The Biggest Google Ads Lies Killing Results

I've been advertising on Google for 15 years spent more than $20 million and spoken to thousands of Google advertisers during that time period and there is still a ton of misinformation out there about Google ads and the problem is that when a Google Advertiser believes something is true when it isn't it absolutely wrecks their results so in this video I'm going to go through the greatest Google ads lies the greatest Google ads myths starting with number one Google ads is really easy now ai does it all for you obviously this is one that's come up

fairly recently but I am seeing it become more and more popular and it is absolutely not true you should look at AI as a time-saving tool when it comes to Google ad campaigns not the something that can completely replace any need for any effort or input from you as the Google Advertiser it's not like you can just set up a campaign really basically never think about it again the AI is going to take care of all of it for you that is not true and that applies to both the AI within Google as itself so

Google will suggest headline variations description variations Google will suggest keyword options all based on AI tools so it applies to that it also applies to external AI sources as well other areas where you can get copy generation things like chat gbt and image generation as well to use in in various locations in Google ads where you might need images or even basic um videos but AI is not ready to remove advertisers absolutely not because some of the suggestions it creates are great A lot of them are rubbish and you need to be the filter you

need to work out okay this one's good good this one's not this one doesn't make any sense this one isn't relevant to my business this one's great let's use this and go through and and like I said be the filter and decide which parts work and don't work the other thing to consider when it comes to AI tools is that all your competitors also have access to the same AI tools I mean a lot of them are within the Google ads platform themselves so that's not where you're going to get a competitive advantage and to

really win with Google ads just like with any form of marketing just like any form of business you need a place to have a Competitive Edge you need to have something that is better than your competition to win over the long run so if everyone's got the AI tools yet it all saves us time it makes us all more efficient much in the same way that you know Excel didn't remove the need for accountants to do any work but it made it easier for them to get their work done faster right and AI is very

similar in the Google ad space um to that so your Competitive Edge has to come from elsewhere has to come from your creative input offers that you can create brand that you can build as a business the stories that you can tell so yeah don't completely rely on AI okay number two you should only advertise on the search Network now a lot of Google advertisers just focus on search they think it's the best place to advertise because there's intent there as in the person searching is looking for something actively as opposed to the Display Network

or performance Max where you've got more sort of interruption advertising and things along those lines now I think it's good for beginners to start with a search network but you don't want to stay there forever you absolutely want to expand once you've got some conversion data into other campaign types like display like performance Max that incorporates all sorts of things if you don't you're missing out on so many Impressions so many clicks so many potential conversions because the whole Suite of Google ads is not just search right there's display there's Google shopping there's YouTube there's

advertising in Gmail there's all sorts of various places you can see your Google ads and you don't want to miss out especially if you've got something to work well so I've got plenty of vids that cover Display Network how to set up performance Max campaigns things like that just go ahead and check out my channel and you can find those right number three you need to be a tech genius to make Google ads work that is not true I'm certainly not a tech genius and I've like I said I've been running Google ads for 15

plus years at this point so Google has put so much time and effort into making the Google ads platform simple and easy to use for advertisers because they recognize that a lot of their customers are small businesses people who aren't massively techsavvy uh they need to be able to come in and get things done and be able to use things and and stuff relatively easily when you go into the Google ad platform it does look intimidating and that's because there are lots of different options you can use now those options are great as you become

a more advanced Google Advertiser because you might want to use them and we certainly enjoy them but having them in there does make it more difficult for beginners my recommendation though is just to stick with it it's not as complicated as it looks just learn I got a load of videos on Google ads that to show you how to how to do it and it doesn't take long you know a few weeks of messing around in there and you're like okay I think I'm starting to understand this this isn't too complicated and get a getting

a feel for it don't let that put you off thinking I'm not texting you can absolutely make Google ads work and without that okay myth number four if you turn off a Google ad campaign it'll never work again I think this kind of used to be true a long time ago I'd still say that the fears around this one were overblown but it's not anymore you can absolutely turn a winning Google ad campaign off and then turn it back on again at a later date and I always say that your business's needs should be prioritized

over what's perfect for the Google ad platform or the optimization system like if you've maxed capacity or you've run out a stock turn your campaign off what's the point in advertising if you can't fulfill on that just because you want to sort of not mess up the Google algorithm and keep your delivery going I think that's uh that's silly absolutely fine to turn campaigns off turn it back on again we do it all the time for our clients and it rarely leads to any issues in fact if you do turn it back on again and

