Paying for Clicks But Getting No Sales with Google Ads

So you have targeted traffic going to your website. So in all intents and purposes, these are the right people clicking on your ads, but the problem is no one is buying. And if you're an ecommerce brand owner and that is you, I want you to stick around and watch this video because I'm going to take you through the process of what to do if you're getting clicks but no sales. Now the very first point that we need to start with here is I need you to think about the last time that you bought something online. Did you click on the ad and go through and buy it on their website the very first time you'd seen their website? Or did you take some time to read their reviews? You may have forgot that you still had their product in your cart for a couple of weeks. You've checked some more reviews, you saw some more ads, and then you went through and made the purchase. And that's a funny thing that I do find sometimes. And look, I get it. Sometimes as a marketer, when you're running your own ads, you can have a different set of expectations to how you go through and buy products in the market. And this happens a lot when we get brand owners who come into our memberships or into teaching and coaching programs, and they'll be saying things like, oh, I've been running my Google Ads and I'm not getting any conversions, we're getting targeted traffic. And then when we sit and ask them, you know, how long have you been running Google Ads? And sometimes they go, oh, 1 week or 2 weeks. And that's the problem that I really need to address in this video, is that you need to firstly remember how you buy products. I know for me right now there's about 2 or 3 different, different products that I'm looking at that I know I will buy at some stage over the coming weeks and months. It's just all about making sure sure I've got the right time and that I've really made a decision on my purchase. And this is especially true if this is the first time you're interacting with that brand. So the big thing that I really want you to think about if you are stressed about getting clicks with no conversions is really understand that a click today doesn't mean that they are not going to convert in the coming days, weeks, or even months. And I want to give you a perfect example here. So I want to show you that this is a brand that we're working with right now. They're just starting in Google Ads. Their breakeven is that $130. So they're just, they're just starting to break even on their products, they do have a really long lifetime value. So for them, it's all about getting new customers because they know they've got a lifetime, a long lifetime value and repeat customers coming through. But this is looking at like today, I'm recording this on the 3rd of August, and this was their data from the 20th to the 26th of July. We had a coaching call with them late last week, and 5 days later, I want to show you the results. So they had a conversion value of $4,000. And that spend has been at $3,000. And now I want to show you here, this is the exact same dates, same campaign, same spend. You can see that now there's been some extra conversions gone up, and this conversion value has already shot up by an extra $800. And this conversion value cost, remembering it was $1.34 or something like that, it's now up to $1.60. So this brand does have a longer buying cycle, so it's highly likely this will end up above $200, remembering for them that $130 is their floor of what they need to achieve. But what I wanted to show you in that example is you really need to understand that a click of someone going to your website is not a conversion, it's not a buyer, they're just a browser. And essentially, someone who clicks on your ad and goes to your website, look, they're definitely interested in your product, but they're not committed. And so many times as brand owners, we can get so frustrated that we're seeing all this traffic coming into our website, but we're not getting any conversions. And it's really, really important to note that across the whole market inside of Google, that the conversion rate for ecommerce is is still sitting about 3% average. So the first thing I really wanted to communicate to you in order to let that frustration go down, just understand that a click is the start of the journey. And because if they click and they don't convert today, it does not mean that you have lost that sale. And once again, I'll bring you back to what we spoke about at the start is I just want you to think about your own buying patterns and your own buying cycle. You know, the last time you were buying a mattress or the last time you were buying a water bottle or a jacket or a new swimsuit, whatever it is, did you go through, make a click and make a purchase straight away? Now sometimes that does happen and sometimes this is niche dependent, but for the vast majority of purchases, it doesn't happen like that. There is that waiting time where you're wanting to check out the reviews, consider the purchase, and then go through and make the purchase. So what I want to do in this video is I do want to take you through what you can do in order to make sure that you are converting more of those clicks into sales for your ecommerce brand. And just in case we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young and I'm from Define Digital Academy. And this concern of people getting clicks and not getting the right amount of conversions is the exact solution that we are solving for many ecommerce brand owners like you. And that's why we started a program called On Demand. And On Demand is our done-with-you Google Ads solution. And what we do with On Demand is that we go, you're the expert of your business, but we're the expert in Google Ads. And we want to bring those 2 knowledge centers together so that we can get better results for your business. And by that, we're not talking about clicks and conversions and click-through ratio and all those things. What we're talking about is money in the bank. How many new sales are you getting? And if you're interested and you'd like some better assistance of how you can increase not only the volume but the efficiency with Google Ads on your brand, why don't you follow that link in the description below so you can find out more information about our on-demand program. But with all that said, let's get back into the teaching. And there are 2 places that we're going to focus on and look at in this video. And the first place is you do need to go through and look at your actual landing page. So remembering that when people click on your ad and then go to your landing page, that is just the next step in the process or the next link in the chain. And there are some things you need to get right on your landing page. And then there's also the second part of it. We are going to talk about how you structure your Google Ads campaign. It is because it's important that you can't just target specific traffic, especially now with so much smart bidding in play. You do really need to make sure that you really are going about and creating your campaigns in the right way and not just targeting that bottom of the funnel traffic. Alright, so let's talk about your landing pages for a little bit. And remembering, as I said before, is that this is just the next step. You've won the click and you've got them to go to your landing page, so you really need to make sure that you've got the right elements on your landing page. Now there is so much information out there, and— but what I want to do is I want to share with you the 5 data-driven things that you need on your landing pages in order to see