Google Ads not converting? Do these 5 steps

Key Takeaways

I've run a Google Ads agency for over 13 years and an online training community and the number one question I get from both clients and students is, "I'm getting clicks and traffic, but I'm getting zero leads and sales. Can you help me?" And if that sounds like you, you've probably already tried the obvious stuff. You've maybe tweaked your bids, changed your budgets, changed your keywords, maybe even rewritten your ads completely, and still nothing. Because here's the thing, it's almost never the ads themselves that are the problem. In the hundreds of accounts I have looked at over the years, I found that the lack of conversions almost always comes down to one of five things. And in this video, I'm going to walk you through all five in the exact order you should check them so you can pinpoint what's wrong in your account and fix it today. So, to start, let me show you the one thing you need to check first because if you skip this, everything else that you do is completely pointless. But before I dive into that, make sure you download our free Google Ads Gotcha Guide. It contains a list of all the 14 default settings that are embedded in the Google Ads system that are really designed for you to waste money. Settings that you need to change so that you don't fall for these money-wasting traps, or as I call them, Google Gotchas. So, I'll put a link in the description. Make sure you download it so you could know which 14 settings you need to change. So, step one is to check your conversion tracking. That is how you're going to know if your ads are working or not. If you're unsure what a conversion is, it's essentially your way of telling Google what is a success. What's success for your business? So, for most people, it's for e-commerce stores, it would be somebody who actually purchases. Or for a lead generation business like a dental practice or a plumber, it might be somebody calling you or filling in a form submission. So, whatever it is your goal or objective that you are trying to achieve. So, where most people go wrong is that they log into their account and they may see zero conversions in their account. Meaning, they've generated zero leads. But, that's not always true. Sometimes the problem isn't that your ads aren't working, it's that the tracking behind it is not correct and you've got no idea. So, think about it this way. Imagine you're running a shop. Every time somebody walks out with a purchase, the cash register doesn't register the sale. So, you think you're making no money, you change products, you lower your prices, maybe change your staff, but the problem was never any of that. It was just that the cash register was broken. And that's exactly what happens when conversion tracking isn't set up correctly in your Google Ads. So, before you touch anything else in your campaigns, you want to check that your tracking is working first. So, here's how you're going to do it. You're going to go into your Google Ads account and under the goal section, under conversions, you're going to go to summary. Here you're going to see a list of all your conversion actions. If I scroll down real quick here, I'm going to click view all conversion actions. And if I scroll across here, what I want to look for is this tracking status column. So, obviously in this account, they have a number of different conversion events that have been set up and as you can see, the ones in green are active and are picking up and recording conversions, that's good. This one that says no recent conversions just says when was the last recorded action for this. This I'm not overly concerned about because maybe, as it says, there just haven't been any recent conversions. But, then you've got ones down here that say needs attention, as well as some might stay inactive. So, have a look in your account to see the status for your conversion actions to make sure they are firing correctly. Sometimes it's worth actually going to your success pages and testing if those tags actually fire. If you're unsure what I mean, let me show you real quick. So, I've gone really quickly to one of my success pages, which is a thank you page, and I've got a little tracking checker tool, as you can see here, which tells me if my tracking tags are firing correctly. As you can see, it's got a green tick and says found. So, I know that if someone lands on this page, this conversion action is going to fire and it's installed correctly. Cuz sometimes you just need to go to these pages to see if it's working or not. If you want access to this tool, I'll put a link in the description and I'm happy to give you access for free so you can check if your tracking is working. So, don't assume your tracking is working correctly. You often need to manually test it and see if the tag fires. You also want to check if you're tracking the right thing. I've seen accounts tracking page views as a conversion. So, that means someone every time somebody lands on like a product page, for example, Google counts it as a purchase. So, your account thinks it's doing a lot better than it is. So, you need to make sure your conversion action is tracking a meaningful action or what is success to you. Be it a form submission, a phone call, a purchase, not just a page visit of a product page. Cuz if your tracking is broken, you need to fix it before you do anything else. Because every optimization decision Google's algorithm makes, be it your bids, your audiences, your ad delivery, is based on your conversion data. And if that data is wrong, everything else is going to be wrong, too. So, now that you've confirmed your tracking is working, let's move to step two, which is reviewing your search term. This brings us to the next big problem many people face, and this one surprises a a of people. Because the truth is your ads might not be showing up for what you actually want. Here's what I mean. Most people don't realize there's a difference between the keyword that they're bidding on and the search term that somebody went to Google and typed into Google that triggered your ad. So, there's a discrepancy between the keywords and the search term. So, you might be running ads for a keyword like accountant for small business, and depending on what match type you use for your keywords, and if you haven't set up negative keywords, Google might be showing your ads to people searching for things completely unrelated to that, like accounting software, or how to do my own taxes, or free accounting templates. Those people are not looking to hire you. They may [snorts] click, and they go to your page, but then they're going to leave. And