the campaign doesn't perform well it's normally not because you simply turned it off and turned it back on again it's normally because of some other external factor that may not have been accounted for so don't worry about turning them off okay number five the purpose of Google ads is to to generate traffic Google ads is often used interchangeably with PPC payperclick and the early days of Google ads was all about getting clicks clicks clicks sending traffic to a website and then it will convert from there and a lot of Google advertisers are stuck in that

mentality they're stuck in that mindset and that really holds them back because Google ads is much more sophisticated now and instead of thinking of it as a traffic Source think of it more as a source of clients a source of leads a source of sales because you can set up your bidding strategy to optimize for conversions and conversions value and Google is smart enough to adjust your campaigns and optimize them to get you that to get you leads to get your sales as opposed to just clicks and Google advertisers that Optimizer campaigns that way typically

see significantly better results right we'll be getting on with some more Google ads Li some more Google ads Miss in a second before I do that I just want to quickly let you know about my Google ads mentorship program now those who follow my content will know that I also have a meta ads Channel we've had a mentorship program there for 18 months or so and we're now bringing that over to Google ads so we're going to be able to Mentor people in Google ads help them get the absolute best results possible included his daily

onetoone support from Us exclusive course material all the things that you need to get the best possible results from Google ads and actually here's a stat I'm really proud of with our meta ads mentorship program 82% of people that join see a notable Improvement in their return on ad spend within just 30 days of joining so that's absolutely fantastic we're bringing that over to Google ads very very excited if you're interested there is a link in the video description below you can click on that come through to a page on our website book in a

free no obligation call with one of my team members to find out more and hopefully we get a chance to work together number six and this is a good one Google hates small businesses I've literally seen that as a comment on my videos multiple times and it is absolutely not true Google literally generates tens of billions of dollars every year directly from small businesses yes they generate a lot of money from large businesses as well but they by no means only want to work with them and want to turn their back on small businesses that

would be really harmful to Google as a company and they do a lot of things that they can to try and help um small businesses yes do large businesses with larger budgets get preferential treatment of course those customers pay way more all businesses operate like that you probably operate like that it's probably clients and customers that pay a lot more money than others and they probably get preferential treatment that's just that's just the way of the world but they absolutely do not hate small businesses in fact Google ads was really the platform that made marketing

and advertising a lot easier for small businesses cuz because previously they could not afford the newspaper ad or the radio ad or the TV ad just too expensive well Google ads came along and a small business could compete on very specific keywords and they could purchase five clicks a day and be advertising alongside a huge business that's you know bidding on many many many keyword thousands of keywords and getting thousands tens of thousands of clicks a day it allowed small businesses to sort of have a go okay myth number seven Google ads quality score doesn't

matter anymore this is not true quality score affects your ad rank so where you appear on the page it also affects your costs two things that are really really important to the outcome of your Google advertising quality score was seen as a lot more important a number of years ago people now thinking it doesn't really matter again Google's just handling all L this stuff that's not true at all I've got another video about quality score include a link in the description where you can check out more about how to improve your quality score but just

know that it does matter and it is something that we keep an eye on on when we're running our Google ad campaigns okay number eight Google ads are only suitable for online businesses well a lot of the budget for Google advertising is spent on online businesses e-commerce businesses businesses that operate some sort of service digitally remotely but it's absolutely not true that it's only suitable for online businesses like this is really old school thinking there are lots of local businesses either brick and mortar or service-based where you visit the customer that run Google ad campaigns

and in fact those are some of my favorite businesses to advertise because there's way less competition for those businesses than there are for online businesses because if you can deliver your product or service online that means that yes you can potentially work with anyone in the world but also so can all your competitors so you are competing against hundreds thousands tens of thousands potentially um competitors for the same customers whereas if your business only operates locally like people either come to you like you're a barber shop people come to you or you're a plumber you

go to them and you're only operating in that local area you're only competing against other local advertisers so whereas it's really difficult to have the best Google ad campaigns for a you know some sort of e-commerce related business because you're competing against like thousands and of businesses and some that massive budgets are really good at it it's actually not that hard to be the best plumber advertising on Google in your local area because you know you could watch like a handful of my videos and boom you know more than the other people running ads in

that space so um yeah absolutely throw that away the best return on ad spends often come from local businesses with physical locations number nine negative keywords hurt campaign performance I think this really comes down to laziness it takes effort to build out a negative keyword list but it is absolutely worth it I've got another video about negative keywords I'll include a link in the description go ahead and check that out how to build out a negative keyword list but anyone who was run a Google ad campaign on the search Network and that has then taken

