1. Carefully choose keywords that indicate searchers are looking to buy what you sell.
   
2. Structure your ad account properly, ensuring that your ads and landing pages match the keywords they show up for.
   
3. Monitor results and manually optimize your ads to double down on what’s working.

These steps may seem obvious. But many times we’ve looked in our clients’ ads accounts and found that they (or the agencies they’ve worked with) have made crucial mistakes within each of the above steps, killing their chances of getting a good return on ad spend (ROAS). 

For example:

• Mistake #1: Targeting keywords without buying intent. With a lack of buying intent behind keywords, it becomes a guessing game to whether a keyword will actually convert or not, ultimately wasting spend and leading to a higher cost per acquisition (CPA).

• Mistake #2: Improper account structure. Grouping many different keywords, ads, and landing pages in each ad group is a common practice but leads to users seeing mismatched combinations of keywords, ads, and landing pages, which reduce conversion rates and ROAS.

• Mistake #3: Too much automation. In our experience, letting Google automate various details of your ad campaigns with features like broad match or Dynamic Search Ads almost always causes budget to be wasted. Automation can fail (and does) in a lot of ways — making it difficult to manage accounts properly and bring in quality leads.

So, in this post we’re going to lay out the mistakes we often see SaaS businesses making with their Google Ads campaigns, and explain what you can do differently in order to avoid these issues and get the best ROAS possible.

Before we get to that, however, we’ll begin with a short discussion of how to know whether or not Google Ads would be a good acquisition channel for your SaaS business.

How to Know If Google Ads Could Be a Good Acquisition Channel for Your SaaS Business

The key question to ask to figure out whether or not Google Ads is even a viable channel for your SaaS business is: are people aware of and actively searching for the SaaS product that you sell?

If you sell a known type of software that has existing search demand — for example, project management software or marketing analytics software — then there’s a good chance that there will be plenty of high buying-intent keywords available and Google Ads will be a worthwhile channel, given that you approach it correctly.

One way to figure this out is to type the category name of your product into Google. If you see other SaaS companies in your category bidding on your category terms, and see them in the organic search results below, it’s a safe bet that there is opportunity there for you as well.

Alternatively, if you’re selling a genuinely new, category-creating product that your target audience is not yet aware of and actively searching for, Google Ads likely is not a good fit for you, and you probably need to focus on outbound sales or other SaaS marketing channels.

But be careful about whether you’re truly category creating or not. We have noticed in particular that B2B SaaS businesses and startups often try to invent a new category to put themselves in for branding purposes, even though they’re basically in an existing category and just have some type of feature differentiation versus the existing products. If you do this, you might determine that there isn’t search demand for your product, and unnecessarily rule out Google Ads as a channel. The alternative is to put your product in the existing category, bid on those terms, and use your differentiators to sell against competitors through your ad copy, landing pages, etc.

The Common Mistakes We See in SaaS Google Ads Accounts

If you’re just starting out with Google Ads, understanding these mistakes can help you avoid them from the beginning. Or if you’re looking to scale or improve ROAS from your existing ads, the following are potential problem areas you can look at first as ways to improve.

Mistake #1: Targeting Keywords without Buying Intent

We’ve covered this extensively for organic search, and it’s just as true for paid search: If the keywords you target don’t have high buying intent, then the likelihood of your ads driving customer acquisition is quite low. Yet we see company after company end up wasting ad spend on search terms without buying intent.

However, unlike SEO content where the focus is commonly on generating brand awareness and measuring “up funnel” metrics like traffic, most companies don’t set out to target top of the funnel, low converting keywords in their paid campaigns. Bidding on low converting keywords isn’t intentional. Instead, it ends up happening for a variety of reasons, such as:

• Wanting keywords with higher search volume to max out monthly spend
• Wanting low cost-per-click (CPC) keywords for “better costs”
• Using a variety of broad match keywords

This isn’t to say that low CPC or high volume keywords shouldn’t be in the account, this just means they shouldn’t be the deciding factor for adding them to the account. The deciding factor should be search intent. Otherwise you may be bidding on keywords that do have a low CPC, for example, but without buying intent, you’re still throwing ad spend away on clicks that won’t convert, even if those clicks are cheap. 

As for broad match keywords, they are actually something Google itself recommends to lower costs, which means many brands and agencies use it, thinking they’ll help.

But in our experience, with a broad match keyword, you can have the term be “accounting software” and appear for something like “bookkeeping companies that use quickbooks accounting software in Dallas, TX.” This is obviously not good if you’re trying to sell accounting software.

So, while it can be tempting to use broad match, the lack of search intent behind these keywords and match types often causes higher costs per acquisition of a lead, if they result in leads at all. 

In fact, even if a company is somehow seeing leads come through from broad match campaigns, if you go one step deeper and look at the quality of these leads, there’s a high likelihood — based on our experience — that the leads aren’t a good fit.

The fact that search intent is the most important factor is aligned with what we’ve seen in content and SEO — except the problem is actually worse with paid search because the clicks aren’t free: for every bad search term that your ad is getting clicked on, you’re wasting money.

Mistake #2: Improper Account Structure

Account structure — i.e. the combined campaign set up of ad groups, keywords, ads, and landing pages — is just as important as the keywords you choose. 

If you have a highly relevant keyword that’s bringing in the perfect search queries but your ad isn’t relevant, click-through rates (CTR) are going to be very low — and therefore lead generation from these ads will be minimal or nonexistent. 

Similarly, you can have the keyword and ad messaging match correctly, but if your landing page doesn’t match them, i.e. if you’re appearing for “marketing analytics software” and your user is now on a landing page that’s all about “marketing operations software,” most people are going to bounce and you’re not going to get many leads.

This logic isn’t groundbreaking.

Your high-intent keyword should match the query → the query should match the ad → the ad should match the landing page.

So why do so many accounts fall short here?

They make crucial mistakes with their account structure — many of which they don’t even realize are mistakes — including:

• Too many keywords per ad group. For example, a business management software with a variety of features may have an ad group titled “project management” that includes the keywords: “time tracking,” “task management,” “file sharing,” “client portal,” etc. All of these keywords may be features they offer. However, they each have different intent, and therefore need different ads and landing pages to be relevant to searchers (which requires them to be broken out into different ad groups). 

• Search intent not matching ad text and landing page. When people do the above and use too many keywords per ad group, their ad and landing page are only relevant to a small fraction of those keywords. For example, an ad and landing page about project management software would be relevant for the keyword “project management,” but people looking for “time tracking” or “client portal” solutions wouldn’t click on that ad, or would bounce immediately from their landing page.

• Enabling Google Search Partners. When setting up a new campaign, Google will typically recommend enabling Google Search Partners, a network of websites where your ads can appear. In our experience and testing, while CPCs can be low (which makes this a tempting channel), we’ve seen that Search Partners rarely — if ever — results in high-quality leads. This isn’t surprising because the intent of traffic from Search Partners isn’t the same as when people are searching Google itself.

Mistake #3: Too Much Automation

One common theme you may have noticed above is that letting Google’s automation features control various details of your campaigns can be a problem.

For example, broad match lets Google choose the queries its algorithm thinks relate to your keyword, which often turn out to be a poor match of intent. Search Partners and Google Display Network let Google’s algorithm determine what websites you should appear on, which often lack relevance to what you sell. 

This problem extends beyond just those two features. There are many other ways that Google’s advertising platform can automate your Ads account. Each form of automation comes with its own potential mistakes relating to lack of search intent.

For example:

• Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs): We often see companies use Dynamic Search Ads, in which you let Google crawl your site, come up with a list of keywords that you cannot see, and then bid on those keywords for you with ad text and a landing page they deem most relevant. In our experience, the majority of the time there are too many areas where these types of ads can fail: between not fully understanding the user’s intent to not understanding small, but important differences between landing pages, and the too general — or too specific — ad text.

• Automated extensions: When done correctly, adding extensions can help your ads stand out and give your users additional, relevant information. However, Google also attempts to automate these, which can cause irrelevant clicks for services or to locations that shouldn’t be on your ad. This feature can be turned off in your account settings.

• Smart campaigns: This type of campaign is very similar to Dynamic Search Ads with a few differences: your ad shows in even more places (not just search) and can even show to users outside of your designated search area. You also cannot control aspects of your bidding strategy such as your max bid or CPC. This hands-off approach can cause many problems.

In the next section, we’ll walk through how to avoid each of these mistakes by targeting keywords with buying intent, using more tailored account structure, and reducing automation for better results.

Note: If you notice any of these mistakes being made in your ads account, or feel that performance could be better, learn more about our PPC service here. We typically start with a simple audit of the ads account and point out what we think can be improved and discuss if we think it can be a fit. You can also find a Google Ads case study demonstrating our work here.

Our SaaS Google Ads Strategy That Maximizes ROAS

Step #1: Focus on Targeting Buying Intent Keywords with “Phrase Match” and “Exact Match” Keyword Match Types

We’ve written extensively about how to find and choose keywords with high buying intent. Check out our posts on SaaS keyword research and SEO keyword strategy for in-depth tutorials on how you can approach this. 

While those articles are written in the context of search engine optimization (SEO), the same keyword strategies apply to paid search. However, even high buying intent keywords can become useless if you’re utilizing the wrong match type. 

As of 2023, there are four match types available in paid search: broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative. These go from least to most restrictive.

As we explained above, with a broad match keyword, you can have the term be “accounting software” and appear for something like “bookkeeping companies that use quickbooks accounting software in Dallas, TX.” This is unlikely to convert well and likely to waste ad spend.

The same term, “accounting software,” with phrase match would show for something like “what is the best affordable accounting software.” A bit better since we don’t know all potential search queries around such a short keyword.

