Why Your Google Ads Campaign Didn’t Work

by Leanne Mordue on 16-Apr-2025 09:30:00

Female business owner analysing a data report to find out where she went wrong with her Google Ads campaign.

As you probably arrived at this article while searching for answers to why your latest Google Ads campaign (or campaigns) failed to deliver, you’ll hopefully forgive us for holding no punches when discussing the mistakes that were probably made, and what you can do to prevent them from recurring.

Google Ads is an extremely powerful and effective advertising and marketing tool. We can’t emphasise this enough. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has made a lot of businesses very wealthy, and Google Ads, having been around since 2000 as Google AdWords, is one of the most proven and reliable platforms. This is probably why you decided to invest money and time in Google Ads. The results speak for themselves, and it’s clearly a successful platform.

So, what is the reason for so many failed campaigns, including yours?

Is it just luck of the draw? Usually, no. At JDR, we are regularly asked to audit and review Google Ads accounts, something we’ve been doing for the best part of 20 years – and we usually see the same mistakes being made, meaning that the ads don’t work effectively for the business. Let’s look at these in more detail:

Google Ads campaign run in-house

The least successful Google Ads campaigns, we’re sorry to say, are usually those that SMEs run in-house. These campaigns often run into a lot of problems, usually arising from the person (and it is usually just one person) running them not having sufficient knowledge or experience of Google Ads management.

This can cause a range of problems, such as irrelevant traffic being drawn to your website, low quality scores, or poor choices of bid strategies and campaign types. In many SMEs, accounts are sometimes not run at all – ads are placed and simply left to chance. If you do run Google Ads campaigns in house, you should be prepared to invest sufficient resources in training, campaign management, and follow-up, in order to get the results you’re looking for.

Google Ads campaign run by an agency

For these reasons, it’s fairly easy to lose money on Google Ads without a strategic management plan in place. As a solution, and recognising a lack of internal resources, a lot of SMEs turn to a marketing agency or Google Ads specialist to run the campaign on their behalf. Does this work? Sometimes, yes, but not always.

The following are the most common problems, along with their solutions:

1. Lack of alignment between the ads and targeting, and the business’s priorities or marketing strategy.

Solution: conduct a strategic alignment meeting with your agency to make sure that your business goals, target audience, and unique selling points are clearly defined. The agency can use this information to create a detailed campaign brief that guides your ad copy, targeting, and bidding strategies. Review this at regular intervals (e.g. monthly or quarterly) to make sure that your ad campaigns remain aligned with your evolving business goals.

2. Lack of sales data, e.g. an agency can track ‘conversions’, such as enquiries or contact us page views, but not see how relevant the leads are, and whether they become customers or not.

Solution: integrate Google Ads with a CRM platform like HubSpot, which allows you and your agency to track the full customer journey from lead generation to sales conversion. This allows all stakeholders to better evaluate lead quality and campaign ROI.

3. Junior or inexperienced people running the campaign.

Solution: work with an experienced agency, such as JDR, with a proven track record of Google Ads management performance for companies in your sector. It’s fair to ask your agency about the experience and qualification levels of the people involved in your account management, and insist that a senior strategist is available to oversee your campaigns and provide regular performance reviews. Google Ads certifications are a good competency benchmark for people involved in running your campaign.