a look at the Search terms report as in the searches that are causing the ads to be shown without a well built out negative keyword list it's horrifying you look at all these searches that caused your ads to show and you're like what no I don't want my ads to pop up for those at all that's not relevant that's a waste of money oh look these people even clicked terrible negative keywords really help with that so take time and effort but go ahead and do it okay and that's tied into the next Point as well

number 10 which is you don't need to bother with Google ad assets what used to be referred to as Google ad extensions so things like site link extensions call out extensions structured snippet extensions call extensions price extensions promotion extensions all sorts on they're often called Assets Now although I prefer the term extensions they aren't the biggest needle movers like you're not going to take a campaign and triple its row ass by adding in Google ad assets Google ad extensions but they're absolutely worth doing it's worth setting them up because you might see a 20% bump

in your return on ad spend and particularly if you Haven got any and you can add in some of the most obvious ones like call out um and um site links so yeah again just takes a little bit of effort but well worth doing I've got other videos on Google ad extensions assets again check out my channel you can see a whole bunch of those number 11 if your Google ad campaigns are good enough they will succeed most Google advertisers spend too much time well the ones that are spending a lot of time I've already

talked about there are those that are just trying to let AI do it all not bothering negative keywords not bothering with ad extensions but those that are diligent that are putting in effort that are doing the right things that are learning watching videos like mine that are testing things out which is all great they spend too much of their time proportionally within their Google ad account and less on the other stuff they forget that the landing page is really important that the offer is really important that how the brand is viewed and perceived from your

marketing from your website from your social channels from your packaging from your customer service from your email followup all of that is really important as well to to create this image and build this brand and build this business that consumers uh feel loyal towards that they want to buy from again and again and again which is often the key to really successful business is being able to do that these things are really important if you're generating leads like how good are your sales guys at converting makes a huge difference I've worked with a number of

businesses where they've changed out the sales team brought in people that do a better job and they triple their conversion rates with nothing else haven't touched Google campaign tripled the conversion rates so tripled the revenue tripled the return on ad spend simply by having a sales team that is much better at following up with leads quickly and diligently and then actually once they do get in contact converts much better as well okay number 12 Google ads is a set it and forget it ad platform now this is one where I see this happen a lot

where people come from The Meta advertising World which like I said previously I've got a Channel all about meta advertising and have operated in that space as well for a long time and they come over and with meta ads because it's all sort of interruption advertising you get ad fatigue happen quite a lot you're putting ads in front of people and then they come over to Google and they see that okay I can advertise in the search Network so my ads only appear when someone's searching therefore I don't need to ever change this I don't

need to create new ads the audience is automatically renewing itself because it's only people searching for this at the time that that will see my ads and I understand the logic but by taking that approach you massively miss out on the best possible Google ad results because if you're not in there testing and optimizing over time that your competitors that are doing that they're going to absolutely Crush you because we have taken so many campaigns from a a 1.5 xros to a 4.5 XS over a six-month period and that that's the sort of thing that

can completely change a business it could be barely break even maybe at 1.5 and at 4.5 really profitable able to scale whole business is doing well business owners are making a lot more money it's life-changing for them it's absolutely worth the time and effort to do it so I understand why they think of it as set it forget it but I don't think you should treat it that way 13 Google ads only work if you're in position one now position one being right at the top of the page because there obviously various positions on a

Google search page that you can have a Google ad now when you look at the data position one obviously gets the most clicks okay but the idea that you have to be there in order for your campaign to succeed is not true at all firstly it's much more expensive usually to get a click in position one than even in say position two or position three so sometimes you're going to see a better overall return on ad spend in position two position three as an average and you can look at your average position on page and

assess where you're coming at and simply because they might convert almost as well or as well but perhaps um doesn't cost you as much in terms of cost per click so don't feel that topof page bid range is way too much I could never afford that cost back click it doesn't mean your Google won't work you can pay less in terms of cost per click and you might still be able to get a really nice return on that spend which is the most important thing then you could scale up and spend more and look to

move up and if You' got some really big advertisers in your space like it's absolutely fine for them to take Prime position and you to take the other ones you can still like I said get good results one of the ways to go about doing that is to lean into specificity so let's say you're bidding on some broader terms and the big players in the market like they've got position one maybe position two and and you're sort of there at lower down but if you're or if you can take a really specific angle on that

search like they're searching for a broader thing but would you be interested in this specific thing well anyone who is after that they're much more likely to click on your ad and therefore they more to convert CU they're like ah yeah actually I was searching for this broader thing but I do want this really specific situation here that would be best for me okay myth number 14 all your Google ads budget will be wasted by competitors clicking on your ads so this is one that you hear mostly from beginners or people who haven't even advertised

