic will waste your resources.
Thanks Channing!
You're totally right about auditing search terms.
And I agree, especially at the beginning it's better to be involved in the launch as a founder. It's less scalable but you'll learn more and have better results inthe long term.
Good roundup. One practical add-on for founders running lean:
If you want, I’ll do a quick 3-leak conversion diagnosis on your landing page + paid traffic path and show exactly what to fix first:
https://roastmysite.io/go.php?src=ih_googleads_founders_cycle_0834
If there’s anyone else in this thread who wants to test Google Ads but doesn’t have time to be in the account every day, I can recommend Optisearch. I brought them in when we already had campaigns running but with chaotic costs, and they helped us put together a clearer structure: which campaigns we keep, which we stop, and what we move to brand / competitor / high-intent. Since then I see Ads more as a long-term growth channel, not just a way to throw some more clicks at it.