You have set up a Google Ads campaign, are you waiting for results and nothing happens? Are you wondering why? You don’t know what to do to improve the situation?
Unfortunately, the problem may be more difficult to capture and live on both the campaign side and the entire strategy of the company.
Google Ads campaign is not working
The most common problems I’ve noticed are poor campaign structure, too broad or too narrow keyword matching, no exclusions, wrong configuration of conversions and no remarketing audiences.
Let’s try to discuss them briefly.
Bad campaign structure
Personally, I think it’s a factor that decides if your campaign is a correct and well-functioning.
The wrong structure works like a sieve – it is leaky, leads to random impressions, can mislead users, burns the budget for unnecessary clicks.
Keyword matches too wide or too narrow + no exclusions
Probably nothing can burn the budget more than displaying ads on broad and very popular among competitors (and therefore expensive) keywords with no relevant exclusions.
You may not be able to convert with these phrases because users who enter general keywords in the search engine are not usually ready to buy yet. They are just doing research.
Without proper keyword matching and exclusions, you bring expensive, but often worthless traffic to your site. If your budget is limited then one of the easiest ways to kill your Google Ads campaign.
On the other hand, if your keywords are too narrowly matched, your campaign will not be visible to users.
Incorrectly configured conversions
Misconfigured conversions are true serial killers of Google Ads campaigns. Remember that you always set / order campaign settings for some purpose – in the case of online shop it will be sales, in other companies – contact by phone with a potential customer, sending him a contact form, downloading the catalog, subscribing to the newsletter and a lot of other things. Your goal is not CTRs, clicks, and just visits to the site (unless you’re running a branding campaign).
No remarketing segmentation
Different visitors come to your site and many of them appear quite accidentally there. There is no point in placing ads on someone who is completely uninterested in your offer. That’s why you should segment remarketing, not set it to all users.
How it doesn’t work, how it works.
All these points can significantly reduce the results of your campaigns. Of course, I could name more such elements, these seem to me the most important.
But even if your campaign fails at some point, this does not mean that it will not bring conversions at all. If your product is attractive to users, then even a poorly set campaign can achieve some results.
A more serious problem starts somewhere else – when the campaign is optimized, users are happy to click on the ads, but do not convert.
A Google Ads campaign or a strategy yet?
Remember that Google Ads campaign captures potentially interested users and sends them to your website. If your site is unreadable, not optimized for mobile phones, it loads a long time, has non-intuitive navigation and, above all, something is wrong with the product, changing the specialist from Google Ads will not help.
The most important thing in this case will be to determine why users end up buying nothing.
Imagine this situation – you see an advertisement for a clothing store, it is encouraging, so you click on it and go to the site. However, all items are in single sizes. Clothes that caught your eye are not in your size. You close the page and leave. After a few days, you get remarketing and the situation repeats.
The problem mainly affects new online stores. In some industries, the competition is so high and the users’ preferences so unspecified that without a thorough understanding of the target group, it is very difficult to talk about satisfactory results.
Many companies also do not care about collecting comparative data, correctly configuring Google Analytics, and enabling all necessary reports. This makes it very difficult to analyze any existing traffic.
When communication fails
Another problem is communication. Many companies think that good ads will do everything and no longer need to communicate with their potential customers. This is an assumption in some industries and the lack of proper and thoughtful communication can already be a problem and have far-reaching consequences.
Let us remember that communication is a very broad concept. It’s not just about writing a blog or running a Facebook profile. It also includes descriptions of your products on the site, taking care of customer reviews, collecting recommendations, sending newsletters, photos and many other things.
Google Ads doesn’t like loneliness
Another issue is the lack of a developed sales path. Each company should analyze how it can close sales.
For example, Google Ads can only open the path and bring valuable traffic to the site, another Facebook Ads will be remarketing involved users and encourage them to subscribe to the newsletter. Unfortunately, sometimes Google Ads alone is not enough and you need to provide customers with more contact points with your business.
Google Ads is like wine – it must mature
Patience is a very important feature in life and marketing. The principle also works in Google Ads – unfortunately you have to wait for good things.
How long can this moment last?
In my experience, a reasonable period for testing is about 3 months. Do not ask every day for results. Get ready for changes on the site and a complete your strategy.
If you’re not prepared for it, or worse yet, you don’t have enough budget for it, Google Ads probably isn’t for you.
Does this mean that companies with a small budget should completely opt out of Google Ads? Not necessarily. It all depends on what competition there is in their industry, as well as what “small budget” means for them.
Why is the Google Ads campaign not selling?
This is a complex problem, however, I wanted to point out in this blog that problems may or may not arise directly from the Google Ads campaign settings.
One situation should be worrying especially and it does not only apply to Google Ads campaigns, but ads in general – when users willingly click on ads, go to the site, but for some reason these actions do not lead to any conversions.
It’s worth perform analysis on your audience and see what they do on the site. If certain behaviors are repeated, you have most likely found the reason for your failures so far.
How do you set up a Google Ads campaign to convert?
Have you set up Google Ads campaigns and are disappointed with the results it achieves? Are you wondering what the problem is and what could you do better?
