Most accounts waste money on the same few things: broad matches, missing negatives and landing pages that do not match the ad. Fix these in order and cost per lead usually drops within a month.
Start with the search terms report
Open the search terms report and sort by cost. Anything that spent money without a lead is a candidate for a negative keyword. Add the obvious ones today and review the rest weekly.
- Add phrase and exact negatives for jobs, free and DIY searches
- Move brand terms into their own campaign
- Pause keywords with 30+ clicks and no conversion
Match the page to the ad
A visitor who clicked a plumber ad for emergency repairs should land on an emergency repair page, not your home page. Message match lifts conversion rate and quality score together, which lowers the price of every click.
- One page per main service
- Phone number and form above the fold
- Page loads in under two seconds on mobile
Track the right conversions
Count calls longer than 60 seconds and completed forms, not page views. Google learns from what you tell it counts, so wrong conversions teach it to find wrong people.
- Set up call tracking
- Remove duplicate conversion tags
- Import offline sales when you can