Just because you can spend money on Google Ads doesn’t mean you’re running ads effectively. After auditing many accounts and onboarding clients from other ad agencies, here are eight of the most common Google Ads mistakes we see and how to fix them so you can eliminate wasted Google Ads spend.
Google Ads Mistake #1: Tracking The Wrong Conversion Actions
Conversion actions drive your Google Ads campaigns. They are essentially the steering wheel for the machine learning that powers your Google Ads campaigns; that means if you aren’t using high-quality signals for your conversion actions, your campaigns won’t optimize toward the right actions.
Not all conversions are created equal either. For example, we often see people tracking thank you page visits after a purchase or clicks on submit buttons before a form is submitted. While these aren’t inherently wrong, these types of actions aren’t really what you’re after.
Instead, it’s better to track the actual purchase event or form submission event at the exact time they occur. Doing so enables the advertising systems to better understand the actions you are looking for and then show ads to more people likely to take these actions. This lowers your cost per action over time, making your Google advertising more efficient. You can read more about the confusion caused by those false signals in our 4 Ways To Track Form Submissions article.
Common Conversion Mistakes:
- Using submit button clicks instead of submission events – What if the submit button is clicked twice? What if the form isn’t complete?
- Tracking thank you pageviews instead of purchase events – What if the purchaser leaves before the thank you page loads?
- Lead leaks – Are any lead forms hosted on a different domain? Do you have phone numbers in PDFs? Can all your KPIs be tracked?
- Using direct email links instead of form submissions – Clicking an email link doesn’t mean an email was actually sent
- Setting micro-conversions as primary conversions – Are menu time clicks and newsletter sign-ups worth the same as a lead form submission? Should all actions be counted in the Conversions column?
- Including old conversions – Are all conversion actions still receiving data? Should any be deleted that are no longer in use?
Pro Tip: Our Tagging & Tracking service can help you develop a robust measurement strategy and help you fix lead leaks and improve the quality of your conversions. We can also help you set up proper call tracking or integrate with HubSpot CRM for even higher-quality conversion signals
Strong and accurate conversion signals are as important to your Google Ads campaigns as gold. That’s why it is the number 1 Google Ads mistake on our list and the very first thing we recommend checking when auditing your Google Ads account. A poor conversion action set up becomes an even more costly Google Ads mistake as AI and automation in ads become even more prevalent.
Bonus Google Ads Mistake #1.5: Only Tracking Calls Within Google Ads
Call conversions in Google Ads are perhaps the most confusing type of conversion because there are multiple ways to set them up. Instead of simply tracking clicks on phone numbers, Google Ads allows you to track the number of real phone calls placed and how long each phone call was for free.
However, even if you set up call tracking the right way in Google Ads, you’ll still be missing out on a lot of valuable information because Google Ads will only show you calls that came from your Google ads. If you’re getting calls from Google Ads, chances are you’re probably also getting calls from other channels like Paid Social, Organic Search, Referrals, and Direct traffic. For the complete picture from all sources, you’ll need to use 3rd-party call tracking software, like CallRail [affiliate link], which will allow you to import your call data into Google Analytics or your CRM. Without 3rd-party call tracking, there is no way to import calls from Google Ads directly to Google Analytics. You’ll then be able to tell which marketing sources are driving the most calls and which ones perform above/below average.
Common Call Tracking Mistakes
- Tracking clicks on phone numbers or call buttons instead of real phone calls – A click does not equal a phone call
- Measuring calls from ads, but not calls from website – The “Calls from ads” conversion action is automatically created when you get a call from a call extension/asset or a Call ad, but many people forget to set up the “Calls from website” conversion action to track when people call after clicking on your ad, visit your website, then see your phone number and decide to call.
- Relying on the Google-hosted “Clicks to call” conversion action – The “Clicks to call” conversion action is automatically created in Google Ads “smart mode” and counts clicks on the “Call” button on any Google location-based ad or service after an ad interaction. It doesn’t track phone calls that actually connected.
Expert Help: If you need help with your third-party call tracking set up, we can help. Contact Intigress today.