more conversions. Now this data I'm about to share with you comes from a company based here in Australia which is called TestMate, and they ran well over 10,000 user tests. And they were able to break down and boil down the 5 things that you need on a landing page that are the real drivers in increasing your conversion metrics. And the first one is a powerful headline, and you really need to make sure that that headline connects to the user's pain point or desire. So regardless of what they search for, you need to make sure that your headline not only delivers on that promise, but it also speaks to them personally. It can't be about you or your brand, it has to be about them and your your product, but take it a step further— how that product goes through and solves their problem. Now, the great thing is that in the world of tools like Claude, you can go through and do user research far, far quicker than what you used to be able to do. And in fact, inside of Define Digital Academy, we've built tools around this that really go through and help you do that. So if you would like some extra help on that, once again, follow that link in the description and you can get some information about our Claude optimization tools for Google Ads. And that brings us to the second thing, is that you need to have a real clear call to action. And what I want you to think about, especially for brands, is that call to action just can't be, hey, buy my product or buy my thing now. Because as we said at the start of the video, the vast majority, well above 97% of people, won't be buying the first time they're on your website. The one thing that I do want to make clear here is that if you go to any top-selling or top-performing D2C brand, if you go on to any page on their website, I can guarantee that within 3 to 5 seconds of being on that website, you'll get a pop-up come up which will be asking you to sign up to their database to get a 10%, 15%, or 20% first-time discount, or they'll get you to join their app once again to get a 10% or 20% discount. And this is what I really want to make clear, is that there's a reason that the top-performing D2C brands do that. It's because it works, but also secondly is because they know, and they've seen it in their own data, that's highly unlikely that you're going to go to their website and buy the very first time. So that's why they've got that pop-up and that invitation for you to jump onto their newsletter or download their app so that they can commit— keep the communication going. So if you aren't doing that, you do need to really think about how can you engage that customer. You've paid for that click. How can you engage them onto your database, onto your app, so that you can continue the communication with them? Because then you can go through that even if you don't get the sale today, you've got a much higher chance of getting the sale in the coming weeks, months, and sometimes even years. Number 3 and 4, I'm going to go through these really, really quickly because some other things that we need to get into, and that's all about having a nice simple clean design. Make it easy for people to see your product and easy to see the specifications. And then the 4th point is you need to have some really high authority markers in the ecommerce space. Really, we're talking product reviews, Google reviews, so that people can really feel safe in buying your product. Also, as an extension of those authority markers, you need to have a safe and easy checkout process. So not only does it have to be something that's easy to do, it also needs to be safe. So making sure that you're thinking about your returns policy and also your warranties to really remove the fear of someone buying from you for the first time. So they're the things that you can do on your website and your product pages in order to increase not only the initial conversion rate, but if you do miss out on that conversion on the first visit, which as we said is likely to happen, that you are getting their information or you're increasing their amount of time so that you can keep the relationship going. And now finally, let's jump on back onto my iPad because I want to take you through how you need to be thinking about structuring your Google Ads campaigns in order to make sure that you are seeing the highest number of sales for your ecommerce brand. And this is a concept which I call my bottom-up funnel, and this is where you not only say hello, you introduce yourself, and then you ask. And what we're looking at here is you can't just target this bottom of the funnel. And this is what a lot of brands really focus on just with their search and shopping campaigns, and they're really just targeting that traffic that are looking to buy now. But you need to expand beyond that and use all of the different levers that you can, and also all of the different networks and placements which, which Google offers so that you can see better results. And the first one is that once you actually get them to go to your website, make sure that you're engaging a remarketing campaign. And at the moment, the best way that we're seeing that to happen is with demand gen campaigns. So this is purely and simply where you are making sure that you're connecting your Google Analytics to Google Ads. And then what you can do is that you can remarket these people. Now you can get more sophisticated if you also wanted to add cart abandoners, so you can really specialize your message. But essentially what you're doing here is that you are saying that we're going to continue to follow you around the internet wherever you go with the ads until you make that decision to buy. Then also moving upwards, you can also start reaching out to things like your Performance Max campaign very, very soon. Obviously you've got Search for AO Max now. There's also Shopping for AO Max coming out. And then you can also take it even further where you are going into your demand gen awareness or your video campaigns. And what I would really want you to be thinking about is that you firstly want to go through and say hello. So you're actually educating and letting people know that you are here and the problem that your product solves. Then when you move into this middle of the funnel, it's all about reinforcing your why. And this is where you may start to add in an offer, but We're, we're really just going through here is we're educating that we exist, we're giving them the reminders, then we come in and when we're down at the bottom of the funnel, it's just about removing the friction, just getting them to go through and make that purchase. And then the remarketing, it's all about reminding them that we are here and that you still haven't gone through and bought your product. Now I know that's a really, really quick crash course in how we go through it, but if you would like to know more about how we structure our Google Ads campaigns, especially for ecommerce brands, I want you to go through and watch this video right now. Here. And if you're an e-commerce brand, because right now it is August 2026 and you do want to know more about Black Friday and Cyber Monday and how to best deal with this in terms of a Google Ads point of view for your brand, I want you to go through and watch this video here, which is with Brent, who's one of our e-commerce coaches here at Define Digital Academy. And remember, as I said, if you would like to find out more about on-demand or some of the free resources that we have here in Define Digital Academy, just follow that link in the description below. Thanks for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you in one of these 2 videos right now. See ya!