Over the past decade of my career at Google, or as an independent consultant now, this is the #1 question that I have heard from customers. Now, there's a lot of different factors affecting campaign performance, but over years of experience working with thousands of customers, I have consolidated some of the top issues, and I will be going through them today.
ps: I am going to use Google Ads as an example but the same logic applies to most of the digital marketing channels already!
"Have you setup conversion tracking?" is often the first question I ask, and you might be surprised that 70% of the customers actually struggled with setting that right. This hurts because your campaigns are spending money, getting clicks and probably conversions too, but there's no way for the campaign to track any conversions. I've seen businesses waste thousands of dollars because their conversion tracking was not set up properly for months and nobody was aware of that. To check if you have this issue, go to Goals > Conversions > Summary in your Google Ads account and check the status of the conversion actions. Also, check if your conversion numbers match what you're seeing in your actual sales data or use Google Tag Assistant to verify tags are firing correctly.
The fix depends on your setup, but start by ensuring your GA4 goals are properly imported into Google Ads if you're using Google Analytics. For e-commerce sites, verify your purchase events are tracking correctly (ideally with actual order values) by making a test purchase yourself. Consider implementing Google's enhanced conversions for better tracking accuracy, especially if you're dealing with iOS privacy changes affecting your data. You can find the complete setup guide at Google's conversion tracking help page and enhanced conversions instructions at here.
Nothing is more frustrating than thinking your campaigns are running when Google has actually suspended them for policy violations. This happens more often than you'd think, and some common policy violations include trademark, financial services and crypto, healthcare, gambling and games, editorial issues and payment; happening at ad level, campaign or even account level. The easiest way to check is looking for red warning banners in the top navigation bar of your Google Ads account or checking your email for suspension notifications from Google. You should also review the "Policy Manager" section in your account for any disapproved ads and verify your payment method is working and hasn't been declined.
The fix starts with reading the specific policy violation carefully and addressing the underlying issue rather than just editing surface-level ad copy. For disapproved ads, edit the problematic content and resubmit for review. If you believe the suspension is incorrect, submit an appeal with detailed explanations about why your business complies with policies. For payment issues, simply update your billing information and resolve any outstanding charges. You can review all Google Ads policies at here and learn about ads approval process at here.
This is a rather minor mistake but could still hurt if you run a small budget and cities that you don't serve eat up your budget. The rule of thumb is that your ads should only target locations that you serve, and languages that you have available in the website. If you run a global business, it's best to open separate campaigns by region or country with an independent budget, depending on your revenue breakdown.
In your targeting options, generally I will only recommend to pick "Where your users are located or regularly located (physical location)", instead of "Locations that your users have shown interest in (location of interest)", unless you have solid business needs such as travel agencies. Check your campaign's "Locations" settings and compare them against where you actually do business, and review your geographic performance reports to see if you're getting traffic from places that don't convert. You can learn about location targeting options here and language targeting here.
Your ads might be perfect, but if your landing page is broken, slow, or provides a terrible user experience, Google will penalise your campaigns with higher costs and lower ad positions. Landing page problems include obvious issues like pages that don't load or return 404 errors, but also subtler problems like mobile-unfriendly designs, slow loading times, or pages that don't match what your ad promised. Google tracks user behavioral signals like bounce rate and time on site, and poor landing pages hurt your Quality Score, which affects both your ad position and cost-per-click. You can test your landing page experience at PageSpeed Insights and review landing page best practices at here.
This is one of my favourite diagnosis because the impact is so dramatic when you fix it. Remember this: campaigns and ad groups can compete with each other when they run the same targeting or keywords. And when that happens it will either i) drive up the bids amongst yourself or ii) one campaign/ ad group taking all traffic and the other got killed slowly. You'll notice this if you see the same keywords appearing across multiple campaigns, if your Search Terms reports show overlap between campaigns, or if you notice your certain ad groups or campaigns have sudden drop in traffic.
Does it mean you should run everything within one single ad group? No! Because in this way the ad copies will not be tailored and click-through rate will suffer, and you cannot have distinctive budget control. The key is to organise the structure by location, business line and audience theme, for example, if you run a stationery business in UK & France:
While we have talked about search terms cannibalization, let's cover another extreme which is search terms that go too niche, and I cannot emphasise how often I have seen small business owners encountering this issue. You might have created the perfect ad, but if only 10 people per month search for your keywords, your campaign will barely run. Business owners often use industry jargons or their company name that customers never actually search for, or using all exact matches that miss out the broader terms people use. To spot this issue, you'll notice if your keywords have "Low search volume" status directly in your campaigns.
