Why Bigger Isn't Always Better with Google Ads

The most common question I get about Google Ads is “what should my ads budget be?” There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, because it depends so much on each business and industry. The better question to answer is: “what would make Google Ads successful for me?” Is it a certain amount of phone calls or website leads per month? Is it a certain number of downloads from your website? It could be based on purchases of a particular item, traffic to a page on your site, or even ‘get directions’ clicks to your store. But without knowing your intended target, budget is truly not the main concern for a Google Ads account.

Of course, we have to be realistic - $100 per month spent on ads won’t really move the needle, and more competitive industries will absolutely require higher overall budgets. The answer to increasing you conversion rate, though, is not necessarily increasing your daily ad spend. Here’s why:

An increase in ad spend means an increase in search traffic.

Wait…that’s a good thing, right? Not necessarily! If you give Google money they will spend it, but that doesn’t mean they will spend it on the best search terms for your business, and when you open up the floodgates of your budget, you will start to get a lot more irrelevant searches than you did before.

I have been working with a Newport News auto shop to run Google Ads for years. Our monthly budget is now five times what it was in the past…and as of the last budget increase, our account efficiency actually went down. The shop started getting phone calls for random competitors, services they don’t offer, and even inquiries to buy auto parts that are completely unrelated to what they actually do.

Giving Google Ads more money might actually decrease your conversions - or at least good conversions - for a time while you work to eliminate the new, irrelevant search terms that pop up. This requires more work for the account manager, and more communication to make sure the searches are relevant. This is why increasing your Google budget should be done very carefully, deliberately, and under professional guidance so the account delivers quality conversions, not just more clicks.

When it comes to Google Ads, bigger is not always better - but over time and with the right amount of work, it can grow your business like nothing else!