STOP Spammy Leads in Google Ads

If you or your sales team is getting absolutely inundated with spammy leads from Google Ads, I'm here to tell you that the problem is not Google Ads. Yes, I said that the right way. The problem is not Google Ads. The problem for why you are generating spammy leads comes down to 2 core issues. The first one being either the data that you're feeding the Google Ads campaigns, or it could actually be— and this one is a little bit harder to say— your offline sales process. So the way that your sales team is actually handling those leads that are coming into your business. My name is Aaron Young and I'm from Define Digital Academy, and this is the exact problem that we are solving for lead generation businesses like yours. And it doesn't matter whether you are a smaller local business or all the way up to a professional B2B, or you could be a SaaS software company, the issue is the same. So in this video, I'm gonna take you through the 3 places that you need to look in order to really resolve this issue so that you can stop getting spammy leads and so that you can convert more of those leads or conversion actions inside of Google Ads into paying customers. Because remember, when it comes to Google Ads, we're not just paying for conversions. We want to be paying for customers because that's the ultimate goal of running ads in Google Ads is we don't just want conversions inside of Google Ads. We want new customers inside of our business. Now I've already said at the start, the one big problem that may be causing this influx of spammy leads doesn't necessarily have to do with your Google Ads campaigns. But the solution could be found inside of Google Ads. And it's got to do with the data that you are feeding your Google Ads campaigns. And this becomes especially true if you're running anything like Maximize Conversions, or if you're running Performance Max campaigns. Because it's important to note that if you are not telling Google very, very clearly what are good conversions and what are bad conversions, and you switch on Maximize Conversions or start a Performance Max campaign, Google is just going to keep finding more and more of those low-quality conversions thinking that it's doing a great job. Now let me show you a real example, and this is a lead generation business who came to us with that exact problem. Their agency at the time was telling them that they were getting more and more conversions, and she could go into the Google Ads dashboard and see that the number of conversions inside of Google Ads was increasing. The problem is the number of new customers for her business was actually reducing month to month. Let me show you. All right, so what I want to show you in here is that this is the business. It's a lead generation business. They offer professional counseling services. And as you can see here, at start of January 2025, they were getting a high, super high number of conversions. If we go back even further, let's run it back another 6 months, you can see that at the back end of 2024, you know, the agency was showing that, hey look, we're increasing the number of conversions. And it was working for a little while, but then what started happening at the start of 2025, while the conversions were high the actual number of paying customers was getting lower every single month. And I want you to see this yellow line from here. You can see that, you know, the conversions are nowhere near what they used to be. So right now we're getting about 300 conversions, and at their peak, they were getting close to 800 conversions. But what I want to show you is with this business, you can see that this blue line, we've been able to scale the spend, is because we are getting more money into their business. And in fact, this business owner has had to put on extra consultants in order to be able to keep up with the demand that is that she is now generating inside of her business. Now what you're looking at here, and I want to make this really, really clear, let me just draw the pencil icon on here, is that this is actually their real conversions. So when we're talking conversions inside of Google Ads, that was her inquiries, whereas this is actually the real conversions. Now remember from here we could see inside of Google Ads how their conversions were going up through here and it peaked in January. But what was happening, and I want you to look in this key period through here is that they're actually close to going out of business because what they need is they need above 80 conversions a month in order to stay profitable as a business. And as you can see, these numbers were just going down and down and down. And then— and now what I want to show you from here is that, as you can see, we managed to fix this up and now they're consistently getting over 150 conversions a month. And that's been from March to July this year. And let's just have a refresh of remember what was happening is that, you know, in June this year they only got 331 conversions, whereas in previous months they were getting well over 500 conversions and in some cases up to 800 conversions. But as we showed you through here, the actual paying customers were less. Now let me quickly talk to you about how we resolved that and what the actual issue was. And it all came down to that the previous agency was just tracking form fills, chat starts on their website and also phone calls. Whereas the first thing that we did with this business is that we actually worked with the owner to connect their CRM with Google Ads, which is then importing and letting Google know which one was actually coming, turning into customers, and which one were just poor quality or low quality leads. Now this can be done in a number of ways. You can even use external services like CallRail, or dependent on what niche you're in, for this business they were using a tool called Podium. But that's the most important step. You just need to make sure that you're actually feeding the right conversion data inside of Google Ads so that you can then make the correct optimizations to really target the correct traffic and also to let Google know that these are the conversions we want you to focus more on. Now, before we get into the second point, I do want to point out that the best bit about that story was that that business owner had no experience inside of Google Ads and they are now also running Google Ads themselves. And what she did is she joined a program which is called Define Digital Academy On Demand. And the difference with On Demand is that we don't act as your agency, we act as your strategic partner, and it is our done-with-you Google Ads solution. So if you're a business owner and you are spending over $5,000 a month inside of Google Ads, why don't you check out the information about On Demand below, and you can also apply, and we can see if this is going to be the best fit for your business. Not only does it include a full audit of your current Google Ads account, it also includes one-on-one private coaching and also direct Slack channel so you can get direct support from