Top 10 Google Ads Mistakes To Avoid

1. Using the wrong Smart Bidding strategy

Automated bidding in Google Ads has been a game changer.

Selecting the right strategy, for the right purpose, is essential in driving performance in-line with expectations.

Max conversions (lead gen) or max conversion value (eCommerce) will try to spend all of your daily budget as it’s trying to maximise performance for you.

If you have strict targets for return-on-ad-spend or cost-per-acquisition, this may not be the right strategy for you. If you increase the budget here you will spend it and may not see any further results - we see this far too often.

For new campaigns and advertisers, starting on max conversions (lead gen) or max conv value (ecommerce) is usually best. Apply a managed budget that you can accept spending each day.

Move to target ROAS at a low target (in-line with current campaign performance) when you have 30 conversions or more. You can then start to scale the ROAS up (or CPA down) overtime in a managed way.

Once you are achieving a target, increasing budget is advisable to allow more headroom for the strategy to bid and achieve your goals.

Understand the goals and purpose of each bidding strategy as the behaviours they then demonstrate in your account will more often than not be in-line with what they are trying to achieve.

2. Not having conversion tracking in place

This is the most fundamental part of achieving Google Ads performance.

If conversion tracking isn’t in place how will you know when your campaigns are working?

More specifically, how will you know what IS working to do more of it and what ISN’T, to do less of it?

As bidding strategies use conversion data to guide who to pay for in the auction (and at what cost), not having this in place will mean you can’t utilise the amazing tools that we have at our disposal to drive performance.

There are a number of ways to track website conversions. Depending on your website platform, you can deploy tracking via Google Tag Manager, hard code it into the website or use imported GA4 goals.

If you aren’t technical yourself and don’t feel comfortable using an online guide or video tutorial, we would recommend finding a freelancer on UpWork who can deploy this for you.

For popular website platforms such as Shopify, Wordpress/WooCommerce, Wix and many more, this has been simplified via integrations, plugins and apps, so no technical skills are needed.

It’s a must-have for any Google Ads campaign, there’s no benefit in spending money on clicks if you can’t see what happened after the user clicked the ad.

3. Conversion tracking not firing correctly

Conversions firing on the wrong action, low value actions or in error is just as much of a problem as tracking not being in place at all.

You need to ensure that only the primary goal you have as a business is set as ‘Primary’ in the conversion settings.

It’s advisable to track multiple actions, for the full picture of the value your campaigns drive, however, a click on an email address isn’t the same value as a user filling out an enquiry form to speak to the sales team.

On the eCommerce side, purchase is the only event that should be set to primary.

Bidding strategies will double-down on what they get the most feedback from. If you’ve said a pageview on the homepage is the same value as a purchase (by them both being defined as Primary in settings) then it will optimise for those who are clicking ads and viewing the homepage, not those who click ads and make a purchase.

You can avoid this mistake by setting conversion actions as ‘Secondary’ in the settings if they aren’t your primary KPI.

Conversion tracking must be firing accurately or you will make poor decisions with optimisations and investment.

If you’re not technical, invest in someone who can ensure your tracking is deployed correctly and accurately.

4. Not excluding brand from non-brand campaigns

This is one of the most common mistakes that we’ve seen in 2024.

Bidding on brand terms can be necessary in some instances.

If multiple competitors are bidding on your brand term, trying to take away your sales when someone is ready to buy from you, ensuring you block them out and retain the business has a value.

These terms need to be split out in search campaigns as the conversion rate and ROAS will be disproportionately above non-brand terms. Having clear segmentation means that you can control budgets and targets in-line with how each of these areas performs.

It’s common to have muddied data without this segmentation and think at the campaign level that performance is at or above where it needs to be, so you increase spend.

As bidding strategies work off conversion data, the more it sees these terms convert and convert at your target ROAS/CPA, the more it will bid for them and a snowball effect will occur.

Most spend will go onto non-brand terms which are under target, some spend goes to brand terms which are above target so at the campaign level it looks and feels ok.

Add your brand term as a negative keyword to non-brand search campaigns to avoid this. This means that if you do have brand and non-brand campaigns, you can control budgets and targets in-line with each area.

5. Going too broad too soon

The broad match keyword match type is able to take into consideration a lot more data points than exact or phrase. This can include browsing history and other contextual signals.

They also put you more at risk of showing on terms that aren’t related to your products or services.

