Solved: Google Ads Campaigns Not Converting (Strategy Fix)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on the issues you're seeing with your Google Ads. It's clear you've been really thorough and gone through the usual technical checklist, which is more than most people do, so fair play to you for that.

But tbh, I think you might be looking in the wrong place. The list you've made is all about the technical settings inside Google Ads – the toggles, the buttons, the bidding strategies. While those things have to be right, they're rarely the reason a campaign completely fails to get off the ground. It's almost never the tool that's broken; it's the strategy you're feeding into it.

You can have 'perfect' settings, but if you're targeting the wrong people with the wrong message and an unconvincing offer, you're just efficiently spending money to get ignored. The real problems usually sit outside the ad account: in your understanding of the customer, the strength of your offer, and the way you communicate its value. I'll walk you through how we look at these things, because I suspect the key to fixing your campaigns is in here.

You'll need to stop targeting demographics and start targeting a nightmare...

Right, let's get this out of the way. The single biggest mistake I see people make, and the one that costs them the most money, is defining their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) with sterile, useless demographics. "Men aged 25-40 who like sports" or "Companies with 50-100 employees in the tech sector". This tells you absolutely nothing of value. It leads to generic ads that try to speak to everyone and end up convincing no one.

You need to stop thinking about who your customer is and start obsessing over the problem state they're in. What is the specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare that keeps them awake at night? Your product is the aspirin for that headache. Your ads need to talk about the headache, not the aspirin.

For an eCommerce store selling, let's say, high-quality handcrafted leather bags, the demographic might be "women aged 30-50 with high disposable income". Useless. The nightmare is something else entirely. Maybe it's the frustration of buying a new "designer" bag every year because the cheap materials fall apart. It's the embarassment of a strap snapping in the middle of a client meeting. It's the feeling of being just another face in the crowd with a mass-produced accessory that has no story.

Your ICP isn't a person; it's a pain point. Once you know the pain, you can build your entire strategy around it. The keywords you target on Google won't be "women's leather bag". They'll be things like "durable leather work bag", "buy it for life handbag", or "full grain leather tote that won't break". See the difference? One is a product category. The other is a solution to a real problem. The person searching the second phrase is a million times more likely to buy from you.

This thinking should influence everything. Your ad copy, your landing page, your product descriptions. You aren't just selling a bag; you're selling the confidence of owning something that will last a lifetime, the peace of mind that it won't fail you, and the pride of owning a unique, handcrafted item. Do this work first. If you haven't defined the nightmare, you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

I'd say your offer is probably broken...

Now we get to what is, 99% of the time, the actual reason ads don't convert: the offer is rubbish. And I don't mean your product is rubbish. I mean the offer is. A product is not an offer. The offer is the entire value proposition wrapped up in one compelling package. It's the product, the price, the reason to buy now, the guarantee that removes risk, and the story that makes it resonate.

You've got a PMax campaign running. That means Google is showing your products across Shopping, Display, YouTube, etc. If people are seeing it but not buying, the system is working – it's finding eyeballs. The problem is what those eyeballs are seeing isn't compelling enough to make them act.

Let's go back to the eCom store example. Looking at your checklist, I can guess what your website might be like without even seeing it. You probably have product pages with a few photos and a price. That's not an offer. That's a catalogue entry. Why should I buy from you, a store I've never heard of, when I can go to Amazon or John Lewis and get something similar tomorrow with free returns?

Your offer needs to be built to overcome that inertia and distrust.

• -> Photography & Video: Are your product images professional? Do they show the product in use, from every angle? Do they show the detail and quality? We've seen how a comprehensive approach can yield great results. For one of our clients, a women's apparel brand, we helped them achieve a 691% return on ad spend. A video of you showing the product can work wonders.
• -> Product Descriptions: Is there a description? Does it just list specs, or does it tell a story? Does it talk about the pain points we just identified? Instead of "Made from full-grain leather," try "Crafted from a single piece of full-grain leather that develops a beautiful patina over time, so your story becomes part of its own."
• -> Trust & Social Proof: Why should I trust you with my money? Where are the customer reviews? Testimonials? Trust badges (secure checkout, etc.)? A link to your Etsy store if you have one with hundreds of positive reviews? An 'About Us' page that tells your story? Without these, you look like a risk.
• -> The 'Why Now?': Is there any urgency? A limited-time offer, a first-purchase discount, a free gift with purchase? People are masters of procrastination. You need to give them a reason to buy today, not "later".
• -> Risk Reversal: What's your returns policy? Is it clear? Is it generous? A strong guarantee (e.g., "Lifetime guarantee on all our stitching") removes the perceived risk of buying from a new brand.

