By Vicki12 May 20269 min read
You don't need to be a paid media specialist to spot a Google Ads account being mismanaged. You need to know the specific dozen places where waste hides. Walk through these in your next agency review and you'll learn more in 30 minutes than most founders learn in a year.
01Account structure and intent
- Broad match dominance. If most of your spend is on broad-match keywords, your agency is letting Google decide what to spend on.
- Search terms vs. keywords mismatch. Pull the search-terms report. If your spend is going to terms unrelated to your offer, that's wasted budget.
- No negative keyword list. A serious account has hundreds of negatives. A coasting account has none.
- Single campaign for everything. Brand, prospecting and retargeting bundled together is a transparency problem, not a strategy.
02Tracking and conversion integrity
- Conversions counted at form-fill, not at qualification. The cheapest conversion is the worst lead.
- Multiple identical conversion actions. Inflates the number you see in the dashboard.
- No CRM-side validation. If platform conversions don't reconcile to your CRM weekly, you're flying blind.
- Enhanced conversions disabled. Indicates the account hasn't been touched in 18+ months.
03Spend allocation and bidding
- Max-conversions bidding with no target CPA. You've handed Google a blank cheque.
- Brand campaign eating a third of spend. You're paying to capture traffic that would have come anyway.
- Display network on by default. Almost always burns budget on junk inventory.
- No bid adjustments by device or geography. Suggests no one is reviewing the data.
We run all 12 of these checks (and 40+ more) as part of the Marketing & Data Audit. You get a written report and a debrief with your leadership team. See the full scope →
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Written by Vicki
Founder of North Route. Fractional CMO to founders between £1M and £20M in London and Dubai.