Users do search more broadly now as we all expect more from our devices. We expect them to know where we are and the websites that we’ve looked at to show us the most relevant result.

I.e 5 years ago we may have searched ‘buy tyres near me’, now we would search ‘tyres’ and expect a local store result.

Broad match relies on conversion data to blend the search query itself, with the millions of other data signals that are available, to paint an accurate picture of ‘is this user likely to have intent to purchase or enquire?’, even if their specific search didn’t indicate that they did.

So frequently, a Google Ads campaign is launched on broad match or keywords are changed to broad match due to in account recommendation and the budget is all spent on low value, irrelevant terms.

In order to avoid this mistake, it’s advisable to start with phrase match and use negative keywords frequently to exclude anything that’s completely unrelated to the product or service that you are promoting.

Once you have regular conversions over a period of 4-6 weeks, you can test broadening out the keyword targeting to take advantage of the additional volume that will be available to you from tapping into the contextual data signals.

6. Applying a target ROAS or CPA that isn’t in-line with performance

Target ROAS / target CPA are great strategies to ensure that your campaign is performing in line with business goals, which then means that scaling up investment is done safely.

These strategies aren’t a magic wand though.

If your current ROAS is 2:1, putting a target of 10:1 isn’t going to transform your performance.

If your current CPA is £100, setting a target of £20 isn’t going to work.

What’s more likely is that the strategy (as a conservative growth focussed option) will start to duck out of auctions as the predictive modelling will show it’s unclear or unlikely to achieve the desired results.

This can lead to clicks and all performance drying up (we see this often).

You need to select a bidding strategy that is in-line with your expectations and ensure that you are providing an environment where it can achieve what you are asking.

You may need to work on website conversion rate, average-order-value and the surrounding performance elements before your Google Ads campaign will realistically be able to hit your target ROAS or CPA.

Being considerate of the numbers here will enable you to set a target that will maximise both return and also volume of new enquiries or customers.

If the average click cost is high and the conversion rate is unlikely to be dramatically optimised, you may be at what’s attainable.

Google Ads always adds more value than the recorded conversion. The sales and leads you drive will then go into email lists for future sales, you may see recursive payments (if a subscription service), you’re also building out the chance for referrals and much more.

Try our ROAS Calculator if you need help calcuating a profitable/break-even ROAS

7. No proof of concept on the website

Not in-platform related but the #No1 reason why Google Ads doesn’t work and the biggest mistake we see!

If your website hasn’t ever converted before, if the conversions rate site wide is very low then this indicates that there are technical issues with website experience, messaging or proposition which need work before you test advertising.

Google Ads is the most powerful tool to drive in those users who are actively searching for what you offer, it can’t get them to enquire or buy though, the website needs to do that.

To avoid this mistake, it’s worth testing ads with a low budget, keeping your keyword targeting highly relevant and adding Microsoft Clarity to your website to analyse user behaviour.

Watching screen recordings of actual users (who in the case of Google Ads you know are actively looking for what you offer) can highlight where there are drop outs and areas for improvement which will then lead your campaigns to start converting or convert at a better return.

Going back to our earlier points, the bidding strategies need conversion data to bid effectively, there’s nothing wrong with testing a campaign out to see what happens (you have to start somewhere right?) it’s not a silver bullet though.

Prove out your proposition with traffic on a test budget, make the changes you need to and then increase spend once you’re seeing viability.

8. Ad copy doesn’t include feature/benefits or USPs

Responsive search ads allow you to add up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Very often as a text based platform, we will see accounts where all 15 headlines are used but 5-6 are all versions of the same headline, often versions of what the keyword is.

We also see accounts where the headlines aren’t fully in use, which is prohibitive to the bidding strategy of being able to find out which combinations of messaging work effectively.

Your RSA needs to include the keyword you are targeting for ad relevance, it also needs varied feature/benefits, USPs and call to actions to drive performance.

Targeting the user with intent is part one of a successful campaign, capturing engagement when an ad shows and the user has the choice of 2-3 competitors to click at the same time is part two.

This is also your chance to qualify the user better before they come through to your landing page.

Setting expectations around pricing, timescales, comprehensiveness of service, time sensitive offers etc, all reduce bounces which increase conversion rate.

Every user we send to the website, we’ve paid for so we need to reduce drop outs as much as possible.