Exact match, on the other hand, would be exactly “accounting software” or something extremely similar such as “accounting programs.”

If you’re using long-tail, high intent keywords, you shouldn’t be using broad match at all. Instead, you can just use phrase and exact match. You should also include a negative keyword strategy in your account if you’re using Phrase match (which we will touch on in another post).

Step #2: Intentionally Structure Each Ad Group Instead of Using Automation

Even with carefully chosen keywords and only using exact or phrase match types, you’ll still need to be very intentional about how you set up each ad group in order to optimize for the highest quality conversions. Specifically, the ad text needs to directly relate to the search term and the landing page needs to directly satisfy the intent behind that search term. 

This three tiered alignment (keyword → ad text → landing page) gives searchers the most cohesive experience and thus maximized conversion potential.

However, we rarely see this level of specificity in Google Ads campaigns.

More often than not, we see general text that’s somewhat related to the search term but doesn’t actually include any part of the search term in the text and landing pages that are even more indirectly related. 

Fixing this issue comes in three parts: 

1. Including at Least Part of the Search Term in the Ad Copy

Ideally, both your ad headline and ad copy should include the search term it’s been created to show up for. 

This ad by NetSuite does a good job of this:

For the search query “accounting software for small business,” their ad headline clearly matches search intent with the title “NetSuite® Accounting Software – #1 SMB Cloud Accounting.” In addition, the first line of the ad description includes both “accounting software” and “small business,” giving searchers confidence that the ad is relevant to them.

In contrast, the second ad from QuickBooks lacks the terms “software” and “small business” in both their headline and ad copy. Now, QuickBooks is obviously a massive brand in the accounting software space and can likely get away with this. But, you can imagine that searchers looking specifically for “small business accounting software” would be more likely to click on the ad with these exact words in the headline and ad copy. And particularly if you’re a lesser known brand in your space, including the exact search terms in your ad copy will give you the best chance of getting clicks over your competitors.

2. Choosing a Landing Page That Satisfies the Intent behind the Search Query

For the best results, we recommend choosing a landing page that not only includes the keyword in the title, but directly addresses all of the questions behind that keyword.

Continuing with the example above, QuickBooks’ accounting landing page does a good job of this for the term “accounting software for small business”:

As you can see, they use the term “accounting software” in the landing page headline, and “#1 small business accounting software” in the main tagline just below. 

Furthermore, as you scroll down the page, they cover topics such as:

• Reviews
• Features
• Benefits
• Integrations
• Pricing plans

You can imagine that these are the exact topics potential customers are interested in when they search for accounting software, and this page is precise in matching search intent and likely converts searchers into leads and new customers at a good rate.

3. Including Fewer Keywords per Ad Group

In order to put your money where it will be the most effective, you need to limit the number of ad groups you have in each campaign. Because your daily budget is set at the campaign level (rather than by ad group or keyword), some of your best performing ad groups may not get the spend they deserve if they have to share the budget with lower performing ad groups. If an ad group is performing particularly well, you may even want to give it its own campaign. 

Then, you’ll also need to limit the number of keywords per ad group.

Google recommends including between 5-30 keywords per ad group, but in our experience, this is too many. 

The problem is that you won’t be able to create ad text that’s relevant to all of these keywords. For example, if someone is searching for accounting software and the ad text says something about invoicing and payments, they are far less likely to click on the ad, much less convert. 

Instead, we recommend limiting the keywords in each ad group to just a few, closely related keywords (and use phrase or exact match types). For example:

In this example, we show potential ad groups based on business stage (i.e. “small business”, “freelancer”) as well as industry vertical (i.e. “real estate”). Alternative campaigns might target competitor brands with ad groups categorized by business stage, or different use cases of the product such as invoicing and billing. 

The key is to ensure that the keywords within each ad group have the same intent behind them, so the same, targeted ad copy would be enticing for all of these searchers.  

Step #3: Avoid Using Too Much Automation and Manually Optimize Campaigns to Double Down on Keywords That Are Producing Leads

To reduce the potential for wasted ad spend, make sure you turn off and avoid using the problematic automation options discussed earlier (i.e. Dynamic Search Ads, automated extensions, smart campaigns, etc.).

And finally, to get the most out of your spend, you should continually optimize your paid search campaigns for the search terms and keywords that are driving leads. For example, we’ll commonly see that within one ad group, certain keywords or search terms will result in quality conversions, while others only receive a few clicks. In these cases, you can shift to focus more ad spend and energy on those keywords and terms that are working, and therefore increase your ROAS.

Driving Quality Leads with Paid Ads

Since you have to pay for every click with paid ads, it’s essential that you have full control over where that ad spend is going and that you’re able to optimize your strategy for the metrics that truly matter: total leads, cost per lead (CPL), etc.

That’s why we take a very intentional, highly specialized hands-on approach to paid search campaigns for SaaS — just like we’ve been doing for years with organic search. 

To work with us, check out Our Paid Search Service page.

• Targeting keywords without buying intent. We’ve covered this extensively for organic search, and it’s just as true for paid search: If the keywords you target don’t have high buying intent, then the likelihood of generating conversions is quite low. Yet company after company, via a variety of mistakes in campaign set up (explained below) end up wasting ad spend on search terms without buying intent.

• Not being intentional or specific enough about how your ad campaign is set up. Even after choosing the right keywords, companies still end up wasting their budget because their account is poorly set up. This includes everything from having too many keywords per ad group to using automation tools like broad match or Search Partners. If each step of your ad campaign (keywords, ad text, landing page, etc.) isn’t carefully chosen by someone who knows your product and target market well, then you’ll likely end up wasting some of your ad budget on strategies that cause high bounce rates, low quality leads, and poor results overall. 

In this article, we use a real client example to bring these mistakes to life and show our PPC services in action. Not only were we able to double the number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) per month, but we also lowered the cost of those MQLs from ~$14,000/per lead to ~$3,400/per lead.

If you feel that your paid ad strategy could be performing better and want to see how we could help, get in touch. We’ll start with a simple audit of the ads account, point out what we think can be improved, and discuss if we think it can be a fit. 

Results from the Previous Ad Agency vs. Our Results

Our client is an ecommerce development agency that handles long-term projects for businesses using the Magento and BigCommerce platforms. Their average client was bringing in $180,000/year in revenue and their goal was to sign new clients with an acquisition cost of no more than $8,000. 

When we looked at the results that their previous ad agency produced, we noticed two major issues: 

• In the last three months, they had only brought in 2 MQLs (for an average of .67 MQLs/month).
  
  
• Each MQL cost ~$14,000.

But, what’s interesting is that these poor results were masked by positive numbers: 

• Leads over the past three months totaled 26 (even after filtering out junk leads, i.e., solicitous form fills rather than businesses who were actually interested in their services). 
  
  
• Each lead cost ~ $1077.
  
  
• The average CTR was 6.25.
  
  
• Total impressions equaled ~55k. 

Looking at these lead metrics, the ads look promising. However, we discovered that while they were driving leads with their ads, they weren’t quality leads (i.e., prospects that actually had potential to become clients and thus satisfied their MQL criteria). After filtering out prospects that didn’t meet their MQL criteria (because of size, industry, project needs, etc.), they were left with the 2 MQLs mentioned earlier.

So, we set out to increase the number of quality leads and decrease the cost of those leads. After implementing our PPC services for six months, these were the results: 

• ~1.4 MQLs/month
• $3.2k/MQL

If we compare these results to the previous results, paid ads become a much more promising channel: 

In the following sections, we dig into the main changes we implemented and why. 

Focus on Keywords with High Buying Intent

Here’s an unsaid truth of the culture of the paid search world that leads to this extremely common problem of ad campaigns looking good on “up funnel” metrics but bad on “down funnel metrics”: When choosing keywords, many ad agencies prioritize keywords with low CPC and/or high search volume.  

Of course CPC and search volume are important, but they shouldn’t be the deciding factors for whether or not to include a keyword. The buying intent of the keyword should. Otherwise you run the risk of being in the exact situation our client was: great click costs and lots of clicks but at the end of the day, not a lot of qualified leads or customers.

For example, one of the keywords our client’s ad agency was going after was ‘magento ecommerce platforms’. At first glance, this may look like a valuable keyword because it’s related to our client’s offering or at least something our client’s target market would be interested in. However, if you carefully analyze the SERP for this keyword, you realize that the searcher isn’t actively looking to hire a Magento development agency. Instead, Google believes this reader wants to know more about what Magento is and who it’s suitable for. 

Unless the reader is actively looking to pay for the solution you’re providing, your conversion rate will likely be quite low (or nonexistent). 

Because of this, our client was essentially throwing money at a keyword that had very little (if any) potential for driving quality leads in the immediate future. (Some ad agencies would argue that you could use this type of keyword to nurture the reader along until they’re ready to buy, but conversion rates from nurturing to actual closed deals are extremely low. So, if there are people out there who are ready to buy your service now, we recommend targeting those prospects first.)

Why Dynamic Search Ads Can Hurt Your Efforts to Choose a Valuable Keyword

You may be tempted to use Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), but we don’t recommend it. DSA is an automation tool provided by Google that chooses keyword groups, develops ad text, and connects those ads to landing pages for you. Using DSA, you’re essentially letting Google run your ad campaign with little to no input from you. 

In our experience, DSA produces ad campaigns that aren’t truly relevant to your goals (e.g., targeting the wrong market), contain inaccurate information (e.g., advertising a service that your competitors offer but you don’t), and are poorly put together (e.g., ad text that doesn’t match the landing page or search term). 

We get into more detail below about why it’s important to carefully choose the right keyword groups and curate your own ad copy and landing page combinations.