Google Ads Mistake #2: Using The Wrong Bid Strategy
If Conversion actions are the steering wheel, your Bid Strategy is the fuel. Putting the wrong fuel into your vehicle could be disastrous. Unfortunately, when we audit Google Ads accounts, we see many campaigns that use the wrong bid strategy for their objective, leading to higher advertising costs and limiting results, making this one of the most costly Google Ads mistakes
There are 3 types of bid strategies in Google Ads:
- Click-based
- Conversion-based
- Conversion value-based
All bid strategies in Google Ads, besides Manual CPC, use some form of machine learning to keep up with today’s fast-paced world. Click-based bid strategies, like Manual CPC, Enhanced CPC (eCPC), or Maximize Clicks, have their place, but 99% of all campaigns should be using conversion-based or value-based bid strategies. The reason is that Manual CPC and Maximize Clicks don’t optimize toward your conversion data at all (eCPC barely does).
In click-based bid strategies, all clicks are worth the same amount, regardless of how likely they are to lead to a conversion. This can lead to a lot of spam clicks, bounces, or “fat finger” clicks that waste your ad spend.
Conversion-based bid strategies, like Maximize Conversions and Target CPA (tCPA), take your conversion data into consideration when bidding in the auction. Conversion-based bid strategies value all conversions equally, so if you’re tracking both calls and form submissions, these bid strategies won’t favor one conversion type over the other. They will try to get you whichever one is cheaper.
Better still, value-based bid strategies, like Maximize Conversion Value and Target ROAS, take your conversion-based bid strategies to the next level by trying to encourage conversions with higher values or achieving a designated return on ad spend (ROAS).
Instead of weighing all Conversion Actions equally, value-based bid strategies take your Conversion Action values into consideration. For ecommerce campaigns using only purchase conversions, this means value-based bid strategies enable you to optimize toward higher revenue-driving conversions. For lead-generation campaigns, you could set lead forms to have a higher value than simple contact forms or calls (since you don’t know the reason someone is calling or filling out your general contact form).
Common Bid Strategy Mistakes
- Using Manual CPC or Maximize Clicks for too long – Since Maximize Conversions and tCPA can start from 0 conversions (see graphic above), you should have a very good reason if you’re going to be using any of the click-based bid strategies.
- Using Manual CPC or Maximize Clicks on Google Ad Grant accounts – Bids from click-based bid strategies are capped at $2.00 in Ad Grant accounts used by nonprofits. Often, this can cause bids that are not competitive enough, so you’ll see very few impressions and clicks on your ads.
- Not feeding enough conversion data to your conversion-based or value-based bid strategies – Machine learning needs data. Without it, your paid ads won’t have any fuel to amplify your impact. Another reason why using quality conversion actions is so critical!
- Using Target CPA with constrained budgets – tCPA works best when it has flexibility. If you have to spend a certain budget or you can’t spend more than a certain amount, you may want to consider Maximize Conversions instead.
Pro Tip: If you’re just starting out with Google Ads, you can use a click-based bid strategy like Maximize Clicks for a couple of weeks to gain some historical data. However, after about 2-4 weeks (depending on conversion volume), you should probably switch to a conversion-based bid strategy like Maximize Conversions or Target CPA so you’re actually optimizing towards your Conversion actions. If you have conversion values set for all your conversions, you can then upgrade to value-based bidding once you’re getting at least 1 conversion a day.
Looking for assistance managing your Google Ads? Learn more about our Google Ads Management and avoid these costly Google Ads mistakes.
Google Ads Mistake #3: Missing Negative keywords
One of the biggest Google Ads mistakes is not using negative keywords. Google has really been pushing broad match keywords that match to tangentially related phrases. Even if you’re just using Exact or Phrase match keywords, there are still plenty of irrelevant or even offensive words that you don’t want your Search ads to show up for. Negative keywords can help you block low-quality search phrases so you don’t end up paying for unrelated and irrelevant ad traffic.
It’s also worth noting that positive keywords use close variants to match to similar and tangentially related keywords, but negative keywords do not use close variant matching. This means you’ll have to add negatives for many variations of the same keyword, such as plurals and synonyms.
