When a campaign underperforms, the cause is rarely exotic. In almost every account we review, the wasted spend traces back to a handful of familiar mistakes. Here are the five we see most often, and what to do about each.
1. Broken or duplicated conversion tracking
Modern bidding is only as smart as the data you feed it. If conversions double-count, fire on the wrong action, or miss entirely, the algorithm optimises towards the wrong outcome and spends confidently in the wrong direction. Audit your tracking first and re-check it after any website change.
2. Broad targeting with no exclusions
Reaching everyone is the fastest way to pay for the wrong clicks. Without negative keywords, audience exclusions and placement controls, budget drifts towards cheap, irrelevant traffic that never buys. Tight targeting is not about spending less, it is about spending where the intent is.
3. Sending paid traffic to a weak page
You can win the auction and still lose the sale. A slow page, a confusing layout or a headline that does not match the ad will quietly waste the click you just paid for. Before you scale spend, make sure the destination is ready to convert it.
4. Judging performance on the wrong metric
Clicks, impressions and likes feel like progress, but they do not pay the bills. Tie every campaign to cost per acquisition, return on ad spend or revenue. When you optimise for a vanity metric, you usually get more of it and less of the outcome you actually wanted.
5. Changing everything, all the time
Constant edits reset the learning phase and keep costs high. Bids, budgets and creative all need a stable window to gather signal. Decide on a structure, give it enough conversions to learn, and change one variable at a time so you can tell what worked.
Fix the foundation first
Notice that the biggest wins are not clever bidding tricks. They are trustworthy data and a destination that matches the ad. Most accounts improve simply by cleaning up those two things and then leaving the campaign alone long enough to learn.
If you want a structured review of where your budget is leaking, that is exactly what our PPC audit is built to find.