If You Havin Girl Problems I Feel Bad For You Son I got 99 Problems But Google Aint one.
Two years ago when I first got started with google ads I had a mentor who used to say he was the glutton for punishment. at the time I wasnt sure what he meant by this. after working at an agency for 2.5yrs I get it now. professionals make mistakes. And having made all of these myself I now realize why agencies charge what they charge even if you hate working with them.
Theres no shortcuts or substitutes to generating results. Running ads is hard. Failure isnt bad though. Its just feedback & gaining experience. Off the top of my head I decided to write down all the things that could go wrong if your starting your PPC journey.
“Why are my campaigns not working?”
Sometimes its not an easy or short answer. that said lets get into it...
your conversion tracking isnt setup right.
your conversion tracking breaks.
your form is in an iframe.
you dont know how to setup conversion tracking.
you dont know how slow the google ads dashboard is.
you dont understand how google, ga4 & gtm work for conversion tracking.
Google makes changes to the dashboard.
All of a sudden money buttons are stashed in other places.
you dont understand how to use editor
you dont know how to keep track of thousands of ads running at once in just one account.
you dont know how to structure your campaigns based on typir business.
you dont know how to deal with ad disapprovals.
you dont know how to appeal your ads.
you dont know how to manage spend.
you dont understand how pacing works.
your keywords are low search volume.
you dont have the capital to keep testing.
your budget isnt big enough.
you dont know how to verify your business in google.
your budget is big enough but, you dont know to spend it effectively.
you dont understand pros & cons of seasonality.
you dont understand google tag manager.
you dont know that conversion tracking is a journey.
you dont know about omnipresence.
you dont understand how to analyze data.
your keywords target one territory & your location targeting is set to another territory.
campaigns can stop performing & you dont have any clue why.
search partners is turned on.
you dont know how to run tests.
you touch your campaigns too much.
you dont understand when to apply max clicks vs max conversion.
you dont understand when to use portfolio bidding strategies.
you dont understand max conversion value.
you dont know how to deal with spam.
you dont know where your spam is coming from.
you dont know creative specs so display gets disapproved.
you might forget your ads for a week & that whole week ads are disapproved.
your ads arent maxed out with full sitelinks, callouts & snippets.
you dont have any image assets.
you dont refresh any of your assets over time.
you dont know why your image assets arent showing.
you dont know about applying account associations.
your not doing any remarketing.
your audiences arent setup in GA4.
you dont know how to apply filters in editor.
you dont know how to apply filters in the google ads dashboard.
you dont know how to test forms.
you dont know about the 12 different ways a form can be tracked.
you dont know what to do if you cant get form tracking.
you dont know how ad strength works.
you dont understand that applying the wrong audience can stop your
campaigns from getting impressions & clicks.
your CPC is too high.
your CPC is low with high cost per yet your not raising budget.
you dont know when to keep your CPC high.
you dont know how search impression share works.
you dont know how to qualify customers in copy.
you dont know that ad disapproval affects spend.
you or your developer updates the website without copying over the same gtm.
your measurement IDs & gtm / ga4 containers are mixed up.
you dont know how to turn off dynamic assets.
you dont know how to lower cost / conversion.
you dont have a baseline of data to work off of.
you dont understand the lag in your conversion data.
you dont understand how sessions & users can be compared to your google data.
you dont understand how to use the compare button with timeframes to make sense of your tests.
you dont understand the value of reporting in looker.
you dont know what optimized targeting does & when it can be applied.
you dont maximize all 15 headlines in your rsa.
you dont maximize all of 4 descriptions in your rsa.
you dont understand redirect urls & why google would disapprove them.
you dont check your daily budget enough.
you check your daily budget too much.
you change your daily budget every other day.
you dont know how to use change history to assess an account.
you dont have a negative kw list applied at the account level.
you dont have a negative kw list sculpting your campaigns at the adgroup level.
you dont know the difference between campaign, ad group & ad levels.
you dont have any tracking templates installed.
you dont know how to apply filters in editor & in the gAds dashboard
you dont know how to link GA4 to google ads.
you dont know how to use your ga4 data.
you dont understand what limited by bid strategy means.
you dont understand the learning phase & what triggers it.
your tracking templates are installed at the wrong level.
if you made it this far & youve never ran ads before then what you just read probably sounds like chinese or french. To me this is second nature because Ive put 2.5yrs of time to become fluent in googles platform. Its no different than lifting weights or going for long runs. It takes time. And by the off chance you dont have the time to learn or want to buy your time back then consider hiring the professional.