A real account, a real leak
A new client came to us sure their Google Ads were working. A healthy-looking return and steady leads. One audit later, we'd found £8,200 a month going straight down the drain.
The three biggest culprits
Wasted spend tends to hide in the same places. In this account, three stood out:
- Broad-match leakage: ads showing for searches with no buying intent.
- Location bloat: budget spent in areas the business couldn't even serve.
- A misleading conversion action: newsletter sign-ups counted as sales, which inflated the return the whole account was optimising towards.
If your tracking counts the wrong action, every decision after it is built on sand.
We fixed the tracking, tightened the match types, and cut the dead geography. Same budget, far more revenue, and a return figure we could finally trust.
