Big agencies often get this wrong: Three reasons why your Google Ads aren’t converting

In today’s fiercely competitive digital landscape, there is no doubt that businesses are continually vying for the attention of online consumers. For many, Google Ads stands as a dominant force. Its strength lies in providing a powerful platform for businesses to reach a highly engaged customer — one that is motivated by actively searching for a solution to a current problem. 

However, despite the opportunity to reach such an engaged buyer, getting your ad account to actually be profitable is a challenge. And whether you have navigated the tech or have invested in outsourcing with an agency, here are three common reasons why your Google Ads are not converting.

You’re running ads like it’s 2021

Things move quickly in the Google Ads world. We’ve seen accounts that worked well in 2021 fall off a cliff in 2022 if the ads strategy hasn’t been updated recently. 

Traditional shopping campaigns have been eclipsed for the most part by Performance Max. If you’ve been avoiding this catch-all campaign in the past, it’s time to start experimenting. 

Bid strategies have also gone through an overhaul in the past few years and leaning into smart bidding is the way to go. 

Google Ads is not a set and forget marketing platform – regular changes and optimisations are needed to maintain profitability. 

You’re not focusing on conversions

If you’re outsourcing to an agency it’s a huge red flag if they’ve never mentioned the words Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) or Return on Adspend (ROAS) to you. 

Google Ads is performance marketing, and you should be working towards a CPA or ROAS goal. 

The process of optimising an ad account involves analysing past performance and making changes to improve results in line with your overall CPA or ROAS metric. 

Without that goal? It makes optimising an account near impossible as you have no benchmark of “good” and “bad” performance.

You feel confused after talking to your account manager

If you feel utterly confused and bamboozled every time you speak to your account manager, it’s not a good sign. 

Oftentimes agencies use confusing tech jargon and industry lingo to give you the impression that they’re the right person to handle your ads. 

And likely you’ve outsourced your marketing because it’s not your strong suit, offloading this to an expert in the field.

Unfortunately this knowledge gap gives agencies the opportunity to hide poorly performing Google Ads behind fancy acronyms like CTR and CPC, without you seeing a difference in your business. 

If you have a gut feeling that your ad manager is trying to camouflage unprofitable ads with glossy reports and marketing speak, it might be time to get a second opinion on your account.

Kaity Griffin is the founder of kaitygriffin.com and a Google Ads expert, trainer, and systems geek.