The quickest way to fix this is using Google's Keyword Planner to verify search volume for your keywords, or look at the "Search terms" report to see what people are actually searching for when they find your ads. The optimal balance is to include search terms that will receive the right amount of traffic you need for your advertising budget. For example, if you run a $10 daily budget and each search term on average costs $0.5, then you should be expecting 20 clicks which translate to 500 impressions/searches (assuming a 4% click-through rate). Make sure you have enough keywords that can generate this volume. Consider targeting competitor names or category terms that people actually search for, and have a right mix of broad match, phrase match and exact matches. You can access Google's Keyword Planner here and learn about different keyword match types here.
Search campaigns are intent-based campaigns, which traffic is dependent on user intent. Reach campaigns such as display, YouTube or most social campaigns are the opposite: you push ads to users and that is completely depending on your targeting. Generally the campaign will figure its way to exhaust the budget, but some common issues include:
You'll know this is happening when you see "Limited by targeting" notifications in your campaign status, tiny audience size estimates during campaign setup, or by viewing the demographic reports. Generally, it's always better to start with broader targeting and layer in restrictions gradually as the campaign learns. Have a mix of affinity & in-market audiences, and run remarketing or customer match only in later stages. Considering using "Observation" mode which allows you to see performance data without restricting your audience. You can learn about different display targeting options here and "observation" targeting here.
This happens when businesses choose bidding strategies that work against their actual objectives. Using Target ROAS when you need volume growth will limit your reach, while using Maximise Clicks when you need efficient conversions will waste budget on low-quality traffic. The mismatch becomes obvious when you compare your campaign goals against your bidding strategy, or when you notice that increasing budgets doesn't improve the metrics you actually care about.
Align your bidding strategy with your real business objectives. If your company is new and you need brand awareness and website traffic, use tCPC and check your Impression Share. If you want leads or sales at a specific cost, use tCPA. If your business is at the maturity stage and you need to protect return on investment, use tROAS. Don't be afraid to test different bidding strategies for a few weeks to see which delivers better results for your specific goals. You can compare bidding strategies at here and learn about tROAS bidding here.
After identifying the right strategies, should you dive right into it? Not really.
A lot of customers come to me complaining that the ads could barely show, and 70% of the time this is because they are using tCPA (target cost per acquisition) or tROAS (target return on ad spend) before accumulating enough data. You'll notice this if you review your conversion volume over the past 30 days and see very low numbers, if your campaigns show "Learning" status that never seems to complete. As the name suggests, tCPA and tROAS means that the system is going to prioritise ads to people who have high likelihood to convert and purchase, and how do they know? Through learning, which means data accumulation. Without a stable pattern of conversion data, there's no way the system can derive patterns about your ideal customer profile and work accordingly.
As a rule of thumb, when you are new to Google ads, always start with tCPC while enabling conversion tracking. Shift only to tCPA once you have accumulated at least 30 conversions per month and in a stable manner; and only shift to tROAS after achieving stable success in tCPA for a while. The key is to be patient and build a foundation of data before expecting Google's algorithm to work miracles. You can learn more about Smart Bidding here and get guidance on when to use different bidding strategies here.
Even with enough data, setting a tCPA that's 50% lower than your historical performance or a tROAS that's double your current returns will cause your campaigns to barely spend any budget. Business owners want better performance, which is understandable, but they set targets based on wishful thinking rather than realistic expectations based on their actual data. You'll recognise this problem when your campaign status shows "Limited by bid strategy", or when you see suggestions for bid adjustments in "Recommendations" section.
Set initial targets based on your recent historical performance, then make gradual improvements of 10-15% at a time rather than dramatic changes. Allow 2-3 weeks for the algorithm to adjust to new targets before making further modifications, and monitor performance closely to adjust targets based on actual results rather than arbitrary goals. Remember that Google's algorithm is optimising within the constraints you give it, so unrealistic targets will simply prevent your ads from showing. Learn about automated bid strategies here and try the bid simulator to estimate the right bid here.
Another common mistake. I have met customers who are obsessed with optimisation, and they literally change the campaign details every single day.
Don't do that.
