Latest / Modularity Podcast / Stop Paying for the Wrong Google Ads Clicks

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Stop Paying for the Wrong Google Ads Clicks · Modularity Podcast

• 0:00
  The average business running Google Ads wastes $1,127.54
• 0:06
  every month on clicks that never turn into a customer.
• 0:11
  That's from WordStream, which went through more than 250,000 reports from over
• 0:17
  15,000 accounts across 23 industries.
• 0:21
  And the average account in that data spends a little over $3,000 a month.
• 0:26
  So that's a big slice of the budget, gone.
• 0:29
  It gets worse.
• 0:30
  About 29 percent of those accounts recorded zero conversions over a 90 day stretch.
• 0:36
  Some of that is probably tracking that was never set up, and WordStream says so.
• 0:40
  But those accounts still averaged more than 12,000 impressions a month.
• 0:44
  Lots of visibility, no customers.
• 0:47
  And 25 percent of advertisers had never added a single negative keyword.
• 0:51
  Which is the whole story.
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  A negative keyword is a word you tell Google, don't show my ad when someone searches
• 0:58
  this.
• 0:58
  Google's own help page uses an optometrist who sells eyeglasses.
• 1:03
  If that optometrist bids on eyeglasses, the ad can show up for wine glasses and
• 1:07
  drinking glasses.
• 1:08
  And every one of those clicks costs real money.
• 1:11
  Here's where owners get fooled.
• 1:13
  You open your account, you look at the Keywords tab, you see roof repair near me,
• 1:18
  and you think that's all you're showing up for.
• 1:21
  That tab is what you bid on.
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  The Search Terms report is what people actually typed before they clicked and cost
• 1:28
  you money.
• 1:28
  Those two lists can look nothing alike.
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  So picture a tree service.
• 1:33
  They bid on tree removal.
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  Without negatives, they could pay for someone searching tree trimmer jobs,
• 1:40
  or a free tree removal offer.
• 1:42
  That's a hypothetical, but it's exactly the kind of mismatch Google's own example
• 1:47
  describes.
• 1:48
  Same with a dental practice paying for someone hunting a free clinic,
• 1:53
  or a commercial HVAC contractor paying for a cheap window unit repair.
• 1:57
  One agency, Top Growth Marketing, estimates that new ecommerce advertisers waste 30
• 2:03
  to 50 percent of their budget on irrelevant clicks before they build proper negative
• 2:08
  lists.
• 2:08
  That's an agency's estimate, and it's aimed at ecommerce, so treat it as a ballpark.
• 2:13
  But it points the same direction as the WordStream numbers.
• 2:16
  Now the number that jumped out at me.
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  Accounts with at least one negative keyword averaged a 13 percent conversion rate.
• 2:24
  Accounts with none averaged 4.6 percent.
• 2:29
  Nearly triple.
• 2:32
  To be fair, that's a correlation, and the figures are medians from people who ran
• 2:37
  WordStream's free grader.
• 2:39
  Accounts that use negatives may simply be managed more carefully overall.
• 2:43
  But it fits the logic.
• 2:46
  You stop paying for the wrong searchers, so a bigger share of your clicks come from
• 2:51
  people who actually want what you sell.
• 2:53
  And more reach isn't the goal.
• 2:54
  Accounts with fewer than 20,000 impressions over 90 days converted at 4.1 percent.
• 3:00
  Accounts with more than 80,000 converted at 2.4 percent.
• 3:05
  WordStream's read is that tighter targeting gives up some reach but puts you in
• 3:09
  front of better qualified people.
• 3:11
  That's their interpretation, but it's a good reminder that a big impressions number
• 3:16
  isn't a win.
• 3:17
  So how do you actually fix this without spending hours a day inside Google Ads?
• 3:21
  You start with an account level negative keyword list of universal budget killers.
• 3:27
  Words like free, cheap, jobs, salary, DIY, course, and PDF.
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  Unless you sell free training or you are actively hiring technicians on that
• 3:38
  campaign, none of those searchers have a credit card out to hire you.
• 3:43
  And you have to understand how match types work with negatives,
• 3:46
  because they do not behave like regular keywords.
• 3:48
  With negative broad match, Google will only block the ad if every single word in
• 3:53
  your negative phrase appears in the search, in any order.
• 3:57
  If you add negative broad wine glass, it blocks cheap wine glass,
• 4:02
  but it will not block wine glasses plural.
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  Negatives do not catch close variants or synonyms automatically.
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  That catches so many people off guard.
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  You have to add the plural, the common misspellings, and root words intentionally.
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  Once that foundational list is in place at the account level,
• 4:20
  make the Search Terms report part of your weekly routine.
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  Look at the last seven days, sort by spend with zero conversions,
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  and add the junk search terms directly as negative exact or negative phrase
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  keywords.
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  Thirty minutes every Friday morning.
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  That is all it takes to build a moat around your ad budget.
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  You cut out the clicks that were never going to buy, and every single dollar you
• 4:42
  save rolls straight back into winning the searches that actually pay your bills.
• 4:46
  And if you want a second pair of eyes to audit your paid campaigns and stop that ad
• 4:50
  waste cold, head over to modularity dot u s.
• 4:53
  We will help you dial in your strategy and make sure every dollar is working for
• 4:57
  your bottom line.