Your ads can only be as good as the page they send people to. You've spent weeks tweaking the campaign settings; spend the next few weeks relentlessly improving your offer and your product pages. A 1% improvement in your website's conversion rate is worth more than a 10% improvement in your click-through rate. It's where the real money is made.

You probably should stop trusting "Perfect Tracking"...

I saw your note: "Conversion Tracking Misconfiguration - Setup through Shopify (Perfect Tracking)". This one sentence tells me a lot. There is no such thing as 'perfect tracking'. Believing that is one of the most dangerous assumptions you can make in paid advertising. The Shopify integration is a great start, but it's just the beginning and it can absolutely be configured incorrectly or, more likely, be misinterpreted.

The tag firing is just step one. The real questions are:

• What are you tracking? Are you just tracking 'Purchase'? What about 'Add to Cart' or 'Initiate Checkout'? If you're not getting sales, these micro-conversions are your only clues to what's going wrong. You need to see where people are dropping off. If you have lots of Add to Carts but no Purchases, the problem isn't your ads; it's your checkout process, your shipping costs, or a lack of trust at the final hurdle.
• Is the value correct? Is it accurately passing back the revenue for each sale, excluding shipping and taxes? If not, your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) data is complete fiction. We once onboarded a client whose 'perfect' tracking was firing the purchase tag twice on the thank you page. Their ROAS looked fantastic in Google Ads, but their bank account told a very different story. They were losing money hand over fist and had no idea.
• How are you attributing it? This is the big one. By default, Google Ads uses a 'Data-Driven' attribution model. This means it assigns fractional credit for a sale to multiple touchpoints (e.g., someone clicks a Shopping ad, then a week later clicks a Search ad and buys). Shopify's internal analytics, on the other hand, typically uses a 'last click' model. This means they will NEVER match up. You can't just look at one or the other. You need to understand what each one is telling you.

Thinking your tracking is 'perfect' stops you from asking these critical questions. You need to become a sceptic. Question the data constantly. Cross-reference Google Ads with Shopify Analytics and Google Analytics. Do they tell a similar story, even if the numbers aren't identical? If Google Ads reports 20 sales and Shopify reports 2, you have a massive technical problem, no matter what the green 'tracking status' light says.

Let me show you how much attribution can change things. Imagine a customer journey: they see a Display ad, then click a Shopping ad, then finally search your brand name and buy. How you value those steps completely changes which campaigns you think are working.

We'll need to look at a new way to diagnose the problem...

Your checklist is linear. It assumes you can fix things one by one. But an advertising funnel isn't linear; it's a system where each part affects the next. You need to diagnose it like a mechanic, not a box-ticker. The data tells you where the engine is failing. Forget your list and start asking these questions instead, in this order.

1. Are you getting impressions? If yes, move to step 2. If no, then and only then do you have a technical problem from your list. It's likely budget, bidding, or a very narrow targeting issue. But it sounds like you're past this point.
2. Are you getting clicks? (What's your Click-Through Rate - CTR?) If you have lots of impressions but a very low CTR (say, under 1% for Search, or under 0.5% for Shopping/PMax), the problem is your 'ad'.
   • For Search Ads: Your ad copy doesn't match the keyword's intent, or it's not compelling enough. It doesn't address the 'nightmare'.
   • For Shopping/PMax Ads: Your product image is poor, your price is uncompetitive, or your product title is bad. Your thumbnail is your entire ad in this context. It has to be good.
   If your CTR is decent, move to step 3.
3. Are you getting 'Add to Carts'? (What's your landing page conversion rate?) If you're getting plenty of clicks but very few people are adding products to their cart, the problem is your product page and your offer. This is the big one. This is where most eCommerce businesses fail. Go back to the section on 'Your offer is probably broken'. This is your homework. It's your photos, your descriptions, your lack of reviews, your pricing. The ad did its job – it got an interested person to the right page. The page failed to do its job.
4. Are you getting to the checkout? (What's your cart abandonment rate?) If you get lots of 'Add to Carts' but few people start the checkout process, the issue could be a poor user experience, but it's often a signal that people are using the cart as a 'wishlist'. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it means you absolutely need to have retargeting campaigns set up to bring them back.
5. Are you getting sales? (What's your checkout abandonment rate?) If people start the checkout but don't complete the purchase, the problem is almost always a surprise at the end. The number one killer here is unexpected shipping costs. