Google Ads can be one of the fastest ways to bring in new business, but it’s also a platform where budget disappears quickly if the setup isn’t right. I often see the same mistakes across different accounts, and the frustrating part is they’re usually easy to fix once you know what to look for.

If your spend isn’t turning into leads or sales the way you’d hoped, it could be down to one (or more) of these five common mistakes.

1. Using Broad Match Without Control

Broad match sounds useful because it gives your ads the widest reach. The problem is, it often reaches the wrong people. Your ad might show up for searches only loosely related to what you sell, and you’ll end up paying for clicks from users who were never going to convert.

Broad match can work, but only when you control it with negative keywords and smart bidding. That way you keep the reach, but filter out the noise.

2. Not Separating Brand and Non-Brand Campaigns

Mixing brand and non-brand keywords together is a quick way to lose visibility of what’s really happening in your account. Branded searches (people typing your business name) usually perform well because they already know you. Non-brand searches are tougher, more expensive and often need different messaging as this audience is less warm to your business.

If you run them in the same campaign, the strong brand performance hides the weaker non-brand results. This can also lead to dishonest results. Separating them gives you clear reporting, better control over budgets, and a true picture of where the wins are coming from. In order to grow a business, you need to be introducing new customers to the business, via non-brand - not reintroducing brand traffic for easy results.

3. Weak Negative Keyword Lists

Negative keywords are your first line of defence. They block your ads from showing on searches you already know don’t make sense. For example, if you sell a premium service, you don’t want clicks from people searching “cheap” or “free”.

Without negatives, your ads end up in front of users who were never your audience. This results in wasted clicks, wasted budget and no conversions.

4. Ignoring Search Term Reports

This ties closely with negatives but isn’t quite the same thing. Think of negatives as proactive, you build them in upfront to stop obvious mismatches. Search term reports are reactive and they show you exactly what Google matched your ads to in real time. It’s also worth noting that Google doesn’t show you all of the Search Terms available.

Checking this regularly lets you spot where spend is being wasted, then add negatives to cut it off. It’s also where you find hidden gems: new keywords that customers are actually using, which you can turn into high-performing campaigns.

5. Poor Conversion Tracking (or None at All)

Clicks don’t pay the bills, conversions do. If you don’t have proper conversion tracking in place, you’ll never really know what’s working. You might think one campaign is a winner because it drives lots of traffic, but without tracking you can’t see whether that traffic is turning into leads or sales.

This makes optimisation almost impossible, because you’re flying blind. Setting up conversion tracking properly is non-negotiable if you want a profitable campaign.

Wrapping Up

The truth is, most wasted spend in Google Ads isn’t down to “bad luck” or an algorithm that doesn’t like you. It’s usually one of these mistakes quietly draining the budget. The good news is that they’re all avoidable.

By keeping control of broad match, separating brand from non-brand, building a strong negative keyword list, reviewing your search terms, and setting up conversion tracking correctly, you give yourself the best chance of running campaigns that bring in the right traffic and convert into real results.

That’s what Google Ads is built for, not just driving clicks, but delivering outcomes that actually matter to your business.

#GoogleAds #PPC #DigitalMarketing #PaidSearch