5 Signs Your Google Ads Are Wasting Your Money

Running a successful Google Ads campaign, or campaigns on any search engine or social media platform, is an art form, and this is why many businesses choose to outsource it to digital media agencies. Most SMEs who run Google Ads though are managing their own campaigns, as using agencies is prohibitively expensive unless you have a big budget. Here are five signs that all business owners need to be aware of when running their own ad campaigns.

1. Your cost per click is high but your conversion rate is low

People not clicking on your ad is bad, but people clicking on your ad and not doing anything once they arrive is worse, because you're paying for that click. This usually means there's a disconnect between what the ad promises and what the landing page delivers. If someone clicks an ad for “emergency dentist Brighton” and your homepage talks about teeth whitening and veneers, they'll click straight off. And that click just cost you.

2. Your targeting is too broad

Your terms are too broad. A keyword like ‘contract’ could mean a lot of things. A solicitor bidding on it will find their ads showing up for ‘phone contract’ or ‘record contract’, neither of which are relevant to a solicitor. Negative keywords tell Google when you don't want your ads to appear so you don't pay for clicks that are not relevant to your business. Without them you're wasting money on clicks that will never turn into business. The same goes for location. If you run a dental surgery in Brighton or a hair loss clinic in Norwich, a click from someone in Newcastle is money down the drain. Apply negative keywords and restrict your locations.

3. Do your ads need to run 24/7?

Do you really want your ads appearing 24/7? How useful to your business is a click at 2am? If you run an online business selling merchandise then that's fine, but if you're putting people through to a phone line that's only manned 8am to 6pm, paying for a click at 2am is just wasted money.

4. You're paying for clicks on keywords you already rank for organically

If you are unsure what a good return on your ad spend looks like, it is worth reading our guide on what a good ROAS looks like for Google Ads.

If your website is already appearing at the top of the organic search rankings, is it money well spent also paying for ads on the same search terms? I'm not saying remove all ads where your website already performs well organically. Sometimes appearing in both places increases your overall click share. But you need to consider carefully where you're spending. Ad Optimiser's Paid vs Organic Overlap tool lets you compare your top SEO performing terms with your ad spend and make that judgement for yourself.

5. You haven't looked at your search term report recently

Look at your search term report regularly, confirm what search terms are a good return on investment and which are wasting your money. Don't assume because things are looking good at an earlier point in time it will stay this way. Google can start to interpret your keywords more loosely through broad matches. You start with a tightly targeted keyword that gets matched to increasingly loosely related search terms.