How to Run Google Ads for Your MSP (Step-by-Step)

If you’re an MSP, Google Ads is one of the best ways to generate leads reliably, consistently, and cost-effectively. In this post, we’ll walk you through exactly how to set up a Google Ads campaign for your MSP so you can start getting leads right away—or if you’d rather have it done for you, that’s exactly what our Google Ads for MSPs service is built for.

Why Google Ads Works So Well for MSPs

Before we get into the setup, let’s look at why we recommend this in the first place.

Search “Calgary IT support” on Google and here’s what you’ll see: four ads at the top of the page, a map pack with local Google Business Profiles below that, and then, after scrolling past more than half the page, the organic results (with even more ads mixed in).

Most of the click volume goes to those top ads. And here’s the thing: your competitors generally have no idea what they’re doing, which works in your favor.

Look at the ads that show up for a search like this and you’ll usually see a mix. One might not mention “IT support in Calgary” at all; maybe it mentions a different city entirely. That’s a red flag for searchers, and it kills the ad’s relevance.

Another might say “IT support for business” with nothing location-specific. Nobody’s clicking that when they typed in their city.

Then there’s the one ad that gets it right: “IT Services Company in Calgary.” Specific, relevant, everything filled out. That’s the one getting the clicks.

If you want to show up at the top of the page, get people onto your website, and get them filling out a form or picking up the phone, you need to be running Google Ads. Here’s how to actually set it up.

Step 1: Start a New Campaign

Open your Google Ads dashboard and click New Campaign.

For the campaign objective, choose Leads.

For conversion goals, don’t just leave the default (page views). You want to optimize for phone calls if you’re able to take them, and form submissions if not.

You can optimize for booked appointments, but that’s a tough ask when you’re just starting out with a limited daily budget. Stick with calls and form fills to start.

For campaign type, go with a Search campaign. This gives you standard text ads at the top of the search results, the same format we looked at above.

Name your campaign something clear, like “IT Support: Calgary,” and click Continue.

Step 2: Choose a Bidding Strategy

You’ll see a handful of bidding strategy options here, and there’s a lot of debate about which one to use. In our experience, Maximize Conversions is your best bet for the first month.

Why? Because after 30 days, you’ll actually have a baseline of performance data to work from. Once you have that, you can switch to a Target CPA strategy and set a real cost-per-acquisition goal based on what you’ve actually seen.

So: Maximize Conversions for month one, then reassess and consider Target CPA from month two onward. (You can also A/B test this down the line with a Google Ads experiment, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Skip “Customer Acquisition” for now, and make sure you opt out of the Search and Display Network partners. These are lower-quality networks and not where you want your budget going.

Step 3: Set Your Location Targeting

This step matters more than most people realize.

Under location targeting, always choose “Presence”, meaning people who are in or regularly in your target location. If you leave it on “Presence or interest,” you’ll start showing ads to people outside your actual service area who just happen to be interested in that location. That’s wasted spend on leads you can’t service.

When entering your location, click Advanced Search so you can define things more precisely. In a lot of cities, the default targeting radius doesn’t map cleanly to how people actually search.

So we’ll usually switch to a radius setting and adjust the kilometers (or miles) to match how far out we’re actually willing to service. For most local IT services, something in the range of 20-30 km is a reasonable starting point, but adjust based on your actual service area.

Step 4: Languages, Ad Schedule, and Networks

Set your language to match your audience: English, or Spanish if that’s who you’re targeting.

For the EU political ads question, select No unless that applies to you.

Leave audience segments and ad rotation alone for now.

The ad schedule is one of the most overlooked settings, and it matters a lot. You do not want your ads running at times when nobody’s available to respond.

If a lead fills out a form at 2 a.m. on a Thursday, nobody’s calling them back, and speed to lead is everything these days. People expect a response within minutes, not hours.

Set your schedule to match your actual availability, typically Monday through Friday (or Saturday), during business hours, maybe with a little buffer built in on either side so you don’t cut off leads too early or too late.

Don’t run ads 24/7. Let your competitors burn budget on 4 a.m. leads nobody’s going to follow up on.

On the next screen, opt out of Search Partners (sometimes labeled AIAX or similar). It tends to burn ad spend without much to show for it. You can always test it later, but we don’t recommend starting there.

Step 5: Keyword Research

This is the part that actually determines whether your campaign works: keyword research.

Open Google Ads Keyword Planner in a new tab, add your target location, and enter a few core services: “IT services,” “IT support,” “managed IT services.” Run the report.

You’ll typically see three natural ad group themes emerge, and a wide range of costs per click. In a market like Calgary, for example, broad terms like “IT support” or “managed IT services” might run anywhere from $7 to $150+ CAD per click.

That’s a massive range, and early on, you’ll be paying toward the higher end of it.

