Google Ads Prints Money... when you understand this

Last year, a business reached out to us absolutely furious about their Google Ads results. And here's what they were so angry about, is that every single month, month on month, their digital agency was telling them that they are getting more results than what they did the previous months. And every month, the report from their digital agency would be great news, we've got more conversions for you than what we did the last month. She would also go into the Google Ads dashboard, and it would say the same story that yes, they were getting more conversions, and their cost per conversion metrics were going It sounds like a happy story, so why was she so angry? And the reason that she was so furious and angry was that even though the agency had told her that every month, yes, we're getting better results, the issue was is that she was actually getting less clients month on month, and she was actually reaching into the red zone where she was not going to be profitable as a business anymore. And here's the big problem, is that those conversions were not turning into paying customers. Because when we talk about Google Ads results, especially inside of the Google Ads dashboard around your conversions and your cost per conversion, these are just vanity metrics. And what I mean by that is that they look good on a dashboard. They let the digital agency, whoever's running your Google Ads account, report a happy story. But if those conversions are not turning into paying customers, it doesn't mean anything. So if that's your story and you relate to that, you're a lead generation or service-based business spending more and more money on Google Ads, seeing more conversions, but wondering where your money is going and wondering where your new conversions are, this is the video that you need to watch, 'cause I'm gonna take you through how you can review this and also the solution to the problem that you're currently facing. And when you understand this, you're gonna be able to turn Google Ads from a money pit to the highest producing revenue source for your business. And right now, let's get straight to the core issue. And the issue is not Google Ads. The issue is the data that you are feeding Google Ads, or for people who are in the US and Europe watching right now, data. I know you say data, I say data, but for me, it's data. Let's just roll on. And you do need to understand the core metric here is that, you know, Google Ads dashboard is designed to make it look good. And there's nothing wrong with that. And also too, when the agency reports, they want to make themselves look good. Once again, nothing wrong with that. But as a business owner, when you are paying for ads inside of Google Ads, and if you're also paying for a management fee, you don't care about whether it looks good in a dashboard. What you care about is Where are the new customers? Where are the new high-quality leads that my sales team can close so we can grow our business? And as I said, the real problem here is the data that you are feeding Google Ads. Because it's very, very easy to blame Google Ads, but you need to remember that if you're giving Google the wrong data and you're saying this is a conversion, and then you switch on Maximize Conversions, you're saying to Google, get me more results like this. The problem is not Google. The problem is the way that you structured your account and the data that you're feeding back into Google Ads. And the simple way to explain it is that Google did exactly what you asked it to do. The problem being is that you asked Google to do the wrong thing. Now we're gonna jump into a Google Ads account so I can show you this real-life story of how we're able to turn this around for this business. But just in case you're new here, my name is Aaron Young and I'm from Define Digital Academy. And at DDA, we exist for one reason, which is to empower you, the business owner, to be able to run better ads for your business. And if you're a service-based or lead generation business spending over $5,000 a month inside of Google Ads, and this is a problem you're currently facing, you would like some extra help so that you can get some more stability and reliability into your lead flow for your business, if you follow the link in the description below, you can find out more about our on-demand program. And our on-demand program was designed specifically for business owners like you who don't only need some strategic input but want one-on-one advice and one-on-one coaching of how they can best run their Google Ads campaigns. And if that sounds like it's something that you and your business needs, why don't you click on the description below and find out more about our on-demand program. But right now, as I said, said, let's jump into the screen share so I can walk you through the problem and what you need to do to fix it. All right, so let me walk you through the Google Ads dashboard, and then we're going to compare it to the actual business results, and you'll see the problem really, really quickly. So let's switch this over to a monthly view. It's going to be easier for us to see what's happening. And this is when the client actually came and reached out to us. It was in July of 2025, and we started with them in September 2025, they started on our on-demand program. And you can see what was happening from here is that their conversions were going up. But what was happening was the— through here, the owner just said to the previous agency, can you stop the spend? Because it wasn't being profitable for their business. And if you were just to look at this account, and you would think that we've done an absolutely terrible job, because through here, you know, January, they're getting over 650, close to 670 conversions. And even now, they're not even getting close to that. They're only getting 330 conversions. But what I want to show you is when you look at the the cost, they're only spending $8,300 because they were losing money as a business and really struggling. And now they've been able to scale that to over 3 times. And that's happened in just over a 12-month period from $8,000 over to $25,000. And the only reason the business has done that is because they are now getting more real customers at 300 conversions a month than what they were when they were getting over 600 conversions a month. And let me show you the real data. Now, this is an important metric to look at because the Google Ads dashboard tells a misleading story, whereas what we're looking at here is the real clients. So we're not looking at data from Google Ads, we're not looking at conversions. These are people who are actually paying. Uh, let's look at April, May, and June. The blue line is what's actually key. The inquiries is conversions inside of Google Ads. The blue line for them is actually conversions, people who became paying customers. May, June, July, before they started with us: 68, 76, 71. Whereas when we look at this last May, June, July, it's over double, 156, 162, 157. But when we look in the account, you can see here May, June, July, we've been able to really, really supercharge their results. And if you only take one