Google's algorithms need time to learn and optimise, from smart campaigns to bid strategies and even ad copies. And from what I know, Google's campaigns tend to take a longer ramp-up time compared to other channels such as Instagram or Tiktok, but could become more stable once that period has passed. You'll know you're doing this if your campaigns are constantly showing "Learning" status. Remember this: every change in the system will trigger the algorithms to restart. I see advertisers panic when performance dips for a day or two and immediately start changing bids, budgets, targeting, and creative assets all at once. This constant tinkering creates a perpetual learning period where the algorithm never gets stable enough to optimise effectively.
Here's my advice. Do not make changes to your performing ad copy (as it may re-learn and lose its good performing status). Wait for 7 days at least after every change has been made, and even longer for advanced bidding strategies like tCPA/ tROAS. Focus on significant, strategic changes rather than constant minor adjustments. You can learn about optimising guide here.
This one seems obvious I know, and you see the pop-up bar in the ads account every single day. You'll know this is your problem when you see "Limited by budget" in your campaign's budget column, when you check the Ad Schedule report and notice your ads stop showing early in the day, or when you review your Search Lost IS (budget) metric and see high percentages. I know it's tempting to set a lower budget to put the algorithm "on a mission" to be efficient, but unfortunately, if your budget runs way lower than the amount it should be (like 70% lower), that is hinting to the system that they should not prioritise traffic to the campaign, and could slowly put your campaign to stop running.
Calculate a realistic daily budget you actually need based on your conversion goals rather than arbitrary comfort levels, and if you really have a tight one, narrow your targeting (or even by ad scheduling) accordingly as well so that the system can send the optimal traffic to the right people, rather than running out of dollars by midday. Remember that being too conservative with budgets often costs more in the long run because you miss out on profitable opportunities. Learn how daily budgets work at here.
Sometimes your campaigns aren't broken, and the change is driven by market developments. New competitors entering your space, seasonal demand shifts, or broader economic changes can all affect how much you need to bid to maintain the same ad positions and traffic volume. This is especially common in rapidly growing industries or during economic transitions when businesses change their advertising strategies. For example, when Temu is entering the market, its aggressive advertising strategies are going to drive up the auction in the entire ecommerce industry; when news about the TikTok ban was released, advertisers fled from the platform and bids plummeted; when iOS privacy updates launch, all conversion metrics dropped across channels. Noticing this requires staying close to market updates, spotting gradual increases in cost-per-click without corresponding changes in your account or declining impression share even with the same budgets, or checking if there's new competitor ads appearing for your brand terms.
Monitor your auction insights reports to see who you're competing against and how your competitive position has changed over time. Consider adjusting your bidding strategy or budgets to account for increased competition, or look for less competitive keywords and audiences that still reach your target customers. Focus on improving your ad quality and landing page experience to compete more effectively rather than just increasing bids. You can access auction insights at here.
Apart from market fluctuations, consumers change their behaviour too. Some obvious trends include annual seasonalities such as Christmas, Black Friday, Easter that affects most industries, or cultural festivals such as Diwali, Ramadan, Chinese New Year etc. However, consumer behaviours are also driven by trends, culture or even political situations. You'll notice this through declining search volume for previously successful keywords, changes in the search terms triggering your ads, or conversion tracking that seems less accurate than it used to be.
Regularly review your search terms reports to identify new search patterns and add relevant keywords to capture evolving customer language. Review search trends at Google Trends and identify new trends that could work for your businesses and ad copies.
I've covered all the common problems when it comes to campaign performance issues. Most advertisers will fall into some of them inevitably, but the good news is you can now fix them right away! Start with a systematic check of your account:
The key is to be methodical rather than making random changes when performance drops. Most campaign issues have logical explanations, and once you know what to look for, they're usually straightforward to fix. Get these basics right, and you'll see your campaigns start performing the way they should.
Thank you for reading until the end :) I'm Loretta, and I've spent the past decade at Google working with thousands of customers all over the world. My work spans digital marketing, business transformation, strategic partnerships, program management, and app development.
I believe AI will empower individuals more than ever, and I'm here to translate my decade of experience into simple, actionable advice to help you achieve your goals. I post bi-weekly about digital marketing tips, industry updates and best practices.
Want more tips like these? I offer 45-minute strategy sessions to help founders scale their businesses, or cover specific challenges such as career development, getting into tech etc. Book a free introductory call with me.
And if you still haven't, check out my free Ultimate Digital Marketing Metrics Glossary 2025 and Beginner's Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy.
Find out if MentorCruise is a good fit for you – fast, free, and no pressure.
Tell us about your goals
See how mentorship compares to other options
Preview your first month