Here’s the math that matters: if you want a sustainable volume of clicks (say, 10 per day) and your cost per click is $80, that’s an $800/day budget, way more than most MSPs are working with.

So instead of chasing the broadest, most expensive terms, get more specific. Combine your service with your location: “managed IT services Calgary,” “IT support Calgary.”

Hyper-targeted terms like these tend to have meaningfully lower costs per click, and they’re a much more realistic starting point for a $100/day budget. You won’t get a flood of leads at that spend level, but it’ll work.

Take that keyword, add it as both phrase match and exact match. Phrase match will pick up close variations (like “managed IT services company Calgary”), while exact match captures people searching that exact phrase.

Step 6: Build the Ad (and Use a Landing Page, Not Your Homepage)

This is where a lot of MSPs mess up.

If you look at most competitor ads, they link straight to a generic service page on their website, not a dedicated landing page. There’s a real difference between the two.

A landing page is built specifically to convert paid traffic: the headline matches the ad and the search intent exactly (“Managed IT Services Provider in Calgary” or “Looking for Managed IT Services in Calgary?”), and every section, from bullet points to images to copy, speaks directly to that searcher’s pain points, features, and benefits.

Don’t send Google Ads traffic to your homepage. Build (or use) a landing page.

For the display path, you can add your location so the visible URL reflects “Calgary,” a small detail, but it reinforces relevance.

Add your phone number if you’re able to take calls. A lot of MSPs find that people have quick questions they’d rather ask on the phone before booking a consultation or sales call.

Headlines

Keep it simple. With a niche service and limited search volume, you don’t need 15 different headline variations. A handful of strong, relevant ones will do the job better than testing dozens of mediocre ones.

Your first headline should mirror the search term as closely as possible: “Managed IT Services Calgary.” Pin it in position one.

Every time someone searches that exact phrase, this is what they’ll see, and it already outperforms the vast majority of ads out there simply because it matches intent so directly.

From there, build out a handful of supporting headlines:

• “Calgary Business IT Support”
• “Local Calgary IT Team” (signals you’re not some faceless national provider)
• “IT Support for Calgary SMBs”
• “25+ Five-Star Reviews” (if you have the social proof, use it)
• “Locally Owned”
• “One Team for All IT”
• “Reduce Costly Downtime”
• “Fast Help When It Breaks”

Descriptions

Two or three solid descriptions is plenty:

• “Looking for managed IT services in Calgary? We’ve got you covered. 25+ five-star reviews.”
• “Prevent costly downtime with our Calgary managed IT services. The trusted choice for local IT support.”
• “Protect your systems, data, and employees with proactive monitoring and responsive IT support.”

Don’t add sitelinks, callouts, or images at the ad level. Those get added at the campaign level, which we’ll cover next.

Step 7: Set Your Budget

This is the part where we can’t give you an exact number, because it depends entirely on what you’re comfortable spending and how confident you are going in.

As a general rule: if you’re working with under $100/day, you might actually get more mileage out of Facebook Ads or a different lead gen strategy. $100/day is really the practical starting point for Google Ads in this space.

Look at the keyword data again. If you’re paying $40-$50 per click, that might only translate to one or two leads a week. If you’re closing one in three or one in four of those, that’s still one or two new clients a month, which can absolutely be worth it.

But go in with realistic expectations: this is a competitive, expensive space from a pure ad-cost standpoint, even if it’s less competitive operationally. Build in enough budget padding, especially in the first few months while Google is still learning your account.

Submit your campaign for review. This can take a few minutes to a few hours.

Step 8: Add Sitelinks and Callouts

Once your campaign is live, go into your ad group and consider adding a second ad group for broader, non-location-specific terms (like “managed IT services” or “IT support near me”) to do some prospecting and see what search terms actually convert.

Let the real search term data guide how you structure future ad groups, whether by service, by location, or by intent.

Then head into Assets to add:

Callouts (added at the campaign level, not account or ad group level):

• “24/7 Managed IT Support”
• “Based in Calgary”
• “Prevent Costly Downtime”

These get tacked onto the end of your ad and give you a little extra real estate to reinforce relevance and speak to your ICP’s pain points. A lot of competitors skip this entirely, which is a free win for you.

Sitelinks: the extra links that show up underneath your main ad:

• “Our IT Services”
• “Pricing” (if you’re able to share it, this converts really well)
• “Testimonials”
• “How We Can Help”
• “Managed IT Services for SMBs”

Every sitelink should point to a specific, relevant landing page or section, never your homepage. Someone curious about pricing should land on a pricing section, not have to go hunting for it.

Why Managed IT Clicks Are Expensive

The keywords are commercially valuable, and the competition is well funded. Someone typing “managed IT services” has budget and urgency behind that search, so every provider in the metro is bidding on it. That’s just the nature of the space.