and it's one of the reasons why don't want to advertise on Google because they think oh isn't there just a load of Click fraud and people just click on your ads and that eats up all your budget so you don't get any leads you don't get get any sales Google is well aware of this as a problem and they put a huge amount of time effort resources into making sure that it doesn't happen in the first place and if it does they do do things to to seek to address it they ban accounts that do

this and all sorts so I understand why it's a concern but it just it's just not worth thinking about there's not much you can do about it Google's got this one for us and it should not put you off advertising on the platform if it was happening enough to take up enough of a budget for it to be like a real issue and something that prevented Google advertisers from being able to get results the platform would not work it would not be the place where businesses spend the most online by far they just wouldn't do

those things if they weren't able to uh to get those results so just not worth thinking about not worth worrying about not much you can do about number 15 you should always bid on your competitors's brand names so when you know what's often referred to as a branded search campaign you can bid on your own Search terms which often a good idea and a lot of advertisers want to bid on their competitor Search terms and they think yeah someone be searching for their competitor but they'll see my ad and they'll click through and they'll go

ahead and buy my thing or sign up to my thing instead again I understand the logic there are times to do it and times to not do it the times to do it are when your offer is obviously Superior to your competitors and you can explain it quickly and easily so let's say for example you offer the same level of service same quality of product but you're massively reduced in terms of cost like your the cost of your thing is way less in competitors okay that might be a really good idea then because when people

are searching for your competitors maybe one that has like a big brand name you know people know about and they see it and they go oh oh look at this one this business here they're saying it's you know half price you can be quite aggressive in your ad copy here and quite cheeky to be honest saying like we're much better than them and we cost a lot less than than um than they do so when you've got that sort of situation I like it when you don't have that sort of situation I'm not a big

fan F cuz what you can often have is someone will search for competitor's brand name if your product is similar or you know maybe even not as good as your competitors well not obviously as good cuz it can't be subtle it can't be like oh you know it's better because of this subtle thing and this technical detail but if your customers don't know then that doesn't really matter what'll of happen is they'll search your ad will pop up they'll click on your ad come through to your website and go oh no hang on this isn't

right this isn't where I wanted to go and they'll quickly hit the back button and they'll research and go to competitor's website and you've just wasted a whole bunch of money and I've seen a lot of businesses waste money um on those campaigns so I think it's good in some circumstances but you need to really think about it and you need to be clever and you need to do it when you can obviously like I said be better in your competition and show it also be really careful if you're like a software or something like

that and you're bidding on brand terms for a competitor and people are often in Google searching for the competitor's name simply because they're already a customer and they just want to log in or access something really good way to waste a lot of budget cuz they're already signed up be really difficult to move them over unless they're unhappy um yeah you need Deep Pockets to take that approach in that sort of space okay number 16 conversion tracking isn't necessary a Google ads menty literally said this to me uh to me recently and I was uh

I was quite surprised conversion tracking is absolutely critical conversion tracking is what allows you to use the better bidding strategies like conversions like conversions value it takes Google ads from a platform that can simply get you traffic to one that can get you leads and get you sales so you absolutely need to make sure that you got conversion tracking set up it's not that difficult to do again Google tries to make it as easy as possible I have videos on my channel if you want to go ahead and look at those and um and check

those out I think they'd be really helpful but like absolutely go ahead and get conversion tracking set up Google is very stunted in what it can do optimization wise without that number 17 Google ads don't work for small budgets this is one that honestly is just an excuse a lot of Google advertisers they they first start advertising on the platform they struggle to get results because they just don't know enough yet they don't have the skills to be able to make it work and they just decide oh I couldn't get Google ads to work cuz

my budget was too small you need a really big budget to make Google ads work that is not true at all because with Google ads you can get really precise with who you're going to put your ads in front of and when so Target very specific keywords that you know you can be very competitive on where you can deliver perfectly for someone searching for that you can Target very precise locations if you're a local business you can get really specific with your messaging with who you're putting ads in front of to make Google ads work

for you and have a very positive profitable return on ad spend that then allows you to scale there are other things you need to do a little bit differently when it comes to small Google ads budgets and I walk you through those in detail in this video here like I said it's absolutely possible to succeed with a small Google ad budget it's possible to succeed with a tiny Google ad budget I've advertised with literally $100 a month before so tiny tiny budgets but like I said you need to change things so go ahead and check

out this video and it'll show you how