Depending on your account structure, another way you can use negative keywords to help “map” certain search queries to specific campaigns/ad groups so that the best ad and landing page show for that query. Using negatives in this way will help you improve your ad relevance, ad quality scores, reduce your cost per clicks, and save you money.
Every Google Ads account is sure to have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of negative keywords. If you don’t have any negatives, you’re wasting ad spend and committing one of the most costly Google Ads mistakes
Common Negative Keyword Mistakes
- No negative keywords at all – why?!
- Using the wrong match type for negative keywords – broad match negatives may not be specific enough, but exact match might not catch everything
- Not blocking brand searches from nonbrand campaigns – Seems obvious, but is commonly overlooked.
- Not excluding competitor brands – Showing an ad for someone searching for your competitor is usually more expensive and less effective than showing your ad to someone who didn’t search for a specific brand.
- No negatives for offensive language – You don’t want your brand to be associated with slurs, profanity, and discrimination
Pro Tip: Working with Intigress to manage your Google Ads gives you access to our proprietary list of hundreds of brand safety negative keywords that protect your brand (and ad spend) against things like profanity, spam, low-intent searches, and more.
Google Ads Mistake #4: Including Search Partners and/or Display Partners in Search Campaigns
When you create new Search campaigns, Google Ads will include Search Partners and Display Partners by default. In our experience, this is usually a significant waste of money for the unsuspecting. Because it’s automatically on when you create a new campaign, it is often overlooked, so it is a very common Google Ads mistake.
Including Search Partners means that your ads appear on sites other than Google.com, including on parked domains. While those partner sites may lower your CPCs, they are much less likely to lead to the conversions you want. You can learn more about what types of sites are included in the Search Network here, but it is usually best to exclude the Search Partners Network on your Google Ads campaigns.
Similarly, including Display Partners in your Search campaigns means your text ads can serve across any site on the Google Display Network (GDN). The GDN is a collection of over 2 million sites that partner with Google (via AdSense), and for a Search campaign, this typically leads to low-quality conversions that end up wasting your time and budget.To fix this common Google Ads mistake, make sure you update your Google Search ads campaign settings to show ads only on Google-owned sites that aren’t on the GDN by disabling Search Partners and Display Partners.
Google Ads Mistake #5: Geotargeting Mistakes
Geotargeting means targeting your ads based on specific geographic regions. Realistically, your ads should only be serving areas where your customers or potential customers are located. As an example, a local business, such as a dentist, shouldn’t be serving ads to other countries or states.
In Google Ads, there are two primary ways to geotarget. You can target:
- Presence or interest: People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your selected locations (default)
- Presence: People in or regularly in your selected locations only
When you select the countries, regions, states, DMAs, zipcodes, etc, that you want to target with your ad campaigns, Google defaults to the first option, “Presence or interest,” unless you change it. That means you could be targeting people anywhere in the world, thus wasting ad spend, even if you’re a local business that doesn’t offer your services outside a small local area.
Common Geotargeting Mistakes
- Using “Presence or interest” when you should be using just “Presence” – Depends on the type of product or service
- Not excluding areas you can’t deliver product or services to – No sense in wasting ad dollars on these places
- Targeting too many locations – Casting too wide a net can spread your ad budget too thin
Pro Tip: You can’t exclude some locations (Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, etc) because you can’t advertise there with Google Ads.
Google Ads Mistake #6: GAMs, Recommendations, and Optimization Score
Google Ads can be a fantastic tool for marketing your business. However, it’s important to realize where incentives lie. For example, Google is incentivized to make it easier for you to launch new Google Ads campaigns or target too broadly (see defaults above) even if it doesn’t help you generate more business. That’s because Google makes money from getting you to spend more on ads.
They also have a sophisticated and aggressive product adoption strategy that involves the “Recommendations” tab in Google Ads and “Google Account Managers (GAMs)” that reach out on a quarterly basis. For both GAMs and the Recommendations tab, most of these suggestions are designed to get you to use the latest product releases or simply spend more. GAMs are literally goaled internally on how many products/features they can get you to adopt each quarter, not your ROI.
