Should you be running Google Ads right now? Not if you already have decent inbound but see a significant drop-off between people finding the site and getting in touch. That drop-off points to a problem on the site that ads can't fix, so fix it first. If ads are already running into it, pause them or cut them back while you do.
When the ads do run, the most common problem I see is an account set up by following the platform's guide. That gets you an account that uses Google Ads correctly, not one built around your business.
When not to run Google Ads at all
Here's when we've told a company not to start with ads: "When they already have decent inbound, but you can see a significant drop-off from direct traffic to actually reaching out."
One qualification: a lot of direct traffic is existing customers and staff, who'd call or email you whatever the site says. The signal is about new people coming to you by name, typing your address or searching the company name. A significant drop-off there usually means "people are searching for them and finding them, but then they're just not interested." And then: "The question is: why are they not interested? Is that because there's not an easy way to reach out? They're not really 100% sure what they do, things like that."
Neither is an advertising problem. A site that's unclear about what you do loses people however they arrived, and the paid ones cost money. So the advice in that situation is "Let's fix what is obviously not optimized." Often that means saying what you do on the first screen, in a buyer's words, covered in why a homepage doesn't say what you do.
The fair objection is that a paid click doesn't have to land on the homepage. It shouldn't: an ad belongs on a page matched to the search, and Google Ads for manufacturers has the check for one. But a matched page doesn't fix a company that's vague everywhere else. Before contacting a company they've just found, many buyers look around the rest of the site, and if the homepage and about page still don't say what you do, the paid visitor hits the same wall a couple of clicks later.
Should you pause ads that are already running?
Often yes, for a while. The advice then is: "Hey, let's pause the ads. Fix these other things, and then we can start them again."
If the people the ads bring hit the same problem, every week of running buys more of the same. Pausing has a cost too: it gives up whatever inquiries the ads produce now. If a few terms bring in real ones, the middle option is to keep only those, each pointed at a page matched to the search, and stop the rest while the site gets fixed.
Where a company does most of its marketing at trade shows or conferences, the better question may be when to run ads, not whether: "why not only run ads on opportunities around trade shows? You're actually using the money in a better way." More on that in choosing the paid channel.
Isn't following Google's setup guide enough?
It gets an account running. Here's what I find most often in an existing account:
"The most common thing is they're essentially just following the setup guide for the ad platform, and sometimes they're working with one of the ad specialists from that platform. They fail to realize that all that's going to do, on the whole, is have it use the platform correctly."
That help is real. Google offers free one-on-one help from a Google Ads Expert with things like ad types, conversion goals, campaigns, budgets and bidding. And the account gives you an optimization score, which Google describes as "an estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform."
Look at what that score is built from, though: your account's statistics, settings and status, plus Google's recommendations and whether you've applied or dismissed them. Acting on them moves the score. Which jobs earn your margin, which work you turn down, and who you actually lose bids to aren't in there. Those depend on your type of business, and they're where accounts set up by the book tend to leak.
Which searches should your account refuse?
"They're not excluding keywords." Negative keywords are how you tell Google which searches you don't want your ads shown for. A setup guide can explain how they work. It can't tell you what belongs on your list, because the list is a description of your business.
Start with the work your team already turns down. A contract manufacturer that only takes production volumes may not want searches for a single prototype part. An equipment builder that doesn't sell used machines or do rentals may not want either word.
The rest comes from what people actually typed. The search terms report shows searches that triggered your ads, though Google leaves out terms with too little activity, for privacy reasons, and its guidance is to add the irrelevant ones as negatives. Read it with the business in mind every few weeks.
Is a competitor bidding on your company name?
"They don't know that their competitors are brand bidding against them a lot, so they need to be doing something about that."
Google's trademark policy lists using trademarks as keywords among the things it won't restrict. So a competitor can bid on your company name, just as you can bid on theirs. It's a normal tactic. The problem is being on the receiving end without knowing. Think about who searches your name: often someone a customer just referred to you, looking you up before they call. That's a bad moment to show them someone else first.
Searching your own name isn't a reliable check either. A rival's ad may only run in some areas, and searching for your own ads adds impressions to your stats. Google's Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool solves the impressions part: it previews the results page without adding any. If you bid on your own name, the auction insights report compares you with the other advertisers in those auctions, but only above a minimum level of activity and 10% impression share, so an empty report doesn't mean nobody else is bidding.
Bidding on your own name costs money for searches you might have won anyway, a fair objection when no rival bids on it and a weak one when a competitor does. Ad text is different. If a competitor puts your trademark in the ad itself and you own that trademark, you can file a complaint, and the same policy lists a direct competitor using a trademark in its ad among the things Google will restrict.
What should you ask about your own account?
The hard part is the one I'd sum up as "they don't know what they don't know," and "they don't even know the questions to ask the specialist from that ad platform." Whoever runs your account, these questions are a fair test:
- Which searches are we excluding, and why those?
- Who else shows up when someone searches our company name?
- Are we paying for the work we want more of, or the work that's easiest to buy clicks for?
- Does the page each ad lands on make it obvious what we do and how to get in touch?
Without answers, following the guide, as I see it, "basically gives them a sense of confidence that they're doing something right until you actually audit it and realize there's a lot being left on the table in terms of performance and optimization."
