Why good Google Ads campaigns still lose clients

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 advice on 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.

If this is true, changing the ad copy or tightening the targeting won't fix things.

I didn't say anything but I think they're going to lose the client. Either at the end of the 30 day deadline, or the next time there is a performance dip.

That's because the ultimatum to "sort it out" is a symptom of a relationship that's adversarial instead of cooperative.

• The client blames the ad manager for poor quality leads.
• The ad manager blames the client for not being able to sell.

Nobody is trying to find out where the real problem lies.

I've seen this a lot. I think it happens because of some bad advice that's persisted long past its expiry date. That's the advice to stay in your lane.

Historically, there was always a sharp separation:

• Ad managers focused on traffic and leads.
• Clients handled sales and operations.

It kept responsibilities clear. But at a cost:

• It made ad managers short-sighted. Especially juniors who didn't get much face time with clients. We ended up with people running ads without thinking about the business behind the ads.
• It trained clients to see agencies as lead suppliers instead of strategic partners. If sales dropped, you fired the agency and hired the next one. You never actually got to the bottom of the problem.

But this doesn't work anymore.

Today, both the ad manager and Google need signals from sales and operations to make the ads profitable. Things like if a lead was qualified, if they booked, if they converted into a customer, and how much the sale was worth.

Both the client and the ad manager from Reddit would be better off if they worked together to find out where the real problem lay.

• It is true that it could be the ads. Perhaps poor targeting or misaligned ad copy.
• It could also be the landing pages. They might be unclear or give the wrong impression.
• But it might be what happened after the leads got into the business. A slow response or a weak sales process.

As long as the client is issuing ultimatums and the ad manager stays buried in the account, nobody's going to get to the bottom of it.

Today, to make Google Ads profitable, the ad manager and the client must share a lane. I'm not talking about taking over the client's business or running their sales team. I'm referring to working together to identify issues and come up with solutions.

I'm lucky enough to work this way with some clients.

I've been working with an RV campground for a few months. We reviewed performance after the first few weeks. It looked good. Bookings were coming in and we were making more than we were spending.

But once we looked deeper, we discovered that most bookings 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 revenue.

Without sharing a lane, I might have taken the logical, but ultimately less profitable, approach of optimising for the lowest cost per booking.

Another client is an immigration consultant. He works with people who have a criminal record that would stop them entering the country.

At first, we thought the Google Ads campaign had a lead quality problem.

We have a shared dashboard that shows us why leads aren't qualified. It turns out that a significant number of his leads actually didn't need his service. They had committed minor offences that were unlikely to keep them from entering the country.

You can't fix this in the Google Ads account.

As we discussed the problem we realised that the real issue was uncertainty. Nobody wants to spend thousands on flights and accommodation only to be turned away because a border officer misunderstood the rules.

That insight led to a new offer.

My client created a lower-cost service. He'd prepare a legal opinion letter explaining, in language border officers would understand, why the traveller should be admissible.

This was good for his clients, and it helped recover the cost of leads that previously went nowhere.

I'm convinced that the future of PPC is ad managers and clients working together to optimise the entire ad system.

This starts with shared visibility so both the client and the ad manager can see where leads came from and what happened to them.

Not just how many leads came in, but which ones were qualified, which ones booked, which ones bought, and which ones went nowhere.

You don't need a perfect CRM setup or enterprise-level reporting. Version 1 can be a spreadsheet. The important thing is that both sides can see what actually happened.

This changes the conversation.

Instead of arguing about whether the leads are "good" or "bad", you start looking for patterns:

• Are leads dropping off after the first phone call?
• Are certain services producing better customers?
• Are people confused before they contact the business?
• Is the sales team responding too slowly?
• Is one campaign bringing in lower-value customers than another?

And it makes it possible to find real problems and improve the whole system together.

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