you pay for every single one of those clicks. So, the fix is simple, but most people don't do it. What you're going to do is you're going to go into a campaign, and then on the left-hand side here, under insights and reports, you want to click on search terms. This is going to give you, under this first column here of search term, what the person actually typed into Google. And on the right here as is the keyword that triggered this particular search term. So, you want to have a scan through this the each individual search term to make sure it's relevant for what you your ad is showing. And if you find something that is not relevant, then you want to add it as a negative keyword. So, let's pretend this one is not relevant. I can simply click this check box here, and click add as a negative keyword, which will prevent this term from showing up in future search terms. It won't retroactively populate, it'll just present prevent it from happening in the future. Recommend doing this at least once a week, particularly when you're starting out, maybe even twice a week. You'll find it makes a massive difference not only to your click-through rate, but also your profitability. Now, let's say your tracking is fine, traffic looks good, the search terms are good, the right people are clicking, but still no conversions. That brings us to step three, which is to evaluate your landing page. And this is where a lot of money gets wasted, and truthfully, kind of has nothing to do with Google Ads at all. Your ad's doing its job. It's getting the click from the right person, but then the person lands on your website and well, they leave. Here's a metaphor for that explains it perfectly. Imagine a restaurant with a beautiful, big sign out the front, big, bold that says best pizza in the city. People walk in excited, they're going to try your pizza, and then they open the menu and it's a sushi restaurant. They feel somewhat misled and they walk straight back out. Well, that's what happens when your ad promises one thing and your landing page delivers something completely different. So, if your ad says free Google Ads audit for small businesses and they click through and land on your homepage and there's no mention of the free audit anywhere, well, they're just going to leave. They're going to hit that back button because they have to work to find what they came for. And truthfully, people don't want to work. They just leave. So, here's what to check. You want to have a look to make sure your landing page actually matches what you're saying in your ad. The headline on your page should directly reflect the offer in your ad. And ideally, the language should be consistent. If your ad targets a specific service or location, ideally your page should speak to that exact service or location. Second, is there one clear call to action for them to do? Not three. Not a navigation menu full of options. One clear next step. And third, does the page load quickly? On mobile particularly. If your page takes more than 3 to 5 seconds to load, I guarantee you're losing people before they even see it. You can actually test your page speed using Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool. So, have a look what it is for your page. So, now you've got the right people landing on your page, but they're still not converting. That takes us to step four, which is to look at your offer and your call to action. Because sometimes the page is fine, the tracking's fine, the traffic is fine, and the [snorts] offer just isn't compelling enough. So, let me put it bluntly. If somebody lands on your page and thinks, "Eh, that sounds all right." you've lost them. You need them to think, "I need this right now." So, ask yourself, is my offer clear? Not just what you do, but what's in it for them? What do they get? What problem does it solve? What changes for them after they work with you? Then look at your call to action. Is it telling them exactly what to do? Learn more is vague versus book your free 15-minute strategy call is specific and tells them exactly what they're getting. Also, where is the call to action on the page? If someone has to scroll to the bottom to find it, well, most won't bother. It needs to be visible without scrolling, above the fold, and then also repeated further down the page for people who do want to read. I had a client once whose conversion rate was terrible. And we looked at everything. The traffic, the tracking, the keywords, all of it looked good. Then when we looked at the contact form, it was asking for 12 different pieces of information. Name, business name, their business number, number of employees, annual revenue. People were abandoning the form halfway through. So, we actually reduced the form down to three fields, name, email, phone, and conversions went up immediately. Sometimes it really is that simple. All right, we've covered tracking, traffic, landing page, and offer. You've checked all four of those things and things still aren't converting. The last thing you want to look at is your bidding. This This especially relevant if you're running a newer account or recently changed your bid strategy to one of the smart bidding strategies like target CPA bidding or target ROAS. Here's the thing about smart bidding. Google's algorithm is incredibly powerful, but only when it has data to work with. It needs conversion data to learn who to show your ads to and when. So, if you have very few conversions in your account, the algorithm is essentially guessing. It's a bit like asking someone to drive you somewhere, but you haven't really told them that your destination and they've never driven before. They'll have a go at it, but they're going to make a lot of mistakes and a lot of wrong turns. So, if you have fewer than 30 conversions in the last 30 days, well, you probably don't have enough data to do Google smart bidding. It might be worth switching to maximize clicks or even manual CPC bidding temporarily to build up some volume first and then switch to smart bidding once you've got the data behind you. I actually have a whole video on how to choose the right bidding strategy for your business. If you're unsure about bidding, I recommend watching that video next because that will really help you choose the right bidding strategy to match your specific account. So, there you have it. Those are the five things that you need to look at to improve conversions in your Google Ads account. Make sure you check out our resources in the description below and also that bidding strategy to watch next. If you like this video, don't forget to hit that thumbs up icon and subscribe and thanks so much for watching.