Google Ads has a funny way of making small businesses feel like they’re doing something. Money goes out, clicks come in, there’s a dashboard full of numbers. But when we audit accounts, we often find a big chunk of the budget going nowhere useful.
Here are the mistakes we see most, and how to fix them.
1. Trusting the default settings
When you set up a campaign, Google suggests settings that are good for Google. Broad targeting, automatic placements on partner sites and apps, sometimes locations where people are merely “interested in” your area instead of actually in it.
Go through every setting yourself. For a local business, you usually want people physically in or regularly in your service area, on Google Search, with display and partner networks switched off unless you’ve chosen them on purpose.
2. No negative keywords
Negative keywords stop your ads showing for searches you don’t want. Without them, a plumber can end up paying for “plumber jobs,” “plumbing course” and “how to fix a tap myself.”
Check the search terms report every week or two. It shows the actual searches that triggered your ads. You’ll almost always find things to exclude.
3. Sending everyone to the homepage
If someone searches “emergency dentist Saturday” and lands on a generic homepage, they have to go looking. Many won’t. Send each ad group to the most relevant page, ideally one built for that service, with a clear phone number and form above the fold.
4. Not tracking conversions properly
This is the big one. If you don’t know which clicks turned into calls, form fills or bookings, you’re judging your ads on clicks and cost. That’s like judging a salesperson by how many people they talked to rather than how many they sold to.
Set up conversion tracking for form submissions, phone calls from ads, calls from your website and online bookings. Then let that data guide where the money goes. (If you’re in healthcare, be careful about what data you send to ad platforms. Patient privacy rules apply.)
5. Letting automation run without guardrails
Google’s automated bidding and Performance Max campaigns can work well, but they need good conversion data and clear limits. Without those, they’ll happily spend your budget chasing cheap, low quality leads.
Start with tighter control. Bring in more automation once you have reliable tracking and enough conversions for the system to learn from.
6. Running ads when nobody can answer the phone
If your office closes at 5pm and your ads run until midnight, those evening callers hit voicemail and call the next business on the list. Schedule your ads around when you can actually respond, or make sure you have a booking form or answering service that handles after-hours enquiries well.
7. Set and forget
Ads accounts drift. Competitors change their bids, costs creep up, search behavior changes, and an ad that worked last year slowly stops working. A quick review every week and a deeper one every month keeps things on track.
Is Google Ads right for you?
Ads work best when people are actively searching for what you sell and the value of a new customer comfortably covers the cost of getting one. They’re a great way to get leads while SEO builds up in the background.
They’re not great if your website doesn’t convert, if you can’t respond quickly to leads, or if your budget is so small you can’t get enough clicks to learn anything.
We manage Google Ads for small businesses, clinics and trades. If you’d like a free review of your account, book a call and we’ll show you where the money’s going.
