If you’ve got a Google Ads campaign running for your local business, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve got some settings enabled that are quietly wasting your budget every single month.
I see it all the time when I’m auditing campaigns.
Business owners think their campaign is set up properly, but there are a handful of settings buried in the backend that are either turned on by default or get enabled without them realizing it.
The result? Wasted ad spend that could have been going towards actual leads.
Today I’m going to walk you through four different areas in your Google Ads account that might be wasting money for you.
I’ll show you how to find them, how to identify if they’re causing problems, and then how to turn them off or make changes to fix them.
A quick heads up before getting into the content – This post has been adapted from one of my YouTube videos, so if you would prefer to watch through the content, you can see a video going over all of this above.
Setting #1: Auto Apply Recommendations
This is probably one of the sneakiest Google Ads settings that can waste your budget, especially if you’re newer to running Google Ads or it’s your first time getting a campaign up and running.
You want to make sure that Auto Apply Recommendations are turned off on your campaign.
This is part of my process whenever I’m building a new campaign and getting it set up. I always double check to make sure all Auto Apply settings are turned off.
Why This Matters
When Auto Apply Recommendations are enabled, you’re essentially giving Google permission to make changes to your campaign while it’s running.
And we definitely don’t want Google doing that.
When it comes to optimizing a Google Ads campaign, you want to follow a process.
You want to make changes methodically, track what’s working and what isn’t, and have control over what’s happening in your account.
If you’re letting Google go in there and just start adding new keywords, removing keywords, adding broad match keywords, changing your bid strategy, and doing all these different things automatically, it throws chaos into the mix.
Google’s Recommendations Aren’t For You
As a quick side note: if Google is recommending something, it’s most likely for them, not for you.
It’s to put more money in their pocket.
Obviously they want to auto apply things to your campaign that are going to get you more traffic, because more traffic means more money for Google.
But more traffic doesn’t always mean better results for your business.
I’ve seen Auto Apply Recommendations wreak havoc on campaigns because all they do is start changing things and throwing optimization into chaos.
When you’re trying to improve a Google Ads campaign, you don’t want chaos. You want a clear process.
If you have Auto Apply Recommendations turned on, it’s going to mess that process up and prevent you from running a better, more profitable campaign.
How To Turn It Off
To check if you have Auto Apply Recommendations enabled, go into your Google Ads account and look for the Recommendations section.
You’ll see a list of different settings that Google can automatically apply to your campaign.
Make sure all of these are unchecked.
Don’t let Google make automatic changes to your campaign. You should be the one making those decisions.
Setting #2: Networks (Search Partners and Display Network)
The next setting we need to talk about is in your campaign settings under Networks.
To get to your campaign settings, click on Campaigns, then click on Settings at the top. It’ll pull up a page with all your campaign settings.
Under the Networks section, you’re going to see two options:
- Search Partners
- Display Network
You want to make sure both of these are unchecked.
Why You Should Uncheck Search Partners
Search Partners used to be a pretty solid source of additional traffic for campaigns.
But something changed in recent years, and the traffic quality from Search Partners has gone way downhill.
Search Partners is essentially a network of other websites where Google can show your ads. The problem is that Google isn’t very transparent about where exactly those ads are getting shown.
What I’ve seen happen with Search Partners enabled is that businesses start getting really low quality traffic and irrelevant leads.
People calling about jobs, people searching for completely unrelated things, and just a lot of wasted clicks that never convert into actual customers.
The name of the game with Google Ads is getting high quality traffic, especially if you’re trying to do lead generation for a local business.
Enabling Search Partners just wastes your budget on traffic that isn’t going to convert.
Why You Should Uncheck Display Network
Display Network has, in my opinion, never been a good option for a search campaign.
You can use Display Network for remarketing campaigns, which is a different strategy altogether. But for your main search campaign that’s trying to generate leads, you want Display Network turned off.
When Display Network is enabled, your ads can show up all over the internet on random websites, apps, and news sites.
Again, this just wastes your budget on traffic that isn’t targeted or focused.
What you want is people in your local market actively searching for your services on Google.
You don’t want your ads showing up on someone’s news app or on some random website they’re browsing.
That’s irrelevant traffic, and irrelevant traffic means wasted money.
Uncheck both Search Partners and Display Network.
Literally just unchecking those two boxes can save you a significant amount of wasted budget every month.
Setting #3: Using The Wrong Bid Strategy
This is something I see quite a bit when I’m auditing campaigns, especially from people who are newer to Google Ads or who set up their campaign a while ago and haven’t touched it since.
You need to make sure you’re using a bid strategy that’s actually aligned with the goals of your business.
