The document
Nearly every expensive mistake traces back to the wrong campaign type
That decision gets made in about four seconds, on a screen somebody has never seen before, by whoever clicked Create. Everything after it is optimisation inside a choice nobody revisited.
Eighteen pages: a six-question decision tree, all eight campaign types side by side with what each one takes from you, and the first ninety days of an account that has never spent a dollar.
What is inside
Ten sections, and the first five happen before you spend
Google’s own documentation describes each campaign type. The decision tree, the structure rules, the budget method and the ninety day sequence are ours, and the document says which is which on every page.
The decision tree
Six questions in order, first yes wins. Search is question four, and the three above it are the reason most service businesses are running the wrong thing.
All eight types
Search, Performance Max, Shopping, Local Services Ads, Demand Gen, Video, Display and App. What each runs on, needs, and costs you in control.
Local Services Ads
A separate product that charges per lead rather than per click and sits above the ordinary ads. For an eligible trade this is not a tweak to the plan, it is the plan.
Fourteen prerequisites
What has to be true before any money moves. None of it costs anything, and all of it costs a great deal if you launch without it.
The budget question
Seven numbers in order that produce a figure meaning something, instead of the unanswerable question of what a budget should be.
The first ninety days
What to change, when, and the four things not to touch at all. Plus five numbers that will mislead you in month one, including optimization score.
How it works
Exact match first, and widen only once something converts
The advice to start broad and let the machine learn assumes the machine has something to learn from. On day one it does not, and you are paying its tuition.
By the numbers
What you are getting
Before you ask
Questions people send us about this one
How is this different from the Rescue Playbook?
This one is for an account that does not exist yet. The Rescue Playbook is for one you inherited: what is actually running, whether it is the right type, and the order to fix it in. The campaign type chapter is identical in both because the question does not change, and it is generated from the same source so the two can never drift apart.
What minimum budget do I need?
We will not tell you, and nobody honest will. Every figure in circulation is somebody else’s market presented as a law. The playbook gives you seven questions that produce your number from figures you already have, in about ten minutes. If the arithmetic says your market costs more than you can afford, that is a real finding and it is cheaper to learn on page twelve than in month four.
Should I just run Performance Max?
Not on a new account. It needs conversion goals, a real asset library and enough conversion volume to learn from. A new account has none of those, so it spends your budget finding out. The playbook explains what it takes from you, including that Google may replace your Final URL with a different landing page based on the search query.
I am a plumber. Does any of this apply?
Particularly question three. Local Services Ads charge per lead rather than per click, appear above the ordinary ads, and carry a verification badge. They are available only for certain categories and involve licence checks and a screening process, which is why most of your competitors have not bothered.