Engagement rate ranking is also a factor in Quality Score. Having varied, engaging and relevant copy will ensure that you’re eligible for the most competitive positioning and lower costs.

Messaging is an area in the age of automation and machine learning where you can really compete and stand out.

9. Over segmentation

Bidding strategies need conversion data in order to learn and perform effectively. If campaigns are overly segmented, this can slow down or prevent the learning phase from completing.

Old school approaches of a campaign per keyword were great for ensuring relevance and manual control over bids, however, now actively harm performance as they dilute the data that’s coming into bidding strategies.

This type of approach also makes it really difficult to dig into what’s actually working and what isn’t to ensure performance is optimal.

You need to take the approach that segmentation where essential, in the instance of targeting different countries for example, should be used.

Doing it because of templates, best-practice or online content is likely to be suboptimal for you.

Having a lot of segmentation can also lead to budget being spread too thin to achieve meaningful results when you are on a limited spend.

You may find that each campaign doesn’t have enough budget per day to achieve a statistically significant amount of clicks to achieve a lead or sale.

Segment where needed, knowing that the more data is aggregated the easier the bidding strategy will be able to learn.

10. Budgets not managed effectively

A simple but important thing to get right.

If a campaign isn’t converting on target, the budget needs to be capped or reduced.

If the campaign is hitting its target ROAS, CPA or above then it shouldn’t be restricted.

It’s not about Google wanting you to spend more, it’s about generating profit and sales for your company.

You need to understand what profitable acquisition is to ensure that once you’re hitting it, you’re maximising the opportunity and when you aren’t you’re mitigating the cash burn.

There’s also a numbers game to consider here.

If the average cost per click in your sector is £10, a daily budget of £50, at most will be able to achieve 5 clicks.

Relative to what your conversion rate is, it would be more surprising if this worked than the fact it likely isn’t for you. I.e 3% conv rate on 5 clicks is 0.15 of a lead or sale.

That’s not to say that you just up spend, you have to look at the compounding elements which contribute to performance such as landing page experience, messaging, pricing, delivery times and more.

If you have viability and a website experience that converts, you will need to invest enough relative to your average costs, to start seeing viability.

Summary

Avoid these Common Google Ads mistakes and you are much more likely to achieve success!

There’s a lot of nuance to driving performance in Google Ads but being aware of these common mistakes will give you a fighting chance to deliver great results that grow your business.

If you are new to advertising take the broader premise of breaking performance out into three areas:

Targeting

Messaging

Post-click (website experience, landing page messaging, conversion tracking etc)

This will allow you to work through why your campaign isn’t working and which areas need work to improve performance.

In summary, here are our top 10 Google Ads Campaigns mistakes to avoid:

1. Using the wrong Smart Bidding strategy
2. Not having conversion tracking in place
3. Conversion tracking not firing correctly
4. Not excluding brand from non-brand campaigns
5. Going too broad too soon
6. Applying a target ROAS or CPA that isn’t in-line with performance
7. No proof of concept on the website
8. Ad copy doesn’t include feature/benefits or USPs
9. Over segmentation
10. Budgets not managed effectively

We recommend avoiding them by:

1. Understand the goal and purpose of each bidding strategy and select the one which closely matches your goals, targets and budgets
2. You must have conversion tracking in place for your desired goal before activity goes live
3. Ensure that only the primary goal of your campaigns is set to ‘Primary’ in Google Ads. This will mean bidding strategies only optimise for the highest value action. Use a specialist to check your tracking is deployed correctly if needed
4. Exclude your brand name from non-brand campaigns to avoid inflated brand performance from skewing your higher spending (potentially underperforming) non-brand activity
5. When you have regular conversions being generated, test broad match via Experiments to see the potential impact of broadening targeting
6. Apply a target ROAS or CPA that’s in-line with current performance and then look to incrementally adjust over time, supporting the campaign with changes to conversion rate and AOV as required
7. If your website has never had a sale or lead, test qualified traffic on a low budget to see what happens before going for it! Use Microsoft Clarity to review user screen recordings and iron out bugs before running proper spend through your campaigns
8. Include feature/benefits and unique selling points in your ad headlines to ensure that copy is engaging and qualifies users before they visit your website
9. Keep your campaigns segmented where needed but try not to take old school approached over segmented which dilutes conversion data down and negatively affects performance
10. Apply a budget that’s reflective of average click costs and your conversion rates, keep spend where it is or reduce when performance isn’t there or has dropped out