The Problem With Irrelevant Bid Strategies
I work with a lot of local service businesses, and I’m doing lead generation in pretty much every case.
What I’ve seen in some accounts is people running bid strategies that would be better suited for e-commerce businesses or businesses that are selling products online.
Now obviously there’s some nuance here. If you are running an e-commerce business, then your bid strategies are going to be different.
But from a lead generation perspective for local businesses, there are specific bid strategies you should be using.
The Right Bid Strategies For Lead Generation
For lead generation campaigns, the main bid strategies you want to use are:
Clicks-based bidding strategies:
- Maximize Clicks
- Manual CPC
Conversion-based bidding strategies:
- Maximize Conversions
- Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
Those are going to be your best options for doing lead generation.
I typically start campaigns with either Maximize Clicks or Manual CPC because you need to gather data first before you can optimize for conversions.
Once you have enough conversion data coming through (usually after you’ve gotten at least 30-50 conversions), then you can switch over to Maximize Conversions or Target CPA.
What Not To Use
I’ve seen campaigns where people are running bid strategies like:
- Maximize Conversion Value
- Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
These are bid strategies that are much more relevant to businesses with an e-commerce element where you’re actually selling products and tracking revenue.
If you’re running a local service business and you’re just trying to generate leads, these bid strategies don’t make sense.
Why This Wastes Money
Choosing the wrong bid strategy can waste your budget because Google isn’t actually optimizing around what you want it to optimize around.
If you want leads, but you’re telling Google to try to hit a target return on ad spend when you don’t even have an e-commerce element, it’s just going to confuse Google.
You want to make sure all of your campaign settings are clean and feed Google the right data.
Make sure you’re using the right bid strategy for your business goals.
If you’re doing local lead generation, you can’t go wrong with Maximize Clicks or Manual CPC to start, and then Maximize Conversions or Target CPA once you have enough data.
Those are the most efficient ways to spend your budget and bid on Google Search.
Setting #4: Location Settings
The last thing I want to talk about is location settings.
Getting your location settings wrong isn’t necessarily going to affect your traffic quality in terms of relevance, but it’s going to affect the actual physical location of where your traffic is coming from.
If you don’t have these settings configured properly, especially if you’re a local business, you could end up getting out-of-location leads and out-of-location clicks.
If somebody is in another state and they click on your ad, you’re still going to get charged for that click even though they’re nowhere near your service area.
That’s wasted money.
We want to make sure your location settings are set up properly so your budget is only going towards people in your actual service area.
Be Granular With Your Location Targeting
The first thing I recommend is being really granular with your location targeting.
Instead of just dropping a big radius around your business location, I like to target specific cities or zip codes individually.
This allows you to actually optimize your location targeting later on and do bid adjustments on different areas.
If one area is performing better than another area, you can bid more for that area and less for underperforming areas.
It gives you much more control over where your budget is going.
Exclude Areas Outside Your Service Zone
On top of being granular with your targeting, you also want to exclude areas outside of your service area.
I add excluded locations around all of my targeted areas to try to weed out any traffic that might come from other locations.
Again, if you’re getting clicks from people outside of your service area, that’s wasted budget.
Having exclusions set up properly helps conserve your budget and spend it more effectively on the areas you actually service.
Location Options: Presence vs. Presence or Interest
This is a big one that often gets overlooked.
In your location settings, you’ll see an option for “Location Options.”
You’ll have two choices:
- Presence or interest – People in, regularly in, or who have shown interest in your included locations
- Presence – People in or regularly in your included locations
You want to make sure you have the second option selected: Presence.
If you have “Presence or interest” selected, your ads can show pretty much all over the place.
Somebody could be in another state searching for services in your area, and your ad could show up for them.
That could end up being a wasted click and wasted budget.
By selecting “Presence” only, you’re adding an extra layer of protection to make sure your ads are only showing to people who are actually in or regularly in your service area.
Make sure you have your location settings configured properly. That’s another easy way to prevent wasted budget on your campaign.
Need Help With Your Google Ads Campaign?
Making sure you’re using the right Google Ads campaign settings is crucial for ensuring that you’re not wasting any of your Google Ads budget.
Implementing some of the things in this blog post will help you save money, increase conversion rates, and cut down your cost per lead.
If you’re currently running Google Ads for your local business, and you want someone to check your campaign out, reach out below.
There’s a link to a free consultation form you can use to reach out. It will get sent over to me personally, and I can review it to see if I can help you out.
In the meantime, if you want to see more Google Ads content you can check out a recent post giving out some Tree Service Google Ads tips.
Thanks for reading!
Recent Comments