If you pay an agency or a freelancer to run your Google Ads, the chances are you judge how they're getting on by the monthly report. If that report is full of leads at a low cost per lead and the clicks are coming in cheap then it's easy to feel like the money is well spent, and most of the time nobody digs any further than that. When I took over the Google Ads for a care home group, the first thing I did made those numbers worse, and I still think it was the right call.
What I Found When I Took Over the Account
When I first went through the account I found that the previous agency hadn't excluded brand terms, and on top of that they were actively bidding on the names of the homes. Those brand keywords were mixed in with everything else, so on the face of it the account looked like it was doing really well, with plenty of leads, a low cost per acquisition and cheap clicks.
The reason it looked so good is that brand searches are about as easy a win as you'll get in Google Ads. If someone types the name of a care home into Google then they already know who they're looking for, so they click the result that matches and there's a good chance they'll get in touch. Generally speaking these clicks are cheap as well, and when they're sat in with everything else they pull the averages up for the whole account. This makes it really hard to tell how the rest of the keywords are actually doing, as the people who already knew the homes are propping up the figures for everything else.
I'll leave the previous agency out of this as it's the setup that's interesting here, and what those numbers were mostly telling the client was that people who already knew the homes could still find them.
Why I Switched the Brand Bidding Off
The homes' organic listings and Google Business Profiles were already showing up when someone searched for them by name, so anyone looking for the homes was going to find them whether there was an ad sitting above those results or not. While there is a case for brand protection campaigns, it wasn't needed for this client.
This wasn't great as having the brand keywords mixed in with everything else meant the campaign kept putting the spend there. Brand searches are easy to convert, so they soaked up budget that could have gone on people who hadn't come across the homes yet and were still weighing up their options.
To fix this I removed all of the brand bidding straight away and excluded the brand terms so they wouldn't creep back in. That freed up the budget for keywords where the site couldn't compete organically at that stage, and those are the searches where paying for a click actually puts you in front of someone who might not have found you otherwise.
The Account Looked Worse but the Business Did Better
Once the easy brand conversions were gone the headline numbers in the ads report dropped back, so on paper the Google Ads account got worse. That's what you'd expect when you take the cheapest and easiest leads out of the mix, but if you'd only looked at that report you'd probably have thought I'd broken something.
The people searching for the homes by name didn't stop searching though, and organic and the Google Business Profiles picked up those enquiries instead. At the same time the ad budget was going on searches the site wasn't in a position to win on its own yet, and across every channel the group ended up with more leads overall than it was getting before.
When I work on Google Ads I try to make sure everything lines up with what actually helps the business move forward, and this was a good example of that as I don't manage the organic search for this client. There was nothing in it for me when organic did well and if anything it made the channel I look after look worse.
What This Means If You're Paying for Google Ads
If your Google Ads report looks suspiciously good, the first thing I'd check is whether the account is bidding on your own name. You can usually see this in the search terms report in Google Ads, or you can just ask whoever runs your account whether brand terms are included and whether they're kept separate from everything else.
After that I'd put the ads report to one side for a moment and look at your total enquiries from every channel. If you switched something off in Google Ads and your overall enquiries held up or grew then that tells you far more about how your marketing is doing than a cost per lead figure from one channel. Bear in mind that every platform reports on itself in the best possible light, so I find it's worth pulling the numbers together in one place and comparing them side by side.
I'd also be a little wary of anyone whose numbers look great in isolation, whether that's an agency or a freelancer, and that includes me. Whoever manages your ads should be happy to talk through how their work fits in with everything else you're doing, even when that makes their own numbers look a bit less impressive.
I wouldn't switch brand bidding off on every account. For this care home group the decision came down to the homes' organic listings and Business Profiles already owning those searches, and that's the first thing I'd look at before changing anything in yours. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on it, a PPC audit is a good way to find out whether your account is spending money on people who were going to find you anyway.
If you're not sure whether your Google Ads are pulling their weight then drop me a message on my contact form and we can have a chat about what you're looking to achieve. I'm happy to take a look at how your account is set up, or if you'd rather hand it over completely I also offer ongoing Google Ads management.
