Getting No Conversions in Google Ads? (Do This)

As a business owner, there is nothing worse than paying for clicks inside of Google Ads and getting no conversions. Because as a business owner, you're not investing your precious money into a Google Ads campaign just to get clicks to make Google richer. You invest in Google Ads so that it brings a profit back into your business. So in this video, I'm gonna take you through the exact steps you need to follow if right now you're spending money in Google Ads and completely wasting it because you're not getting any conversions. Now, just in case you're new here, my name is Aaron Young and I am the founder of Define Digital Academy. And we exist for one reason, and that is to help you, the business owner, get the best results possible with your Google Ads campaigns. Now, I am gonna be calling out some extra things that we can help you with throughout this video. But if you go down and check out the description below, you'll actually get free access to some of our tools like our Google Ads optimization checklist and also our Google Ads diagnostic tool that we run through Claude. If you get free access to those tools, all you need to do follow that link in the description below. But right now, let's get to the first starting point that you need to really focus on if you are not seeing any conversions inside of your Google Ads campaigns. And the very first thing that you need to isolate and work out is, is this just a Google Ads problem, or is this non-converting problem affecting all of your different traffic sources? So to rephrase that another way, what is— what you want to find out is, is Is it only your Google Ads campaigns that are not converting? So you are seeing conversions from your social media campaigns, from your organic traffic, or even from different email campaigns? Or is the issue of no conversions affecting everything? So it's not just Google Ads, it's also your social media paid ads or social media organic content, your organic content, and even your direct website traffic. And the reason for why this is the most important starting point is because you do need to remember that for success with Google Ads. You don't only need your Google Ads campaign to be set up the right way. So yes, you do need to make sure you're targeting the right keywords, you've got the right bidding strategies and settings, and you're also using ad copy, which is going to also allow you to convert. But you don't only need to get your Google Ads campaign set up right. You also need to be sending people to a highly converting landing page and also an offer that converts. So you do need to make sure that you're seeing success in those 3 areas in order to get those conversions with Google Ads. So in this first step, what we're trying to work out is, is it all of those things, or is it just Google Ads which is bringing the whole campaign results down? So what you want to do before you even take a deeper dive inside of your Google Ads account, you want to firstly find out if it's just Google Ads or if it's all of the other traffic sources. And the best way to find this out is going to a tool or program like Google Analytics. Now you could also do this if you've got analytics inside of your, your website hosting platform, so say for example Shopify. But in this example we're going to go across to Google Analytics. So let me show you how you can firstly diagnose this problem. Alright, so in this example, we're going to go into Google Analytics, and where I recommend that you go to is that you want to go into your reports, which is this icon in through here. Then when you're in reports, if you go into acquisition, and then I find it's handy to go into traffic acquisition. Now there is a couple of different ways that you could see this data, but this is probably the easiest way that we use. Because it gives us a really quick analysis. And then what I also do recommend is that you do change over because it will, by default, show you the channel group. But if you go down into session source/medium, what this is gonna do is this is gonna break down. So you can see here, Facebook paid, Google CPC, which is Google Ads. That's the one we're looking for. Then also Google organic. And we've got some other things down through here, but these are the main sources that we wanna look at. The other thing that I would also recommend is that if you go through to here, with the event. We've changed this over to purchase. You could also— I'll show you this example through here. We also changed it over to form submit. And what you want to be looking at is you want to be looking at things like the average time per session, and then just is it converting. So firstly, with conversions, now thankfully for this campaign, they don't have a problem with their Google Ads account. But we would see a problem with the Google Ads account is If, say for example, all of these other traffic sources— Facebook, direct, organic— were converting and we weren't getting any conversions in Google Ads, but you can see in this case it's actually the opposite, it's giving us the highest conversion metric. Then, for example, in this one where we're looking at form submissions, once again we can see from here we're looking at Google CPC versus Google organic, and we can see there once again that Google— the paid Google Ads traffic is providing the is providing us good traffic. So as I said, what we're looking at here is we're just trying to find out if you were not getting any conversions. So say for example, if we're getting conversions from Google organic, direct, our newsletter, and even Bing, but we were getting no conversions from Google Ads, we would then definitely know that it's a Google Ads problem. And if you're in the situation unfortunately where you're not getting any conversions from any channel, so whether that be paid, whether it be newsletters, whether it be direct, you then probably know the issue is not your Google Ads campaign, although there may be be some issues in there, but it's also likely to be your landing page and your offer. What I also do want to show you here as well is that we do also get the scenario sometimes where people say, look, I'm getting some clicks and no sales. One of the ways that you can diagnose is, is it a targeting problem? So is it the traffic that we're getting or is it an offer problem? This is a really simple rule that you can look at, is that if people are coming to your website and they're bouncing off in the first 10 to 30 seconds, That's a really— that's really letting us know that's probably more to do with the traffic that you're targeting. Whereas if people are staying over 60 seconds, or even you could pull that back to 45 seconds and they're not converting, that's probably giving us a really clear indication that it's got more to do with your offer and with your landing page. And the way that you see that