The dashboard says your ads are working.
People are seeing them. People are clicking. Google is happily taking your money.
But the enquiries aren’t coming in. Or they are coming in, but they’re not the kind you wanted.
It’s tempting to change the ads immediately. Sometimes that’s the right move. First, though, I’d follow a click all the way through to the business.
Are you attracting the right searches?
A click is only useful if the person behind it could realistically become a customer. Look at the searches triggering your ads. Are people looking for the service you sell, in the area you serve, at a stage where you can help them?
If you provide a paid service and keep attracting people looking for free advice, more clicks won’t solve the problem. Neither will a prettier advert. This is where I’d check targeting, search terms and the words in the ad itself. Sometimes being more specific means fewer clicks and better enquiries. That’s a trade I’d happily consider.
What happens after the click?
Imagine clicking an ad for “bookkeeping for small businesses in Reading” and landing on a homepage that talks vaguely about “comprehensive financial solutions”.
You’d have to work quite hard to confirm you were in the right place.
Your landing page should carry on the conversation the ad started. Explain the service, who it’s for, why someone should trust you and what they should do next.
Then check it on a phone. Can you read it easily? Is the enquiry form sensible? Does the page load properly? You’d be surprised how much money can be spent sending people to a page nobody has tested on mobile recently.
Are the enquiries actually being counted?
Before declaring a campaign a failure, make sure you can see what it produces. A form submission is one useful measure. Calls and booked appointments may matter too. But even those don’t tell the whole story if your real goal is qualified opportunities or sales.
I’d want to know which enquiries came from the ads and what happened to them. Were they suitable? Did anyone respond? Did they receive a quote? Did they become customers?
Without that connection, it’s easy to optimise a campaign for the cheapest lead while the better business comes from somewhere else.
Check the handover
An ad can do its job and still be let down afterwards.
If someone asks for a quote and waits days for an answer, the problem isn’t necessarily the campaign. If they receive a vague reply with no next step, the next campaign change probably won’t fix that either.
Look at a few recent enquiries from start to finish. The weak point may be the search, the ad, the page, the form or the follow-up.
The point is to find out which one before you spend more.
Clicks are useful. Customers are better. Your ads should be judged by how well they help you get from one to the other.