Use Phrase or Exact Match Instead of Broad Match

After carefully choosing keywords with high buying intent, we recommend using phrase or exact match types instead of broad match. All three match types are different ways for Google to decide which search terms (i.e., what the searcher is actually typing into the search bar) to include in a keyword group. 

The screenshot below shows an example of different search terms that would be included under the keyword “lawn mowing service” for each match type. 

Image source

Broad match, as the name suggests, includes the widest variety of keywords, which is tempting to some advertisers. And, even Google recommends using broad match: 

However, we never recommend using broad match. 

To demonstrate why, let’s look at some of the search terms that were showing up for our client using broad match. The keyword was “magento agency”, which has good buying intent. However, using broad match, the search terms they were appearing for were terms such as: 

• “Magento web” → Google results for this keyword suggest the reader wants to learn more about what Magento is. A business already on Magento who needs help developing some aspect of their site would already know this. Thus, not a good term for our client.

• “BigCommerce” → Again, the reader is looking to learn more about BigCommerce as a platform — not hire an ecommerce development agency.

• “Online marketing” →  If you were playing a word association game, this term might make sense. But, it’s not even close to having the same meaning or intent as “magento agency”.
  

Obviously, a campaign that shows your ads on these search terms is going to waste ad spend on low conversion-potential traffic. But, be careful: Broad match is extremely common (we see it all the time in our paid search audits) because terms like these can often significantly lower CPC and improve those “up-funnel” metrics.

In contrast, exact match and phrase match types are very useful for focusing campaigns on the most relevant versions of those valuable keywords. These match types allow for readers to have slight variations in how they describe a service (or product) without changing the meaning. Here are some examples of the terms that would come up using exact or phrase match types with the keyword “magento agency”:

• Exact match: “magento development services”, “adobe agency” (since Adobe is powered by Magento)

• Phrase match: “top magento agencies”, “how to choose a magento agency”, “magento agency for {vertical}”

All of these search terms have high buying intent and are a good match for what our client offers. 

Intentionally Structure Each Ad Group Instead of Using Automation

Even with carefully chosen keywords and only using exact or phrase match types, you’ll still need to be very intentional about how you set up each ad group in order to optimize for the highest quality conversions. Specifically, the ad text needs to directly relate to the search term and the landing page needs to directly satisfy the intent behind that search term. 

This three tiered alignment (keyword → ad text → landing page) gives searchers the most cohesive experience and thus maximized conversion potential.

However, we rarely see this level of specificity in paid ad campaigns.

More often than not, we see general text that’s somewhat related to the search term but doesn’t actually include any part of the search term in the text and landing pages that are even more indirectly related. 

Fixing this issue comes in three parts: 

• Including at least part of the search term in the ad copy
  
  
• Choosing a landing page that satisfies the intent behind the search query
  
  
• Including fewer keywords per ad group

Next, we’ll look at examples from our client for all of these.

Including the Keyword in the Ad Copy

In order for a reader to click on your ad, they need to believe the ad will satisfy the reason for their search. While this may sound obvious, it’s often not given enough attention when creating ad copy. 

For example, in the screenshot below, we see an ad that was created for the keyword “magento web design agency”. 

The first line of the ad copy includes a closely related version of the keyword — “Magento website design team” — however, the keyword isn’t included in the title or in any of the links below. So, while this ad was getting some clicks, we could increase the clicks by using the keyword in the title and in the links. 

Carefully Curated Landing Pages

Returning to the example in the section above, the landing page for the “magento web design agency” ad had the title of “UX Review and Design”. Again, this doesn’t match the keyword. 

In our experience, this leads to higher bounce rates. 

Instead, we recommend choosing a landing page that not only includes the keyword in the title, but directly addresses all of the questions behind that keyword. 

In this example, a landing page for “magento web design agency” would include: 

• Examples of Magento sites that our client had designed
• A discussion of the nuances of how to design a Magento site
• How to choose the right agency for your website

Notice how this is more involved than simply sprinkling keywords throughout an existing page. The entire page would be carefully curated to address that keyword (what we call the specificity strategy). You can do this by either creating a new landing page or a blog post. 

In order to include the keyword in the ad and create highly targeted landing pages, you need to limit the number of keywords in each ad group. We’ll cover that next. 

Fewer Ad Groups per Campaign and Fewer Keywords per Ad Group

In order to put your money where it will be the most effective, you need to limit the number of ad groups you have in each campaign. Because your daily budget is set at the campaign level (rather than by ad group or keyword), some of your best performing ad groups may not get the spend they deserve if they have to share the budget with lower performing ad groups. If an ad group is performing particularly well, you may even want to give it its own campaign. 

Then, you’ll also need to limit the number of keywords per ad group.

Google recommends including between 5-30 keywords per ad group, which might look something like this for our client: 

But, in our experience this is too many keywords per ad group. 

The problem is that you won’t be able to create ad text that’s relevant to all of these keywords. For example, if someone is searching for Magento developers and the ad text says something about BigCommerce developers, they are far less likely to click on the ad, much less convert. 