thing from this video, this is what I want you to take. Forget about your Google Ads data and look at what is happening inside of your business, because that's how you resurrect a poor performing Google Ads campaign. And it's also why I fundamentally believe that you, the business owner, should be empowered to run Google Ads because you can add that correlation so much easier and so much quicker. Now, as I said, this is the most important point. You need to forget about your Google Ads data. Forget about those vanity metrics. It's not about how many conversions you're seeing inside of Google Ads every month. It's not about your conversion rate. What it is about is how many conversions are you getting inside of your real business, real paying customers. And what I now want to take you through is how we get to that issue and how we get to that data. And it firstly comes down to us being really, really focused on this one core thing. So whenever we take a new business into our— one of our programs, before we even look at the Google Ads data, we want to understand this core important metric: how does your business actually make money? So what we want to find out from there is For example, do you get a lot more conversions from phone calls or is it from form fills? And this can be different for lots of different businesses. And it can even change as a business matures and grows. So, perfect example, you may be starting out and you may, as the business owner, be answering the vast majority of those phone calls. And you know, if you can get the phone to ring, you are really, really well equipped to be able to convert them into a paying customer. Whereas you might have an outsourced sales team or an internal sales team and they work much better off a solid inquiry flow from quote forms or from lead forms. And that's the first thing that we really want to understand. We want to understand what's the main driver of your business here. And then when we find out what that first point of contact is most important for your business, that's what we feed back into Google as the core data lever. So if you get high levels of conversions from phone calls, we won't even really worry about form fills because we want to focus on phone calls. Or vice versa. And it can be different for all different types of businesses depending on your niche, depending on your area, also depending how your business actually operates and how you actually qualify those phone calls and those leads that are coming in. So that's why you first need to understand the business, and then that's what you really want to measure for your Google Ads account. Now there is some more nuance there that you need to also go into. For example, we've got some businesses where we can set the benchmark at 60 seconds for a phone call, whereas we know for other businesses that benchmark needs to be at least 3 minutes before we count it as a conversion. Once again, it comes down to the business, how you operate and how your sales team operates so that we can get more leads and really point Google in the right way. You've got to remember that when you set a conversion action inside of Google Ads, you are telling Google, give me more of these actions. So if you're not setting that action correctly, that's where you can come into trouble. And the real mindset shift I want you to really think about here is that Google Ads is not the driver. Your business results are the driver. So you take the data from your business and then use that data to be able to be the lever so you can have it control and push Google in the right way. Now the second part of this that you need to get right, and this is what I call the 3 tiers or the 3 buckets of conversions. And where a lot of businesses go wrong, they make 2 big mistakes with this. And the first mistake is the spammy lead or the unqualified lead. And this one, that's this one here. And this is where you can get a high volume of leads, but they're really low value. And this is where you're just doing form fills or you're just doing, you know, short phone calls. So remembering that Google's default is at 30 seconds, so you haven't gone and increased the call duration in your conversion settings. Or you may be doing chat starts or click-to-calls or click-to-emails, whatever the situation is. And that opens itself up to be able to have spammy or unqualified leads. And this is supercharged if you go to Maximize Conversions, or if you use something like Performance Max. Then I also see another mistake, and this is at the other end of the spectrum, where businesses will only go for converted clients, you know, the ones that actually pay. But the problem is, is that you can have a low volume, and what this can actually do is that this can have a byeffect of having really, really high CPCs. And the reason for that is because you're only selecting— you're giving Google a smaller pool of conversions And it's just too expensive to be able to operate. And that's why we really recommend that businesses operate in this middle section. It's what we call qualified leads. The way that we would qualify a qualified lead— I know there's a lot of qualifieds there— is that what we're essentially saying to the business owner or to the sales team is we're going, let us know the type of people that you want to speak to more. You may not close all of these. In fact, you won't close all of them. But what is the lowest level where you're saying that was a qualified lead and at least we had a chance? Now the reason for why this is so important is because the more volume that you can put into the Google Ads, into the conversion data, you're going to be able to scale your spend much more profitably. So the problem being is if you set it— set the bar too low, you get a high volume with low quality. If you set the bar too high, you get too low of a volume and And you can see that increase in CPCs. And that's why we recommend that you really play in this middle section where you're not going to close every single sale, but you're not going to get off the phone call going, that was a waste of time, they didn't know anything, they weren't qualified, they didn't have the budget, or they're the wrong type of products or service. So the way that we say this is that when it comes to Google Ads, you want to be setting your conversion data at the lowest possible level that it still creates value to your business. Now I know this is a big topic, and if you would like to know more about the offline conversion data process, I want you to go through and watch this video here. Or if you'd like to know more about the metrics that we really view to be the most important inside of Google Ads, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Hey, thanks so much for joining me. My name is Aaron Young from Define Digital Academy, and remember, if you would like some extra strategic one-on-one— so no group calls, no group settings— support with your Google Ads accounts, why don't you follow that link in the description below so you can find out more about our Define Digital Academy on-demand program. Thanks so much for joining me and look forward to seeing you in one of these 2 videos real soon. See ya!