data is inside of the analytics report. If you go to the average engagement per session, So what we're seeing here in this example, we're seeing that once again, the Google Ads traffic is actually the second highest. The only one that's, that's lower is the Google organic traffic in this session, which is quite common. It is quite common that your organic traffic will be a longer duration. But if you just use this as a really rough guideline, that if you are seeing that people are staying on your website for less than 30 seconds from your Google Ads paid traffic, that's probably a really clear indication that you are also targeting the wrong keyword traffic. Which is just not relevant. If it's over 60 seconds and they're not converting, that's more leading to a, a, an offer or a landing page issue. All right, so now what I want to do is we've gone through that first step and we've worked out that it is a problem with our Google Ads campaign. So we're getting conversions from other traffic channels, we're just not getting those conversions from Google Ads. This is where we do need to now go through and start looking at our Google Ads account. And what I wanna take you through is that when you're wanting to optimize your Google Ads campaign, you wanna use what I call the STAB framework, which is our spending, our targeting, our ads and landing pages, and our bidding. And these are the tools that I was sharing with you before that you can get when you follow that link in the description below, is you've got our Google Ads optimization checklist. And as you can see through here, we've gone through the STAB method. It takes you through how to review your spending and segmentation, your targeting, your ads and landing pages, and also your bidding. But we also do have this, this Claude tool that you can use, which is our Keyword and Search Term Audit tool. There are 5 tools, but this is the one that we give you for free. And that goes through and runs through a full analysis of your live Google Ads campaigns and lets you know where you're wasting money and where you are seeing your good results. And if you want access to either of those tools or both of those tools, just follow that link in the description below. But right now, let's firstly focus on where you would go inside of your Google Ads account, find out whether you are targeting relevant traffic. So as a reminder, you are seeing that you're getting conversions, say for example, in your social media and emails and direct and SEO, but you're not getting any conversions from your Google Ads account. What you need to do is that when you're inside of Google Ads, you firstly want to go through and find out and really resolve the question is, is this traffic relevant to my product? So the way that you go through and do that is that if you go into your insights and reports and into your search terms, you're going to see the traffic that has been triggered from all of your different campaigns. Now, it is important to note that this will show the search terms for your search campaigns, shopping campaigns, and also Performance Max campaigns. You go into the same— go into the same area. And what you can also see, you can see from here we've broken it down by campaign and ad group. Now, I've had to hide the search terms that are appearing because We do need to keep our client privacy. But what you can do from here is you want to go through and have a look and go, are there any keywords here which are not relevant for our business? So, and there were some in here that were not relevant. So what we did is we selected them and then you add them as a negative keyword, and then you just go through and click Save. And what that is doing is that that's going to stop Google spending or put a block on people spending when they use those search terms. Now there is one little note that I do want to add here, is that especially when it comes to performance Max campaigns, I wouldn't be too aggressive with your negative keywords because what I really, really want you to think about is that you don't want to be blocking out any keywords that aren't converting, especially if they're not spending much money. The main thing you want to be doing is you want to use negative keywords in two core cases. One, if you want it to— if you want Google to stop spending in products or services that you do not offer. Let me give you a perfect example. You may be an apparel brand and you only provide apparel for adults, so you don't have any kids or teenage apparel, if you start seeing some searches around kids and teenagers, you can block out those search terms. Another great example we have is that for many years we ran a campaign for baby earmuffs, but they were the hearing protection earmuffs. And so we had to block out anything to do with earmuffs that were stopping the cold temperature, especially in those cases where Google may have a little bit of trouble really deciphering the exact meaning of what you're wanting to target, that's when you can use negative keywords. But don't just go through and add negative keywords if they're not converting. And the only reason you would do that is that if, for say, 2 or 3 weeks or 4 weeks in a row, you're seeing a lot of money being spent and you're not getting any conversions, that's when you could potentially look at adding in a negative keyword. Alright, so now let's move to the next step. So once you're inside of Google Ads, you've already gone through and you're happy with your keyword targeting, what you now want to be focused focusing on is the ad copy. So what you want to be doing is you want to be making sure that your ad copy is not only relevant to the search terms, but it's also preparing people to take the next action that you want them to take. The way that I think about it is this, is that you need to be thinking about that for success with Google Ads, you need to have Google Ads running in a chain. And what I mean by that is that you need to have the first link of that chain is you need to make sure that your keywords and your search terms are targeting the right type of search terms. You then want to have that ad copy which not only links them through to the, the search terms so they know that it's relevant, but you also want to be preempting them with what you want them to do when you get to the website. Then when they get to your website, you need to make sure you've got your headline at the top of the landing page which is relevant, and then as it goes down, you need to make sure that you entice them with the right offer. But ad copy is key, and the reason for that is because it needs to do two core jobs. Jobs. The first job is, is you need to make sure that you are firstly getting that click, especially with Google Ads. Remember, when people are seeing your ad, especially in the search campaigns, you don't have— you can't change the font, you can't change your font size. So