Why I've Stopped Giving Quick-Fix Google Ads Advice

Over the last 18 months, I've made the same mistake several times: I've given quick-fix Google Ads advice.

I often get small business owners coming to me for help with Google Ads. The conversations are similar:

• "My ads worked for a few weeks, then started producing junk."
• "I listened to Google’s rep and now I only get spam leads."
• "I used to get 10-20 good calls a week, but now they're all worthless."

I know where spam leads come from. I know how to stop them. I know how to reset an account to escape from the junk-lead-death-spiral.

So, I've said:

• Turn off Performance Max campaigns unless you're optimizing for qualified leads or sales.
• Don't advertise on the display network (YouTube, news sites, and so on where people are browsing, not searching).
• Don't advertise on search partners (random sites that often bring spam).
• Show ads to people in your area, not to people interested in your area.

Or, more bluntly, "Don't advertise in the sewer."

This is solid advice. Nobody who knows anything about Google Ads would disagree with me.

But the people who need this level of help aren't ad experts. None have been confident that their conversion tracking was working. None have been able to identify which leads came from Google. None knew how many qualified leads came from Google, or the cost of generating a qualified lead.

Instead, they watch surface-level metrics like impressions, clicks, and average cost per click (CPC).

They want a quick fix so they can get back to cutting trees, or lawyering, or whatever. And so, I've given them the quick fix.

But here's a thing...

Surface-level metrics get worse when you stop advertising in the sewer.

• Impressions drop: You're an arborist in a small city. Your Performance Max campaign gave you 12,000 impressions a day. But guess how many people in your city actually need tree work today. It's the 200 who saw your search ads.

• Clicks drop. You are not paying for accidental clicks from fat-fingered toddlers watching Baby Shark videos. You are not paying for clicks from bots or click farms. Now you are paying for clicks from people who want what you sell.

• CPC skyrockets. The $1.50 clicks from bots and babies are gone. They are replaced with the $15 clicks from valuable leads. Each click costs more because they are from people who might become customers.

And when this happens, they panic. They undo the changes. And so, they keep getting junk leads. This isn't good for them, and it isn't good for me.

I've learned from my mistakes and developed a new four-step plan for fixing Google Ads accounts:

1. Set up conversion tracking. Calls, forms, WhatsApp—everything. We need to know where every lead came from.

2. Collect baseline data. It might take two to four weeks, but we'll know which leads came from Google Ads and what a qualified lead cost.

3. Show where the junk was coming from. Help them see the ad targeting that generated spam and what's generating qualified leads.

4. Tell them not to advertise in the sewer. But, show them how to measure the results against qualified leads, not surface metrics.

The irony is, the quick fix works. But if you don’t understand what’s happening under the hood, it looks like failure.

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