Google Ads is a complex creation in which you have to consider a lot of different elements. So how do you set up Google Ads campaigns to convert? How to quickly improve your statistics?
Think like your customers
Put yourself in the customer’s place. Remember that you know your product, you think it’s good and you don’t have a distance to it.
However, your customers think completely differently. They often have a limited budget. For them, purchasing is a decision they are considering, because they have to get the most out of it.
Think what questions and concerns they may have about your product? Why does it cost more than competitive products? Is the price commensurate with the quality? – these are just some of the question’s visitors may visit when visiting your website. Are you sure your site is responding to them? Have you ever wondered what else might stop potential customers from completing the transaction?
Post search information on the website
Your website should also be such a trip, show the user why the product is worth the price, why it is unique on the market and how customers’ lives will change drastically after purchasing it.
Do not write that your company provides high-quality services at a low price. Instead of this:
- post materials for those really interested (case study, comparisons, additional articles)
- explain why the product costs so much
- tell us how this product is different from others
- list the specific benefits the customer will achieve after purchasing
- add opinions of other satisfied customers
- show the product with high-quality photos, video, etc. (high-quality materials are particularly important for premium products)
- don’t forget about intuitive navigation!
Give the potential customer the opportunity to clarify their doubts – post a pop-up banner on the site with an incentive to contact (if you have nothing against paid solutions, you can install Call Page, for example).
The site may be professional, but if (especially in the case of expensive products) it does not answer the basic questions of users, the chances of sale decrease rapidly.
Consider the structure of your campaign
Do you already know what customers can ask for? Have you polished your website?
In that case, it’s time to look at your Google Ads campaign structure:
- should reflect site construction
- helps to differentiate advertising messages from different target groups
- prevents accidental ad impressions
Relevant landing pages
Ads should send users to subpages of relevant products or categories, do not direct them to the main page, do not make them search – recipients do not like this.
Ads matched your query
Make sure you display ads that exactly match their query. You can do this by separating ad groups with fewer keywords and writing dedicated ads to them.
Appropriate keyword matches
Watch out for general keywords. Such phrases often do not lead to conversions (users are only at the research stage), and they also cost a lot due to the huge competition.
Search terms
Remember to regularly check the search terms – it will help you determine if your ads are not showing accidental queries, or whether you should apply more keyword exclusions or more exact matches in your Google Ads campaign.
A good campaign structure is an absolute foundation. If doesn’t work properly, you may be burning a significant part of the budget. Also take into account that your potential customers may behave quite differently than you expect – that’s why you need to make necessary changes.
Take care of good copy
Write good texts – both for ads and on the website. Don’t download from the competition. Do not write product descriptions on your knee. Do not copy the same ad to all ad groups.
The more accurate and better the advertising text matches the user’s query, the higher the click-through rate on the advertisement, and more visitors on the page and the greater the chance of conversions.
Thanks to a good copy, you are able to show the recipient that you perfectly know his needs and are able to meet them.
Bet on remarketing
Not every user will immediately decide to buy, which is why remarketing is so important. However, forget about targeting ads to All Recipients lists. For example, you can set up a list of people who viewed specific subpages, watched a selected video on YouTube, or visited the site within a certain period of time.
When you have a separate page URL with a product added to the cart and a separate thank you for your purchase, you can easily list in the Google Ads panel people who added the item to the cart but did not finally buy it.
You can also create a list of recipients who have already made a purchase in your store. On their basis, the system will automatically create a list of similar people who may also be interested in the product. The users can then be remarketed in separate campaigns, with a different ad sequence, different budgets and bids.
Find out what actions lead to conversions
Nobody knows immediately what will bring the best results. For this you need data. Only after some time will you be able to find out what works in your campaign and what doesn’t. Over time, each campaign should narrow down (as much as possible) to keywords, campaign types, ad formats, and custom lists that bring the best results.
Give yourself some time
After some time, however, you will be able to draw conclusions that, for example, keywords that match your phrase from the top five ad groups in your case work best and 80% of the entire advertising budget is worth spending on them.
Campaigns based on interest in the Display Network do not usually bring measurable profits, but remarketing campaigns using HTML ads and narrowed to people who have added something to the basket, but did not buy, are coming out very well.
For this, however, you need tests, tests and tests again.
Build sales funnels
Surely you have already heard about attribution and you know that your recipients are covering the entire path to buy. The path can look very different. Much depends on your product and its price. It may turn out that Google Ads will be great as a traffic beater from search engines, and sales will eventually be boosted by Facebook remarketing.
The specific moves depend on your industry and the difficulty of obtaining a lead.
There are industries where it is enough to set simple ads and everything works like gold. There are also those where it is enough to implement simple remarketing. Sometimes, however, this is not enough.
If you set up your campaigns with care and they still do not work – you are probably missing something. It is possible that you do not fully understand your customers, at some stage, you do not meet their expectations.
Think of Google Ads as one of the advertising sources that you can use in your strategy. Take a look at Google Analytics and see how your clients ’paths have looked so far. Put yourself in the place of your recipients and answer honestly the question of whether you would buy your product yourself, and if not, which could convince you to spend money.
Connect different systems, test and be patient. The results do not appear after a week, but eventually, they will.
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