everyone's ads is looking the same. So you need to really put a big focus on your headlines to really make sure that it's not only relevant but it's also driving emotion. And that's the biggest mistake I see with businesses when it comes to Google Ads is that they just focus on keyword focus. Yes, your ads do need to have a keyword focus. So if someone is searching for acupuncture, an acupuncture clinic near me, your first headline should be saying something about acupuncture. However, rather than just going into the second headline of book now, you want to be really tying in the pain or the desire and remembering that at its core, all marketing is driven by, is driven by emotion. And what we're really looking at doing is we're either looking at driving people by the desire or something they want to attain, or you're wanting to be a solution. So you're moving them away from fear or moving them away from pain. And let me show you an example now of a business that we took on. We helped— we started with them last August, and what we really started working on was two core things. Firstly, and you can see from here, we're dealing with 6, about 7 months of data from September to October. April, you can see at the start their click-through ratio was okay. So their click-through ratio was actually really, really good at a 9.7, but they had a really low conversion rate at 1.6. And what the problem was here is that I had a— they had ad copy that was only keyword focused. So what we started really focusing up on is increasing their messaging, and we did this through different rounds of split testing, and it was making sure that it was more focused on those pain points and which in this case was moving people away from actual physical pain and really positioning this brand as being able to solve that. And then you can see from there we continue to increase their metrics. So one of the ways that we go through and do this is that we actually use what's called our Ad Copy Writer. And now this is a paid tool. You do get free access to the Keyword and Search Terms Audit, but inside of Define Digital Academy, we run this Ad Copy Writer. And what that does is you can see from here that we've had to blur out these actual headlines, but what it does do is it gives you the reasons for why it's recommending those headlines. So whether it's a direct keyword match, uh, it also goes through authority signals. And also here, you can see from here, it goes through fear and dread of collector calls, uh, goes through, um, shame and isolation relief. So it's really writing to the user's pain points. And that's the big thing that I also want you to go through and do is that If you're not seeing conversions with your Google Ads campaigns and you've got a good click-through ratio— now, good click-through ratio is anything above that 7% mark, even anything above 5% is passable— but if you're still not getting any conversions, I want you to start testing your Google Ads headlines. And what I want you to steer— what I definitely want you to steer away from is language that is weak. And what I mean by weak is I really hate it when you see businesses who use headlines like 'We're number one' or we're the best. You want to be speaking in objective facts. And what I mean by that is that you want to say things that your, your competitors can't say or won't say. So really start to think about what are your unique selling points that you have which is different that your competitors can't or won't say. So firstly, targeting. Secondly, you need to go through your ad copy messaging and really be thinking about where that ad copy sits. So you've got them to click on the ad, but we also want them to be ready to do what we want them to do, which is either buy or give us a call. All right, so once you've gone through and you've worked out that you do need to work on your Google Ads campaigns because you, you're getting conversions from some other traffic sources, you've gone through and checked your keyword targeting to make sure that your ads are appearing on relevant searches, you're then going through and testing some of your ad copies, you need to come to the fourth area in which you can go through to really work on to improve the conversions you're getting inside of your Google Ads campaigns, and that is that you need to go through and check to make sure you're using the right campaigns, the right settings, and also the right smart bidding strategies. Now, this is a really, really big topic, so I'm going to start this by giving you some guidelines we really work on inside of Define Digital Academy in 2026. And the first one is that especially if you're starting out inside of Google Ads, you should be focusing on search campaigns if you're a lead generation business, And if you're an e-com, you want to be starting with Search and Shopping. And then when you start to build up to more than 30 conversions in a month, that's when you can then start layering in some Performance Max campaigns. And the reason for why that's so important is because it's important to note that Performance Max works with smart bidding. So it, by default, it goes to maximize conversions or maximize conversion value, and you don't have as many control levers over the ad copy, over the search terms. So that's why it is best to start with Search and also with Shopping if you're ecommerce brand. So you can really make sure that you've got that first part of the journey that you need for success with Google Ads. You are targeting the right search terms with ad copy, which is converting, sending them to the best converting landing pages. The other things I do want you to think about is that even right now in 2026, we're still holding off on AIO Max. It will be a powerful tool or powerful feature in the future, but right now, especially if you're starting with Google Ads, you don't need to be utilizing AIO Max right now. And then the other important thing to note is that you don't want to be using a target CPA or target ROAS goal until you're hitting at least 50 conversions a month. Now, as I said, because this is a really, really big topic, what I do want you to do, especially if you're new to Google Ads, I want you to go through and watch this video right here, which takes you through the full process of how many Google Ads campaigns you should be starting with for your business in 2026. Or if you're a little bit further down the journey in Google Ads and you really want to learn more about smart bidding and which smart bidding tools you should be using, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Thank you for joining me. My name is Aaron Young from Defined Digital Academy, and remember, if you want access to our Google Ads optimization checklist or our AI diagnostic tool, all you need to do, follow that link in the description below, and I look forward to seeing you in one of these two videos real soon. See ya!