Cutting wasted ad spend in 30 days

Most ad accounts waste money in the same few places: clicks from searches that were never going to buy, budget spent where nothing converts, and tracking that hides which is which. You can find and fix most of it in about a month.

We cannot promise how much you will save, since it depends on how the account is set up today. What we can give is the order of work. Run this on a Google Ads account that has at least a few weeks of data.

What counts as waste

Type of waste	What it looks like	Where to look
Wrong searches	Clicks on “free”, “jobs”, “how to”, or a service you do not offer	Search terms report
Wrong places or times	Spend in areas you do not serve, or at hours nobody answers	Location and schedule reports
Wrong devices	Lots of clicks on one device and no enquiries	Device report
Weak ads or pages	High cost per click, low conversion rate	Ad and landing page reports
Broken tracking	Conversions counted twice, or not at all	Conversions settings

Week 1: measure properly

You cannot cut what you cannot see.

1. Check each conversion action. Is it a real enquiry (form send, call, WhatsApp tap) or just a page view?
2. Remove duplicate counting, for example a thank-you page and a button click both counted for the same lead.
3. Link GA4 and Search Console.
4. Write down the baseline: spend, clicks, conversions, cost per conversion for the last 30 days.

Bad tracking is the most costly leak, because every later decision is made on wrong numbers.

Week 2: clean up the searches

1. Open the search terms report and sort by cost.
2. For each term that spent money, ask: would we want this customer?
3. Add clear misses as negative keywords. Use a shared list for ones that apply to the whole account. Start with exact or phrase negatives so you do not block good searches by accident.
4. Look for patterns, such as “free”, “cheap”, “jobs”, “course” or other cities, and add them in groups.
5. Repeat every week from now on.

See how match types work in Google’s help pages, which is worth knowing before adding negatives.

Week 3: move the money

1. Compare campaigns by cost per enquiry, not by clicks.
2. Move budget from campaigns that spend without enquiries to those that bring them. Do it in steps, not all at once.
3. Check location reports and exclude areas you do not serve.
4. Check the hours when enquiries arrive and when someone is free to answer. If calls go unanswered at night, consider limiting the schedule.
5. Look at devices. If mobile spends and never converts, check the mobile page before cutting it: the cause may be a broken form.

Week 4: ads and landing pages

1. Pause ads with a low click-through rate once better ones have enough data to compare.
2. Make the ad say what the page says. A mismatch wastes the click.
3. Review the landing page for the basics: a clear heading, one main action, proof, a short form. See five on-page fixes.
4. Make sure the phone number and form work on a phone. Test them yourself.

After the 30 days

• Review search terms and spend every week.
• Keep a change log: date, what you changed and why. It stops you repeating mistakes.
• Change one thing at a time where you can, and give each change a fair run before judging.
• Decide the target cost per enquiry from your own margins, not from an industry average.

Things we avoid

• Cutting a campaign on three days of data.
• Turning off brand search without checking what it protects.
• Letting automated recommendations change the account without reading them.
• Promising a fixed saving before looking at the account.

If you would like a second opinion on where your budget goes, our Performance Marketing team can review the account. See also a simple Google Ads structure that scales, or ask for a free consultation.