Instead, we recommend limiting the keywords in each ad group to just a few, closely related keywords (and use phrase or exact match types):

All of these keywords have the same intent behind them, and, because we use Phrase and Exact match types, all the search queries will follow suit. So, the same, targeted ad copy would be enticing for all of these searchers.  

Remove Google Search Partners

Google Search Partners is a feature that you can choose to turn on or off in your ad account. With Google Search Partners, your ads will appear in more places than just Google search including YouTube, directory pages, and search results pages within websites. 

This feature is attractive to many advertisers — including our client — because it expands the reach of ad campaigns and the CPC rates are often much lower than when displaying ads on Google search pages. However, there are two major problems with using Google Search Partners: 

1. The quality of leads generated by Google Search Partners is often quite low (i.e., many leads are solicitous, aren’t looking for your services, or aren’t your target market). This is because your ads could be showing up almost anywhere. For example, someone searching for ‘top magento developers’ on Google is likely a good fit for our client because they’re most likely looking to hire Magento developers. Whereas, it’s much more difficult to discern the intent behind someone searching for ‘magento developers’ on an unrelated website (e.g., news journal, public forum).
   
   
2. Google (not you) decides how much ad spend is spent on displaying ads via Google Search Partners vs. Google search.
   

These issues showed up clearly when looking at the results of our client’s ad strategy before and after turning Google Search Partners off: 

• With Google Search Partners: 7.6% of leads became MQLs with total ad spend equalling ~$9k/month.

• Without Google Search Partners: 24% of leads became MQLs with total ad spend equalling ~$7k/month. 

Additionally, it’s worth noting that these numbers were added up after removing junk leads, i.e., solicitous form fills rather than businesses who were actually interested in their services. Our client frequently noted that they also received far fewer junk leads and that the conversations they had with the qualified leads improved significantly after turning off Google Search partners.

Optimize Keywords That are Producing Leads

The last issue we saw with how our client’s previous ad agency was running their ad strategy was that they weren’t further optimizing the search terms and keywords that were working. 

For example, both “magento experts” and “magento web” were search terms that appeared under the keyword “magento development”. “Magento web” received a few clicks, however, those clicks didn’t result in quality conversions. On the other hand, “magento experts” received one conversion from only one click and six impressions because the intent to buy is quite high. 

Despite the difference in performance between these keywords, our client’s previous ad agency didn’t switch their focus the following month. Instead, they saw that “magento development” as a keyword was performing well and they left it alone. 

It’s important to remember that looking at keywords that are performing well doesn’t give you a holistic picture of the account. As we saw above, you need to dig into which search terms are doing well in order to understand what’s working and what’s not. 

Once you know which search terms are working, you can focus more ad spend and energy on those. This often means turning high performing search terms into keywords so you can optimize the ad copy and landing pages specifically for that term. 

With this level of detailed attention, you’ll also be able to direct ad spend where it will be the most effective. In the previous example, they ended up spending over $1000 on “magento web” and only $44 on “magento experts”. Once again, the majority of their budget was going towards a keyword with little chance of driving quality leads even though the keyword was “performing well”. 

Driving Quality Leads with Paid Ads

Since you have to pay for every click with paid ads, it’s essential that you have full control over where that ad spend is going and that you’re able to optimize your strategy for the metrics that truly matter: total MQLs and cost per MQL.

That’s why we take a very intentional, highly specialized hands-on approach to paid search campaigns — just like we’ve been doing for years with organic search. 

To work with us, check out Our Paid Search Service page. 

The level of buying intent of the search terms where your ads are showing up dictates conversion rate and therefore ROAS more than anything else. But in paid search, as opposed to organic, the consequences of getting this wrong are even more severe — you’re literally paying for every wasted click on low-intent keywords.

So, it’s surprising that in paid search accounts we see many companies making serious mistakes that are wasting spend on ads with little opportunity of leading to conversions, which kills the chances of getting good ROAS. Specifically: 

• Targeting keywords without buying intent. With a lack of buying intent behind keywords, it becomes a guessing game to whether a keyword will actually convert or not, ultimately wasting spend.

• Improper account structure. Using too many keywords per ad group or too general of ad text is a common practice but can drive up costs, plus, the wrong landing page can cause high bounce rates and, therefore, a lack of leads.

• Too much automation. Automation can fail (and does) in a lot of ways — making it difficult to manage accounts properly and bring in quality leads.

These problems are far too common which is why we developed our own approach to paid search management. One that focuses on precise strategies and hands-on control of account settings and structure.

In this article, we’ll discuss the above mistakes in more detail along with more common mistakes we see in paid search accounts. Then, we’ll outline how we utilize our high buying intent strategy, among other things, to solve them.

Mistake: Targeting Keywords Without Buying Intent

As mentioned above, the number one issue we see in client’s Google Ads accounts is wasted spend on keywords that don’t have buying intent. 

