Five places your Google Ads budget quietly leaks
A short audit you can run yourself in about forty minutes, in the order that usually finds the most money.
Most accounts we audit are wasting between 20 and 40 percent of spend. It is almost never one big mistake, it is five small ones.
One: the search terms report
Open it for the last 30 days and sort by cost. Anything with spend and no conversions that is clearly irrelevant becomes a negative keyword today. This alone usually finds ten percent.
Two: conversion actions counting the wrong thing
Check what is actually inside your primary conversion action. If page views, button clicks and form submissions are all counted together and all marked primary, the bidding system is optimising for a blend that includes worthless events.
Three: display network creeping into search campaigns
Search Partners and Display expansion are on by default in several campaign types. Look at the network segment. If Display is spending and not converting, turn it off.
Four: location targeting set to presence or interest
The default includes people merely interested in your location. For a local service business this means paying for clicks from another state. Set it to presence only.
Five: ad schedule against your ability to answer
If your phone is answered between 10 and 7, and ads run at 2 AM, you are paying for leads nobody calls back. Check the hour of day report and cut the hours you cannot service.
Run these five in order. Then look at bidding strategy, not before.