Performance Marketing
2026-10-12 · 10 min read
Sapun Lamichhane
Founder & CEO of Arcetis
Setting up a Google Ads account from Nepal works the same way as anywhere else: a Google account, business details, and a billing method. Billing can be set up in NPR or USD depending on the account's configured currency, usually through an internationally enabled debit or credit card, since local bank transfer options are more limited for Google's ad billing specifically compared to, say, eSewa or Khalti for other services. It is worth confirming the card supports international and recurring online transactions before relying on it, since failed billing is a common and avoidable reason campaigns pause unexpectedly.
Business verification is also worth doing early rather than after launching, since Google periodically requires identity or business verification for advertiser accounts, and an unverified account can have ads limited or paused until it is completed. Having basic business registration documents on hand speeds this up considerably.
It is worth setting up the account with a business email address and at least one backup administrator rather than a single personal login, since accounts tied to one person's email can become inaccessible if that person leaves the business or loses access, a surprisingly common and entirely avoidable way small businesses lose control of a working ad account.
“Google Ads rarely fails because of bad ads. It fails because of no conversion tracking and a landing page nobody would actually buy from.”
Search campaigns, ads that appear when someone types a relevant query, are generally the right starting point for a first-time advertiser, because they target existing demand, someone actively searching, rather than trying to create it, and the direct relationship between a keyword and an ad is easier to understand, test, and diagnose than more automated formats.
Performance Max, Google's more automated, AI-driven campaign type that serves ads across Search, Display, YouTube, and more from a single setup, can perform well but hands more control to Google's automation and is harder to diagnose when something underperforms, since it does not break down results by placement in the same detail. It tends to work best once a business already has solid conversion tracking and some historical data for Google's systems to learn from, rather than as a cold start.
Shopping campaigns fit e-commerce businesses with a product feed and are often worth testing alongside Search rather than instead of it, since they capture a different part of the buying journey, someone browsing product listings versus someone searching a specific question.
Keyword research should start narrow and specific rather than broad, targeting what someone would actually type when close to a buying decision, "CRM pricing Nepal" rather than just "CRM", since narrower, higher-intent keywords usually convert better and cost less per click than broad, generic terms competing with far more advertisers.
Daily budgets in Nepal's market vary enormously by industry competitiveness, but a reasonable starting test budget for a small business is often somewhere in the range of NPR 500 to 2,000 a day, enough to gather a meaningful number of clicks within a few weeks without overcommitting before the first results are in. This should scale with the business's actual margins, a service with a high average deal size can sensibly sustain a higher cost per click and a higher daily spend than a low-margin retail product.
Separately from this ad spend, if using a managed service rather than running it personally, a management fee for Google Ads in Nepal typically scales with the media budget, often landing somewhere between NPR 15,000 and 40,000 or more a month depending on account complexity and reporting depth, on top of whatever is spent directly with Google.
Setting up conversion tracking, telling Google specifically what counts as a result, a form submission, a WhatsApp click, a completed purchase, before launching is the single most important technical step in the whole process, and it is the one most commonly skipped or done incorrectly by first-time advertisers. Without it, Google's own optimization has nothing to learn from, and the advertiser has no reliable way to know whether spend is actually producing customers rather than just clicks.
For businesses relying on phone calls or WhatsApp messages rather than a form, call tracking and WhatsApp click tracking are both available and worth setting up specifically, since the default pageview-based tracking will otherwise miss the majority of actual conversions for a business that primarily closes deals over the phone.
Judging a campaign after three or four days almost always leads to a wrong decision, since Google's system needs time and a reasonable volume of clicks to optimize delivery, and early data is noisy. A campaign that looks weak in the first week can look very different by week three or four once it has had time to learn.
Sending traffic to a generic homepage rather than a dedicated landing page matching the specific ad and keyword is another frequent and costly mistake, since a visitor who searched a specific question expects a page that answers that specific question, not a general overview they then have to navigate to find relevance in.
A third common mistake is leaving broad match keywords unmanaged, which can pull in loosely related, lower-intent searches and burn budget on clicks that were never likely to convert. Regularly reviewing the search terms report, what people actually typed to trigger an ad, and adding irrelevant terms as negative keywords is ongoing maintenance that genuinely affects cost efficiency.
Running a small, single-campaign account personally is realistic for a motivated business owner willing to spend a few hours a week learning and reviewing performance. It becomes worth hiring help once the budget is large enough that mistakes are expensive, once the account grows complex enough, multiple campaigns, product lines, or locations, that diagnosing underperformance takes real expertise, or once the owner's time is simply worth more spent elsewhere.
A reasonable middle step before committing to full monthly management is a one-time account setup or audit, having someone experienced build the campaign structure and tracking correctly at the start, then running it personally day to day. Arcetis manages Google Ads accounts across a range of Nepali industries as part of its broader performance marketing work, with clients retaining full ownership of their own ad accounts throughout, which matters if a business ever wants to bring management back in-house.
It depends on the account's billing country and currency setting; many advertisers in Nepal end up billed in USD through an internationally enabled card, so confirm with your card provider that international and recurring charges are supported before launching a campaign.
A reasonable minimum test is about four to six weeks with a consistent daily budget, enough time for the algorithm to optimize and for enough clicks to accumulate for a statistically meaningful read on cost per lead, rather than judging off the first few days.
Missing or incorrect conversion tracking combined with a landing page that does not clearly answer what the ad promised. Both are fixable without increasing the budget, and fixing them usually matters more than raising spend on a struggling campaign.