Why Your Google Ads Campaign Isn’t Working
Just because you’re paying for those ads doesn’t mean they’ll automatically show up. In fact, paid search is just as technical as hunting organic traffic. Now, if your Google Ads campaign isn’t yielding results as expected, there could be several reasons for that. Generally, these reasons are related to performance, or they could also be technical issues too.
If you think you could be facing a technical issue with your campaign, there’s a likelihood it could be one of the following issues. I’m also including tips on how to correct those issues.
TECHNICAL REASONS
1. A Problem with Payment
As is the case with most advertisers, setting up an automatic payment allows an ad campaign to auto-renew whenever the current billing period elapses or when you’ve exhausted your payment funds threshold. The problem with this arrangement is that if the payment details linked to your Google Ads account change or are not updated, the payment will not go through. If Google can’t receive your payment, your ads will not show up.
TIP: You should ensure your payment info is up to date. Also, check that your card is not expired.
2. A Small Daily Budget
If you have set up a small budget compared to your keyword bids, the daily budget can run out really fast. This could also affect your PPC if your budget is too low to pay for every time your ad is clicked by potential customers. Once this happens, you’ll notice a limited tag on that particular ad campaign.
TIP: If you cannot afford to adjust the bids or reschedule, your only option is to increase the ad budget.
3. Extreme Bids
When setting up an ad, you’re required to set a daily budget. If this budget is lower than your maximum CPC bid for a given keyword, Google will not show your ad. On the other hand, if your bids are too low, you will most likely miss out due to a reduced overall quality score of your ad.
TIP: To be on the safe side, ensure your ad budget does not conflict with the value of the keyword bids you make.
4. Ad Schedule or Targeting Restriction
When creating an ad, you’re also required to create a schedule. This schedule tells Google when to display your ad. It could be particular days or a specific period that your ad should be shown. Setting up this schedule depends on your research, but do not let the schedule be too constricted.
Geographical location is another factor that you should consider before targeting. If your ad isn’t showing up, there is a high possibility that the geographical area you’ve targeted isn’t producing as much search traffic as needed.
TIP: The best way around this hurdle is using the Observation Setting. This way, you will reach a wider audience as you monitor the performance of the ad.
5. Ad Status
There is a good chance that your ad may have been paused, disapproved, or even removed for specific reasons. You should check the status of your ad whenever you notice underperformance. If the ad is paused, then you only need to enable it. An ad may also fail to show up if the specific ad group in which the ad is placed has been removed. The only way around this is to create a new ad under that category.
TIP: If your ad has been disapproved, it will clearly indicate it in your your profile, but won’t show up on SERPs. Here, you need to revise your ad and align it with the ad policies before it can be approved.
6. Small Search Volume
Sometimes the problem is usually with the keyword itself. Your targeted keyword may be yielding very low or no monthly traffic at all, in which case the ads will not show up on search results. Google automatically deactivates such keywords and then reactivates them when the search volume has reached a certain threshold.
TIP: Don’t stress out over this, instead use the Keyword Planner tool to identify a better-performing keyword in the neighborhood of the low-search volume keyword.
7. Negative Keyword Countering the Active Keyword
As you may already know, a negative keyword allows you to disqualify specific queries, so you do not spend your ad budget on irrelevant searches. As good as this might sound, your negative keywords could be canceling out the active keyword(s).
TIP: You can push your ads out to the desired audience by going through your negative keywords and ensuring none are negating your targeted keywords.
8. Device Bidding
Device bidding enables an advertiser to optimize ads for specific devices, which can be desktop, mobile, or tablet. This way, bids may be increased or decreased for a given device type to utilize the ad budget for the best possible outcome.
A carelessly planned device bidding ad campaign can result in ads not showing up due to a negative adjustment for a particular device. Your ad will thus not show up on those devices.
TIP: To avoid this problem, ensure the bid adjustment is not 100%.
PERFORMANCE REASONS
1. Scattered Ad Group
If your ad group is not focused, that is, the keywords do not synch with the ad, you could be losing valuable traffic. Basically, Google displays your ad depending on the keyword searched. If your keywords are not relative to what the prospect is searching for, you may be displaying ads that don’t align with the search intent. Displaying the wrong ad will affect the way visitors interact with your content. If they do not click, your ad continues to rank lower.
TIP: You should always select keywords that are as closely related as possible. This way, your ads will always be relevant to the search intent and thus giving you a higher chance of converting clicks.
2. Low Click-Through Rate
As mentioned above, if your prospects do not click on the ad, this is registered as a non-performing keyword search according to Google. You already know that content that doesn’t seem to resonate appropriately with users will continually rank lower.
TIP: Creating appealing ad copy and landing pages is your best bet here. Ensure the keywords are chronologically organized to address a customer’s specific search query.
In Conclusion
You now know there are a few reasons why your ads may not be showing up or performing well enough. If you’re not sure of the issue affecting your ads, just go through each of the problems above to make sure the ad meets these minimum requirements. You might discover a few more insights in the process.
