Are Your Google Ads Campaigns Bleeding Money?
Running Google Ads without a clear strategy is like throwing money into a wishing well and hoping for leads. After auditing hundreds of accounts for Australian service businesses, we see the same costly mistakes over and over again. Here are the five biggest offenders and how to fix them.
1. Over-Relying on Broad Match Keywords
Broad match keywords cast the widest net, but they also attract the most irrelevant traffic. If you are a plumber in Sydney, broad match might show your ad to someone searching for plumbing courses or DIY plumbing videos. Switch to phrase match or exact match for your core service terms to ensure every click has genuine intent behind it.
2. Ignoring Negative Keywords
Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches. Without them, you are paying for clicks from people who will never become customers. Review your search terms report weekly and add negatives for queries that do not match your services. Common ones include free, DIY, jobs, courses, and salary.
3. Sending Traffic to Your Homepage
Your homepage is designed to introduce your business, not to convert a specific search query. Create dedicated landing pages for each service or campaign with a clear headline that matches the ad, a single call to action, and social proof. Landing page relevance also directly impacts your Quality Score, which affects how much you pay per click.
4. Neglecting Quality Score
Quality Score is Google’s rating of the relevance of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. A low Quality Score means you pay more per click and get worse ad positions. Improve it by tightly grouping related keywords, writing ad copy that matches search intent, and ensuring your landing pages deliver on the promise of the ad.
5. No Conversion Tracking
Without proper conversion tracking, you have no idea which keywords, ads, or campaigns are actually generating leads. Set up conversion actions for phone calls, form submissions, and any other valuable actions on your site. This data is essential for optimising your campaigns and allocating budget to what works.
The difference between a profitable Google Ads account and a money pit often comes down to these fundamentals. Get them right and everything else becomes easier.
If any of these mistakes sound familiar, it might be time for a professional audit. We offer free Google Ads account reviews for Australian businesses ready to get more from their ad spend.