me and our lead Google Ads coaches so we can turn your business around and stop you getting those spammy leads. And the second thing is, is that you need to go through and do an investigation to find out, is it your sales team which is causing the issue? Now, this is a real issue that we do need to tread carefully with, especially if you've got employees and you're having to go through to really check the quality of these leads. Because we've had 2 cases over the last 6 months which have made this really, really apparent. And really understanding that when it comes to getting conversions from Google Ads, you need to understand that that conversion you're getting inside of Google Ads is not a new customer. It is just a lead, and it's another step in the process, but they are not there yet. And if your sales team is dropping the ball or not looking after these high-quality leads in the right way, and even if they're low-quality leads, is not able to flip them over to high-quality leads so that you can then take them to the next step of the sales process, you are just going to be wasting money inside of Google Ads. And this became really, really apparent to us because we did some consulting with a large business which was a professional lead onseller. So this was for the legal niche within the United States, and what this business does is that they generate legal leads and then they onsell them to different law practices. Now, it's all above board, so the legal practices know what they're getting and they know that they're not the only ones who are buying these leads. But what was happening was is that this was the exact same leads were given out or bought by 3 different legal firms. So we're not talking the same keywords, we're talking the exact same database. 2 of those legal firms came back and said that these leads were poor quality, our sales team couldn't close them. The other legal firm said that these are really, really great leads, came back and wanted to buy more. And that becomes a really clear example— same leads, different outcomes. And what it came back to is it once again really magnifies the truth that Yes, you do need to filter out some spammy leads inside of your Google Ads campaigns, but ultimately how your sales team or your staff deal with those leads is also a highly important factor for how you can see better results with Google Ads. We also saw it in that program I mentioned before, the Define Digital Academy On Demand program. We had another business owner who, when they joined, they saw 4 months, continual 4 months of month-on-month growth in their leads and ultimately in their sales. But then at month 5, we started to get some feedback from the owner that they were getting lower and lower quality leads. And we went through, dove through the Google Ads account, saw that we were still targeting the same keywords. And if anything, the conversion rates and the cost per conversion metrics had dropped. And then when we worked with the owner even further, they did— they went back and had a listen to some of the recordings because what had happened at the end of month 4, they changed over a key member of their sales team. And that's where they found the issue was that this new salesperson coming on, just to put it frankly, wasn't being friendly to their leads. So they were able to then work with that customer to improve that sales process. And once again, those same leads which they were saying were spammy were actually becoming higher quality leads. So this is a real check for business owners that if your sales team or your staff are letting you know that those sales leads are spammy or poor quality. Just, just like you should be properly auditing your Google Ads account to make sure that you're targeting the right keywords, that your messaging is on point, you're targeting the right demographics and the right audiences. But don't forget to also go through and do an audit of your actual sales process to make sure you can really diagnose whether it is the traffic coming in from Google Ads or whether it's your actual internal sales process. And I know with that internal sales process, that is a tougher one that sometimes you have to deal with, but I did want to highlight it Because it's remembering that for a successful Google Ads campaign, it's not just about what is happening inside of your Google Ads account. Not only do you need to have high-converting landing pages, but you also need to have a high-converting sales team. Now, the third point that I do want to talk about, and this is not a diagnosis problem, but this is more just wanted to introduce what I call the bodybuilder concept. And what this has got to do is that there is not going to be a perfect world where you're not going to get any spammy leads at all. There's not never going to be a situation where every single lead that comes in on Google Ads is ready to buy with no objections, and it's just a matter of you sending through your quote, your payment link, and they send you back the money the very next day or even on that same day. Now what the bodybuilder concept is, is that it works off that concept as— clearly I'm not a bodybuilder, but I do have a friend who has gone through some competitions, and what he spoke about is that in order to get ready for his competition, he first had to go through his bulking phase, and he was getting big, bigger, but he was also carrying a little bit more fat than what he would usually do. And then when he would get to his cutting phase, it was all about cutting down that excess fat. And that is the game that sometimes we do need to play with Google Ads, where we are going through and increasing our volume, which what may mean that we are getting some extra lower quality leads coming through. And but then once we get those data metrics there, and we're feeding in proper data, we can then go through and start to increase the efficiency or into that cutting phase. And there's 2 core ways that you can do that, and that's using your smart bidding strategies. So the first thing you could do is obviously add in a maximize conversions or maximize conversion values bidding strategy. Or secondly, you could start to really optimize your target CPA or your target ROAS settings. And because that's absolutely another big massive topic that we need to talk about, if you would like to learn more about how to set your bidding strategies right, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. But remember, as I said, if you are a business owner and you would like some extra strategic advice with your Google Ads campaigns, just follow that link in the description so you can get more information about our on-demand program. And if you're just starting out in Google Ads, you can also in the description below find more about our Google Ads Mastery Program, which takes you from stage 1 all the way through to getting your first conversions. And there's some free resources that I have down in the description. But if you'd like to stay on YouTube and you're just starting out, go through and watch this video right here. See you next time.