Your Optimization Score (also called OptiScore) is marketed as an automated “account health” score, but really it’s Google’s way to get you to adopt its new features (so they get data) and get you to spend more on advertising. Accepting Recommendations within the Google Ads UI helps to raise your Optimization Score, but raising your Optimization Score has ZERO direct impact on the performance of your ads. In fact, you can increase your Optimization Score by simply dismissing the recommendations, but they will resurface after a set period of time.
In our experience, many of these “recommendations” can be deceitful, irrelevant, and/or surfaced prematurely, which can encourage you to make changes that actually hurt your ad performance or waste your ad spend. Auto-applying these recommendations and accepting all suggestions from your GAM is another of the most costly Google Ads mistakes. Please think critically when reviewing the Recommendations tab or any suggestions from your GAM.
Common GAMs, Recommendations, & OptiScore Mistakes
- Letting GAMs create/manage campaigns for you – Never do this because GAMs aren’t experts in your business and often don’t know what’s best for your bottom line
- “Blindly” accepting all items on the Recommendations tab – Many are surfaced prematurely and are not relevant for your business, leading to wasted ad spend.
- Ignoring Optimization Scores completely – Review these regularly as they can sometimes help identify issues or spur ideas. Some, like the conflicting negatives recommendations, can be very helpful and timely!
- Accepting Recommendations too soon – Think critically about each recommendation and if following it is in line with your best interest, Google Ads best practices, and advice from Google Ads Help articles.
Pro Tip: If a GAM is assigned to your account for a quarter, tell them that email is the best way to contact you and to send their recommendations over via email. This gives you time to research their ideas and determine if they make sense for your business, instead of being put on the spot on a call where you’re hearing them for the first time. This is especially important for folks who are new to Google Ads or beginners.
Google Ads Mistake #7: Poor Naming Conventions
For professional Google Ads managers auditing accounts, it’s immediately apparent whether or not your Google Ads account is being expertly managed just by looking at how your campaigns are named. Believe it or not, the naming structure you use for your campaigns, ad groups, and even your audiences and conversation actions can help you maximize performance. That’s because a clear, consistent, and well-thought-out naming convention helps to keep information organized and makes it quicker and easier to analyze the data in your Google Ads account UI, or when imported into Google Analytics, Looker Studio, or your CRM.
When you have clear insight into which campaigns are working best and where you can make improvements, you can more quickly make adjustments to reduce wasted ad spend. Time is money. This is why inconsistent naming conventions is another of the top Google Ads mistakes we see.
Common Naming Convention Mistakes
- No consistency – why make it harder on yourself?
- Naming ad campaigns like social campaigns – Such as using the launch date
- Different naming conventions at the campaign level vs ad group level –
- Not descriptive enough – When looking at your naming structure, it should be immediately clear what your campaign is doing
Pro Tip: There are many different ways to naming your campaigns, but we prefer something like Intigress-Google-Search-Nationwide that includes your name, the platform, the campaign type, and campaign geo-targeting.
Overall, there are myriad ways you can waste your budget in Google Ads. By understanding and resolving these common Google Ads mistakes, you can avoid some of the top budget-wasting mistakes, save money on your campaigns, and improve your Google advertising performance.
At Intigress, we have been expertly managing Google Ads campaigns since 2014 (back when they called it AdWords) and have worked with clients in many industries, from hotels to auto manufacturers and car dealerships, to home services and homebuilders, to nonprofits, and many more. We see these common Google Ads mistakes across industries, locations, and business sizes. Hopefully, you’ll benefit from being aware of these common mistakes and using this information to resolve them and improve your results.
The good news is that there is always a way to fix these Google Ads mistakes, and doing so will drive better results, in many cases, almost instantaneously. If you need help optimizing your Google Ads campaigns, we are always happy to help. You can learn more about our Google Ads management services or contact us for a free consultation. As a boutique agency based in Oregon, we’re invested in ensuring your digital marketing efforts are positively impacting your business’s unique goals, and we’d love to help you grow. Reach out to a Google Ads expert at Intigress today.