How to Stop Wasting Money on Useless Clicks.
Running Google Ads can be one of the fastest ways to get your business onto page one of the search results, but without careful management, it can also be one of the fastest ways to burn through any marketing budget.
Here at Altitude Internet, we help businesses maximise their results from their Google Ads campaign.
Every day, thousands of businesses waste money on irrelevant clicks, poor targeting, or lazy optimisation.
Whether you are running Google Ads yourself or relying on an agency, understanding where your money is being spent and how to stop the leak is crucial to achieving profitable growth from your Google Ads campaign.
This brief blog will break down exactly how to stop wasting money on clicks that do not convert, and how to maximize the spend and turn it into a genuine return on investment.
The first thing you should do is to identify where you are potentially losing money.
Because, before you can fix the problem, you need to understand where the leaks and the problems are.
Whilst every business is different, here are a few of the most common reasons that advertisers waste money on Google Ads.
Your keywords may be too vague.
Let’s imagine you are a roofing contractor for a moment, to help explain some of the potential pitfalls and problems.
For example, if you are utilising broad match keywords, which is often one of the recommendations that Google makes, and for example, you are bidding on the word roof, your ad will appear for searches like roof decorations or roof tiles, and these are people potentially seeking information rather than the services of a roofing contractor.
You may also have poorly targeted locations; for example, your ads may be showing to users outside of your service area.
So, for example, if you cover a 20-mile radius of your postcode, your ad could still appear to people hundreds of miles away.
Many clients also waste budget on competitors’ company names being triggered, or not regularly checking the search terms report, and continuing to pay for irrelevant queries that don’t convert into good quality leads or sales.
Broad match keywords can be fine if you’ve got a large budget, but for most small or medium-sized businesses, they can be a money drain.
Our hot tip here would be to consider switching to a mixture of phrase match and exact match keywords, which helps you to better control who sees your ads, prevent irrelevant search traffic, and improve the quality score of the ads.
We also recommend that you truly master the art of negative keywords.
Negative keywords are one of the most underused tools in Google Ads, and often when we review a client’s Google ad campaign, we see there are not sufficient lists of negative keywords within the account.
You should consider adding negative keywords on a frequent basis, including things like free, DIY, courses, training, jobs, careers, and other keywords that are not likely to be googled by actual paying customers.
We also recommend that you consider refining your location targeting.
For example, if you are a local business, your ad should only show in the areas that you can truly serve, yet many advertisers mistakenly target a much wider area, sometimes even the whole of the UK, or use incorrect location settings.
For example, if you are a plumbing company in Hertfordshire, you don’t want clicks from Manchester or Birmingham, so tighten your Radius to your true service area and immediately, and you will instantly reduce potential click waste.
We also recommend that you optimise ad copy and filter out bad clicks.
Poor ad copy can attract poor clicks, and the more specific your messaging, the more likely you are to attract the right potential customers.
For example, make sure your ad copy includes something like “24 seven emergency plumber with no callout fee” to push your strengths and give a clear call to action.
E-commerce sites should use messaging like, fast shipping, or save 10% with code SAVE10 etc, to make clear their shipping terms / offers and give a promo code to encourage purchases.
You should also ensure that conversion tracking is activated, because if you can’t track conversions, you will never know which clicks are leading to sales or leads.
Whilst every business is different, you may wish to track form submissions, phone calls, purchases, or live chats as conversions.
As your Google Ads data builds, especially over a few months, you will be able to focus the ad spend on the keywords that actually drive physical conversions and not just vanity metrics like clicks or impressions.
Google is rolling out more advanced AI automation, including some of these features that can be valuable. You should never just blindly trust Google’s automation.
If your campaign is new or has limited conversion data automation, the AI bidding can ‘over bid’ and burn through your budget, meaning that you may be paying more for the click and not generating enough conversions.
This will help you to make educated and informed decisions to rebalance budgets towards campaigns that are performing better.
If you want to stop wasting budget on ads that don’t convert, we recommend that we conduct a full and detailed audit of your existing account.
Here at Altitude Internet, we specialise in running high-performance Google Ads campaigns for UK businesses, and our team can show you exactly where your money is potentially being wasted and how to improve the return on investment.
If you are interested in booking a free PPC audit, please click here to schedule a call with a member of our team.
We are a Google partner agency, and all of our PPC specialists hold the latest certifications from Google and will ensure that all best practices are implemented in your Google Ads account.
We firmly believe that Google Ads can be a great way to generate traffic, leads, and enquiries; however, the campaign must be well optimised to avoid click waste, or you stand the risk of burning your budget and leaving your ad account to underperform.
If you are interested in finding out more about Google Ads or pay-per-click marketing generally, please click here to find out more.
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Here are five great reasons to use Google Ads.
- Instant visibility
- Pay only for real clicks
- Laser-focused Ad targeting
- Powerful data and insights
- Scalable results that grow with your business
Google Ads is not just about getting clicks; it is about getting results, and when set up and managed professionally by an agency like us, Google Ads could be one of the greatest ways to deliver ROI for your digital marketing activities.
Helping your business to attract more customers and generate more traffic, leads, and enquiries is something we specialise in, and we can help you dominate the search results for your local area.
If you found this blog interesting, you can click here to read some other recent blog posts, which include topics such as conversion rate optimisation, search engine optimisation, and landing page design.
Here are five great reasons to trust Altitude Internet.
- Over 1000 five-star reviews stretching back over a decade.
- Specialists with expertise across SEO, Google Ads, and Web development,
- Transparent regular reporting and clear communication.
- Award-winning Google partner agency
- A dedicated team of 45 digital marketing professionals.
Get in touch today to schedule a call with our team and learn how we can help your business grow with professional Google Ads management.