This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as:

• Wanting higher volume keywords to max out monthly spend

• Wanting low cost-per-click (CPC) keywords for “better costs”

• Using a variety of broad match keywords

This isn’t to say that low CPC or high volume keywords shouldn’t be in the account, this just means they shouldn’t be the deciding factor for adding them to the account. The deciding factor should be intent. Otherwise you may be bidding on keywords that do have a low CPC, for example, but without buying intent, you’re still throwing ad spend away on clicks that won’t convert. 

As for broad match keywords, they are actually something Google itself recommends to lower costs.

So, it can be tempting to use broad match. But the lack of search intent behind these keywords and match types often causes higher costs per acquisition of a lead, if they result in leads at all. In fact, even if a company is somehow seeing leads come through from broad match campaigns, if you go one step deeper and look at the quality of these leads, there’s a high likelihood — based on our experience — that the leads aren’t a good fit.

This all makes sense based on what we’ve seen organically, the main difference is that for every bad search term that your ad is getting clicked on, you’re wasting money. 

The “Search Terms” Report

There’s an easy way to see if there’s proper intent behind the keywords in your account right now — take a look at your “search terms” report. In this report, you can preview some of the actual search queries that your ads are appearing for (and for many, it’s a complete surprise).

You could be bidding on the term “web developers” but actually appearing for something like “what is the salary of a web developer in San Diego, CA.” That’s not great if you’re trying to bring in web development clients.

Of course, in this instance, the problem is with the keyword. It may have a low CPC or high volume but the intent is not correct. Instead, it would be better to have the term “web development agency for hire” or “web developers that specialize in xyz.” 

We know what search intent is correct with individual keywords by doing research beforehand. Our research includes analyzing the SERPs, talking to clients, and reviewing past performance in the search terms report.

Choosing Keywords

We use the same keyword strategy that we do in organic: long-tail and high-intent (meaning we want to show ads on keywords that indicate the searcher is looking to buy a product or service like yours).

However, these keywords can become useless if you’re utilizing the wrong match type. 

In paid search, there are four match types available as of 2024: broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative. These go from least to most restrictive. 

As we explained above, with a broad match keyword, you can have the term be “accounting software” and appear for something like “bookkeeping companies that use quickbooks accounting software in Dallas, TX.” Just like the web developer example above, this is obviously not good if you’re trying to sell accounting software. 

The same term, “accounting software,” with phrase match would show for something like “what is the best affordable accounting software.” A bit better since we don’t know all potential search queries around such a short keyword.

Exact match, on the other hand, would be exactly “accounting software” or something extremely similar such as “accounting programs.”

If you’re using long-tail, high intent keywords, you shouldn’t be using broad match at all. Instead, you can just use phrase and exact match. You should also include a negative keyword strategy if you’re using phrase match (which we will touch on in another post).

Mistake: Improper Account Structure

Account structure is just as important as the keywords you choose. If you have the perfect keyword that’s bringing in the perfect search queries but your ad isn’t relevant, it’s not going to get clicked on — which means you’re not going to get any leads. 

Similarly, you can have the keyword and ad match correctly, but if you’re appearing for “Shopify development agency” and your user is now on a landing page that’s all about Squarespace themes for sale, you’re not going to get any leads.

This logic isn’t groundbreaking. 

Your high-intent keyword should match the query → the query should match the ad → the ad should match the landing page.

So why do so many accounts fall short here?

Their account is structured incorrectly.

Too Many Keywords per Ad Group

Many online forums — and previously Google — recommend between 5–30 keywords per ad group. In our experience, this is too many. In fact, 10 keywords are generally too many.

Let’s take an example from Google’s own website:

In this example, Google recommends that for the ad group “desserts” you could have six keywords relating to different desserts: cupcakes, pumpkin pies, apple pie, chocolate cake, etc.

But if I’m searching for cupcakes for a birthday party, I’m not going to click on an ad that talks about pumpkin pies. 

It’s just not relevant. 

Instead, you should have only a few high-intent keywords. In this example, that could look like someone shopping for cupcakes in Portland, ME: 

• Ad Group: cupcakes
• Keywords: “cupcakes for sale,” “cupcakes in Portland,” “cupcake bakery near me.”

Although these terms may not be the exact same, they all have the same intent (to buy cupcakes in Portland) and you can base your ad text accordingly to improve your click-through-rate. 

In our experience, the ad group should really only have up to six keywords. In this example, it would be:

1. “cupcakes for sale” (phrase match)
2. [cupcakes for sale] (exact match)
3. “cupcakes in Portland”
4. [cupcakes in portland]
5. “cupcake bakery near me”
6. [cupcake bakery near me]

However, the number of keywords relates explicitly to the intent, ad text, and landing page, so you might only have 2 keywords or up to 8 keywords. It’s all dependent on what works best for your user’s query and journey.

