If your Google Ads are sitting at a 1.5–2x ROAS, you’re not failing — but you’re not winning either. You’re essentially paying Google to break even. After managing over $4M in Google Ads spend, we’ve identified the same 5 mistakes that cap nearly every underperforming account.
1. Your campaign structure is fighting itself
The most common issue we see is ad groups that are too broad. When one ad group is trying to serve “running shoes”, “best running shoes”, and “buy Nike runners online”, you’re forcing Google to choose which ad to show for very different intents. The result: wrong ads for wrong queries, wasted spend.
Fix: Single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) or tightly themed ad groups with 3–5 closely related keywords. One intent per ad group.
2. You’re bidding on broad match without controls
Broad match in 2024 is a gift and a trap. Google’s smart matching has genuinely improved — but without tight negative keyword lists, your ads will show for completely irrelevant searches and burn your budget fast.
- Build a negative keyword list before launch, not after.
- Review your Search Terms report weekly for the first month.
- Add negatives at the campaign level for cross-contamination.
- Use exact match for your proven high-converting keywords.
3. Your landing pages are generic
We say this constantly: a brilliant ad sending traffic to a generic homepage is like hiring a world-class salesperson and making them read from the company brochure. Your landing page must speak directly to the intent behind the search query.
Every ad group deserves its own landing page. Match the message to the keyword intent, and your Quality Score — and ROAS — will thank you.
4. You’re optimising for clicks, not conversions
Maximise Clicks is the default bid strategy — and it’s the wrong one for most accounts. It tells Google you want as many clicks as possible regardless of whether those clicks buy anything. Switch to Target CPA or Target ROAS once you have 30+ conversions/month, and watch your account self-optimise toward profit.
5. Conversion tracking is broken or incomplete
You cannot optimise what you cannot measure. We audit nearly every new client account and find the same thing: either conversions aren’t being tracked at all, or they’re double-counting leads, or they’re tracking page views as conversions. Fix your tracking first — everything else is secondary.
Getting Google Ads profitable isn’t magic. It’s structure, intent matching, and continuous iteration. If you want us to audit your account, get in touch — we’ll tell you exactly what’s holding your ROAS back.
