How to reduce unqualified clicks on your Google Ads
Madeleine Gasparinatos
September 21, 2023
Metigy Learning
If you’re using Google Ads as part of your lead generation efforts, you need to make sure your ads are getting seen by the right people.
PPC visitors are 50% more likely to buy than organic visitors, so you have a great chance to generate ROI if your ads work.
Unfortunately, paid ads can be tricky to get right.
If your audience targeting is off or your copy doesn’t resonate with your ideal customer type, it’s easy to get unqualified clicks.
Those clicks won’t generate any ROI, and you’ll quickly decide that Google Ads just isn’t the right channel for your brand and could miss out on a big growth opportunity.
In this article, I’ll walk you through three easy ways to reduce the number of unqualified clicks on your search campaigns and get more customers from your ads.
Let’s jump in.
The problem with getting too many clicks
You’re seeing a massive uptick in traffic from your new ad campaign, but when you look closer, none of those clicks are converting. It’s a common problem.
If you’re getting clicks and no conversions, you’re wasting money.
Unqualified leads won’t care about your business, and won’t convert.
The most likely culprit is that you haven’t focused your ad targeting enough, and people are seeing your ads and mistaking them for something they’re not.
Not only does this waste money, but it will confuse your marketing team.
Suddenly you have a spike in traffic, but no one is converting – they’ll start to think that the landing page has issues and can start optimizing for the wrong things.
No matter how many landing page changes they make, the root cause will be the same – your site visitors aren’t a fit for your product or service.
How to reduce unqualified clicks in Google Ads
1. Review your keyword targeting
First things first – check your keywords and consider adding negative keywords.
Negative keywords allow you to stop your ads from showing if someone uses a certain word or phrase in their search.
For example, many businesses will add the word “free” to their negative keyword list, so they don’t show up in searches where people are explicitly looking for a free tool.
Negative keywords are also worth using if you sell a product to a certain industry, that could theoretically be used by others.
For example, let’s say you have a CRM for real estate agents.
If you target “CRM” as a keyword, you’ll show up in searches for people looking for marketing CRMs, Sales CRMs, and more.
Consider adding negative keywords related to those industries, like “marketing”, “sales”, and any additional keywords that appear in your ad reports but aren’t relevant to your business.
To make things easy, you can create these negative keyword lists on an account-wide basis.
You can update them on the go, so whenever you see people clicking your ads on keywords that don’t make sense for your brand, you can update your negative keyword list and they won’t show up again.
2. Use intent-based targeting
If you can get in front of buyers when they’re in the market, you’ll have a higher chance of converting them into customers.
Consider using custom intent audiences to target people with ads at the right time.
In the Audience section during your campaign setup, choose “Custom Intent Audiences”.
From there, you can add in competitor URLs, keywords, and more, to help target audiences based on what they’re searching for and the sites they’re visiting.
For example, if you have a social media scheduling tool, you can add competitor URLs and related terms to get in front of people visiting those sites.
Custom intent audiences are a great way to reduce unqualified spending by only showing ads to people you know are in the market, ready to make a purchase.
3. Make your copy obvious
Poorly worded ads are a major culprit for attracting unqualified clicks.
For the best results, use copy that will resonate with your ideal customer.
Don’t make broad statements that could apply to any industry or personas. Focus your copy on those who make up the majority of your customer base.
Ensure you match your copy to the search intent too.
As mentioned before, if you’re selling to a specific niche, mention that niche in your headline to make it obvious your product is for them.
You only have a few seconds to grab your prospects’ attention, so you need to make those characters count.
Now you can reduce unqualified clicks on your Google Ads
Unqualified clicks to your ads will waste your money and lead to poor campaign results.
If your ad targeting is off, or your ad copy doesn’t resonate with your ideal customer, you’ll attract the wrong people to your site, and your conversion rate will suffer.
The tactics in this article are great first steps to ensuring your Google Ads get seen by your ideal customers when they’re looking for a solution exactly like the one you can provide them.
Start growing your business with Metigy and Google Ads today
Managing a Google Ads Account is difficult. Not only do you have seemingly infinite options and settings to choose from, but you also have to bid against competitors who may have a bigger marketing budget than you have.
At Metigy, we’ve addressed the number one challenge facing SMEs that want to start using Google Ads, the complexity of creating and running a successful Google Ads campaign. We’ve created a simple way for you to run a successful Google Ads campaign, backed by our AI recommendation technology. You can start using Google Ads inside your Metigy account and drive customers to your site.
Try Metigy today and break down the process of creating Google Ads every step of the way with a simple setup and our AI recommendations help you capitalize on missed opportunities through keyword and audience suggestions.
Signup and unlock Google Ads today using our AI Recommendations!
Additional Google Ads resources to get you started
