How to NOT set your ad budget on fire

Hey team,

For those in the US, hope your hangover isn’t that bad.

For everyone else, happy Friday.

Before we start - how is this not the best thing we’ve seen this year.

zuck

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Another week of auditing ad accounts has me really nervous for some brands out there.

Earlier this week, I shared this tweet (are they still called ‘tweets’?) and found $12k+ of wasted ad spend.

Ouch.

An easy mistake to make if you’re a jr.

An even easier mistake to spot if you know what to look for.

I also found this

Not to be all doom and gloom but I’m finding a ton of mistakes in ad accounts that are cost a lot of $$$.

Luckily, this client has signed on!

The first order of business with them is getting lead tracking set up so we can optimize for rev, not ‘Page view (pricing)’ 🤦‍♂️

With all of these money pits I’m finding in ad accounts, seems fit to give some guidance on how to know you’re spending on your ad dollars in the right place.

Let’s get started.

Track what you need to win

Sounds simple right?

If you want leads then track leads in the conversions column…

If you want sales then track sales and revenue in the conversions column.

Usually, the main barrier I come across is people not know exactly how to set this up.

For ecom, you’re probably in Shopify then you’re lucky enough to have this all built-in with a single click (one of, if not my fav integration with Google Ads).

By default, you’ll have funnel tracking - View Item, Add to Cart, Begin Checkout, Add Payment Info and Purchase.

Pro tip: use custom conversion columns so you can see the funnel flow for your campaigns. This is the best place to spot if there are any kinks in your checkout flow.

Lead gen is tricker - you’re going to need some tech knowledge or experience with Google Tag Manager. Reply to this email if you want me to help you out with this one.

Only pay for ready-to-buy-traffic

You’ve heard it before:

‘Only 1%-3% of people are ready to buy now - you need to target the other 97% for when they’re ready’

And while maybe someone who did a university study one time that has an IQ triple what mine is said so, you can completely bypass this finding (never actually looked up the study) with Google Ads.

The entire point of Google Ads is that you’re targeting the 1%-3% of people who are ready to buy now.

Be brutal with your search queries and don’t let free loads run rampant with your budget.

Like I found in this client’s account that they had 10% of their budget spent on queries where people were searching for ‘free’ (they sell enterprise software).

Keep a tight leash on your query report and only pay for the highest intent traffic - unless you don’t like money. In that case add ‘free’ as a modifier to all your keywords. 🤣

If you’re finding it hard to control the queries as they’re getting flooded with too many irrelevant terms then you should look at narrowing the match type.

Otherwise, you can end up in this situation…

I think you get the point now.

*Actually* target your target location

One final one in the interest of time length.

Seasoned Google Ads managers know this one too well.

This one little button is how the account above misspent $12k+.

You’ll find this one by going to campaign settings - you even have to unhide this option with the ‘Location options’ drop-down.

Super sneaky…

The fastest way to see if you’re spending money outside of your location is to go from your dashy:

Campaigns > Insights and reports > Report editor and select Campaign performance.

Then just change it the only row selection is Country/Territory (User location).

And… taa daa

Want me to do a free audit of your account?

If you haven’t noticed yet from this email - there are TONS of money pits in Google Ads.

You don't know what you don’t know - and that’s fine.

But I do know and if you are feeling sweaty after seeing these examples and wondering ‘is my ad spend going down the same money pit?’

Then just reply to this email and we can sync up - happy to offer a helping hand for the grand cost of $0.

If you don't want an audit but still enjoyed today’s ready reply anyway so I can give some kind of signal to the email gods that this isn’t spam!?!?!

ty

See you next week

Adios, ciao and cya.

Follow me on Twitter/X/Musk’s past time hobby: @PayPerMitch