Search Intent Not Matching Ad Text and Landing Page

In the example above, if you’re selling cupcakes but your ad text says “pie bakery” because you have a large ad group with a bunch of semi-related ad text including both “pie bakery” and “cupcake” related ads,  it’s not going to get any clicks.

Again, not revolutionary. 

However, it’s still a common mistake we see in larger mismanaged accounts. Especially ones that previously had a large keyword inventory per ad group.

The easiest fix is to audit your ad text to make sure that the keywords are incorporated properly. As an extra tip, you can “pin” different headlines and descriptions to different parts of the ad. Your keyword should always be pinned in the #1 spot.

In addition to the text, your ad can only be associated with a single landing page. That landing page should also exactly match the query. If your intent is good, your ad text matches (and your click-through-rates are excellent), but your bounce rates are high, then this is where you should look.

Search Partners

When setting up a new campaign, Google will recommend many things to you and one of those is to enable search partners. 

Google Search Partners is a network of websites where your ads can appear. The CPCs on the Search Partners Network are generally much lower than Google itself. 

However, this is a huge problem. 

In our testing, we’ve seen that Search Partners rarely — if ever — result in high-quality leads. 

When someone is searching your keywords on Google, they are in an active mindset to buy your product or service. 

On Search Partners, this may not be the case. They may be browsing a new site or blog. The intent behind their search isn’t the same as when they’re searching on Google itself. In addition, some sites are irrelevant to your users’ query. These factors tend to make these clicks complete junk.

This is why we never use Search Partners.

Mistake: Too Much Automation

A common theme you may have noticed above is that automating can be a problem.

1. Broad match is just letting Google choose the queries its algorithm thinks relate to your keyword.
   
   
2. Leaving important keywords in unpinned positions in your ads can cause those keywords to not appear at all (due to Google’s automation).
   
   
3. Search Partners lets Google’s algorithm determine what websites you should appear on.

This problem extends further. There are a variety of ways that Google wishes to automate your account. Each form of automation comes with its own potential mistakes relating to lack of search intent. 

For example, Dynamic Search Ads are a commonly used feature in paid search. 

Dynamic Search Ads

In Dynamic Search Ads, you have a couple of choices: 

1. You can let Google crawl and analyze your entire website.
2. You can give Google specific pages to crawl.

Once Google knows which pages are important, using its algorithm, it will develop a keywords list that you cannot see. Then it will bid on those keywords using ad text that it develops — although you can develop part of this — and will direct users to the landing page on your website that it feels is most relevant.

There is also a search terms report here where you can see what queries your ads are appearing for and exclude searches — but only after they’ve already happened. 

The problem here is just as it is above: a majority of the time, Google’s algorithm is wrong. There are just too many areas where these types of ads can fail — between not fully understanding the users intent to not understanding small, but important differences between landing pages, and the too general (or too specific) ad text.

This makes running these kinds of campaigns almost impossible to manage or see quality results on.

Automated Extensions

When done correctly, adding extensions can help your ads stand out and give your users additional, relevant information.

However, Google also attempts to automate these. 

It can pull information from your website and around the web to add assets such as sitelinks it thinks are relevant to your users query or even location data. In fact, Google warns: 

“Google Ads may automatically match your business to known locations (based on various account properties such as landing pages) and add the information to your account to create these assets.”

This level of automation can cause irrelevant clicks for services or to locations that shouldn’t be on your ad. This feature can be turned off in your account settings.

Smart Campaigns

Smart campaigns are made for businesses that may not have the time to run their own account. Below is how Google describes this:

“When you sign up for a Smart campaign, you’ll write an ad that describes your business. You’ll also choose which keyword themes you want to target your ad and set a budget. Your ad will automatically show to potential customers across Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and Google partner websites.

Your ad can show when potential customers in your geographic area search for phrases related to your business on Google or Google Maps. Your ad can also show for people who are outside of your neighborhood, but who include terms related to your business as well as your business location in their searches.”

This type of campaign is very similar to Dynamic Search Ads with a few differences: your ad shows in even more places (not just search) and can even show to users outside of your designated search area. You also cannot control things like your bid or max CPC.

This hands-off approach can cause many problems, similar to what we see in Dynamic Search Ads.

Partner With Us

Just like in organic search, high-intent keywords are extremely important when setting up your ads account. The user’s intent and query play a big role in determining if they will click on your ad at all or become a quality lead.

But the stakes are even higher in paid search because you’re paying for every click. So you can’t afford to waste clicks on keywords, ads, or landing pages that aren’t carefully optimized to drive the most customers as possible. 

That’s why we use a careful, manual, non-automated, no-shortcuts approach to help companies transform their paid search campaigns from barely break even to positive ROAS. 

If you’re interested in working with us on your paid search campaigns, you can learn more and reach out here. We start every engagement off with an audit where we analyze the account based on the factors above and give our honest assessment of its issues and opportunities (and whether we’d be a good fit to help manage your paid search campaigns).