The hardest Google Ads problems have nothing to do with Google Ads
One of the most disheartening parts of managing Google Ads is that you can do a great job and still lose the client.
The ads get clicked. The landing pages convert. The CPA looks reasonable but the client doesn't make sales.
The ads, and by extension the person managing the ads, always gets the blame.
This came up again on Reddit. An ad manager posted that they'd generated 50 leads from about $6,000 in ad spend. The client had only closed 2 deals worth a total of $7,000 and had given the ad manager 30 days to "sort things out".
Most of the replies were about improving the ads. But, a $120 lead cost for a $3,500 service isn't terrible.
It's quite possible that the ads aren't the problem.
(Don't) stay in your lane
Historically, there was always a clear separation between responsibilities:
- Ad managers focused on traffic and leads.
- Clients handled sales and operations.
Everybody stayed in their own lane.
But this doesn't work anymore.
Today profitable Google Ads depend on signals from sales and operations. Things like if a lead was qualified, if they booked, if they converted into a customer.
You need visibility into what happens after the lead lands:
- How quickly are leads contacted?
- How many are qualified?
- How many book appointments?
- How many become customers?
- Which campaigns produce the best customers instead of just the cheapest leads?
Once you can see the full journey from lead to sale you can separate ad problems from sales problems. Something I suspect would improve our hero's chance of keeping the client.
And, you can optimise the ads for the best business outcomes.
I recently saw this in an account I'm running for an RV campground.
At first glance the campaign looked successful because bookings were coming in, and we were making more than we were spending.
But once we tracked the actual booking values properly we discovered that most were low value with a few juicy outliers.
That completely changed the optimisation strategy.
We shifted the budget to a market segment that, while more expensive per lead, resulted in much higher per-booking values.
Without downstream visibility we would have continued the logical, but ultimately less profitable, approach of optimizing for the lowest cost per booking.
Now, I'm not saying that you should take over your clients' businesses. What I am say is that you can't expect profitable Google ads if you ignore what happens after the lead is created.
The hardest Google Ads problems increasingly have nothing to do with Google Ads.
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