I get this question a lot and it's usually from new clients where I'm looking at a health check - a Google Ads health audit on their Google Ads account (or now ChatGPT ads). Often they say to me "the campaign's not working, I'm not getting any leads, we're not getting any clicks" - those are the common themes.
There are many reasons why the campaign might not be working, and the most common thing I see is that the campaign has been set up wrong. Often people are running the wrong campaign type and money is just being spent on low quality keywords.
At the end of the day, if you want more quality conversions you need more quality clicks, and that means the keywords and the campaign need to be optimised correctly.
There are a few things to look at here. Firstly, reviewing the campaign and seeing that the setup is correct. Often times I just see a whole bunch of broad keyword types and I see that none of the conversions have been set up, or it's been set up incorrectly. Essentially the Google Ads algorithm is tracking things incorrectly - checking conversions incorrectly.
The next thing is testing out different ad copy. If you've just got the one old ad copy running, it's not going to be any good. We need to do an experiment with various headlines and descriptions to see what is resonating best, what's working best and what's clicking through best and converting best.
Next comes down to the bidding strategy. You might have the wrong bidding strategy set up. You might have -
Looking at the correct bidding strategy for your campaign and your industry is going to make a big difference on what you see in terms of the results of the campaign.
The next one is checking your targeting. Things like audience and location - are you targeting the right location? Is it just too broad?
Is it getting clicks from the wrong location?
We need to tighten that up to understand that the demographics, interests and behaviours align with our ideal customer.
Ad extensions is the next one here. Have you even got your extensions set up or are they set up correctly? You need all of these to be utilised -
These enhance your ads' appeal. Otherwise basically your campaign isn't going to run to its maximum capability.
Another reason why I see Google Ads not performing and customers come to me and say "look, I'm not getting any clicks, I'm not getting any conversions" - automatically I can see that the landing page (that's where the ads are going to) is not optimised for conversions.
What does this mean? It means -
Essentially people are not bothering to get in touch, they're not bothering to call or make that conversion. Because at the end of the day you can get people clicking, but if your landing page is lacking, it's not going to convert.
Another reason I see for why the Google Ads campaign is not working - and it actually seems super obvious but, you know, a lot of people skip over it - time has gone by and they haven't checked that their form is even working.
Often they're running the campaign, getting all those clicks, but the form where people need to convert and contact you doesn't even work. It doesn't even load on certain browsers or certain devices, or just has a problem itself.
And this has happened with checkout and shopping ads as well. Google shopping ads where there is a problem with the checkout - people can't even check out and buy the product.
I've seen it countless times where people are spending money on Google Ads but the journey is truncated - it's no good.
Going back to conversions as well - it may seem basic but has it been set up correctly?
Often I receive an account and I do free audits with customers (free Google Ads audits) and I see that the campaign is recording conversions, however the conversions are all incorrect.
They've configured the conversion types incorrectly, and it's all wrong and needs to be restarted.
Another big issue is the budget is too small. Unfortunately with Google Ads you do need to be spending the right amount for your industry to get those clicks and those conversions.
If you've got a tiny budget and you're trying to target all these keywords and all these campaigns and run all these great things, but your budget is peanuts, then the campaign is just not going to perform effectively. It will struggle to compete - you may as well invest in something else, perhaps SEO.
In summary, continuous testing and optimisation are key to finding what works best in terms of strategy and your conversion process. If you've literally done all these things, sometimes it could just be down to the page experience, the product, the price - people not seeing what they like and they're not checking out, it's not aligning.
Free Google Ads health audit - get in touch with the team and we'll be happy to organise this with you.
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