Here’s why that’s actually fine: an MSP client is worth $30,000 to $120,000 over its lifetime. Against a $60,000 client, a $2,500 cost per lead is a good trade at almost any close rate you’re likely to hit.

So the click price was never really the problem. The real issue is when a meaningful chunk of your budget goes toward queries that could never buy from you in the first place.

Structure That Works for an MSP

Keep this simpler than most agency dashboards make it look.

Build your campaigns by service line. Managed IT, cybersecurity, and cloud have different buyers and different values, so they shouldn’t be lumped into one campaign.

Keep ad groups tightly themed. Every ad group should have one intent, so the ad itself can speak directly to that searcher instead of trying to cover three things at once.

Set location targeting to presence, not interest. “People in your area” and “people interested in your area” are two very different audiences, and the default setting will waste money if you leave it as is.

Then there’s the part most accounts get wrong: every ad group needs to point at a page that actually answers the query it’s targeting. If you send “managed IT services Dallas” to your homepage, you just wasted the $30 click you paid for. This is exactly where dedicated location pages earn their keep twice over—once for SEO and once for paid traffic.

Why Landing Pages Are the Whole Game

I want to slow down on this point because it’s the single biggest lever in the entire account, and it’s the one most MSPs skip.

A landing page isn’t a nice-to-have add-on to your Google Ads campaign. It’s arguably more important than the ad itself. You can write a great headline, target the right keyword, and still lose the client entirely if the page someone lands on doesn’t close the loop.

Think about what actually happens when someone clicks your ad. They searched “managed IT services Calgary,” they saw an ad that matched exactly what they typed, and now they’re one click away from either filling out a form or bouncing. That page has maybe five seconds to convince them they’re in the right place.

Your homepage was never built for that job. It’s trying to speak to everyone: prospects, job applicants, existing clients, vendors. A landing page has one job: convert this specific searcher, with this specific intent, right now.

A page that actually works will mirror the exact language of the ad and the search, so there’s no disconnect between what someone typed and what they see. It leads with the outcome the visitor cares about, not a description of your company.

It speaks directly to the pain points of that buyer, whether that’s downtime, security risk, or just being tired of a bad provider. It shows proof fast—reviews, client logos, years in business—because trust is the whole battle at this stage.

And it makes the next step obvious: one clear form or one clear phone number, not five competing calls to action pulling someone in different directions.

Here’s the part that should really change how you think about budget: two accounts can spend the exact same amount on the exact same keywords and get wildly different results, purely because of the landing page.

A generic service page might convert at 2%. A tightly built landing page targeting that exact query can convert at 8% or higher. That’s not a small difference—that’s the difference between a channel that works and one you give up on.

If you only fix one thing in your account, fix this. Better keywords and better ad copy get you the click. The landing page is what turns that click into a client.

Conversion Tracking That Means Something

Counting form fills tells you your cost per form. It does not tell you your cost per client, and those two numbers can differ by an order of magnitude.

Track calls alongside forms. A large share of MSP inquiries come in by phone, and if you’re only measuring forms, you’re blind to most of what’s actually happening in the account.

Push conversions into the CRM, even manually if that’s what it takes. Track which inquiries turned into conversations, which turned into proposals, and which actually closed. Without that, you end up optimizing for the cheapest form fill, and that reliably produces more of your worst leads, not your best ones.

Report on cost per client every single month. It’s the only number that actually tells you whether the channel is working.

What to Expect

Immediately: clicks and impressions. Also immediately: spend. This part happens fast, so don’t panic when the dashboard starts moving before anything else does.

Two to four weeks: you’ll have enough search term data to run your first real negative keyword pass. Expect to block a lot. This is normal and it’s actually a good sign—it means Google is showing your ads for a wide enough range of searches that you can now start tightening things up.

One to three months: your cost per lead starts to stabilize, and you’ll finally have enough conversions for the platform’s bidding to actually learn from. Before this point, don’t put too much weight on any single week’s numbers.

Three months plus: now you’re looking at cost per client, and that’s really the number that tells you whether this is working.

Budget realistically here. If you’re spending under about $1,500 a month on managed IT campaigns, you’re not going to gather enough data to optimize anything. You’ll end up concluding the channel doesn’t work for you, when what actually happened is you never got far enough past the noise to find out.

Putting It All Together

That’s the full setup: campaign structure, bidding, location targeting, ad scheduling, keyword research, ad copy, budget, and extensions. Get these right and you’re already ahead of the vast majority of MSPs running (or not running) Google Ads in your market.

If you run a cybersecurity company or MSSP specifically, buyer behavior is different enough that it’s worth reading our dedicated guide on running Google Ads for cybersecurity companies and MSSPs. And if you want a channel that builds awareness before someone starts searching, pair this with our LinkedIn Ads strategy for MSPs.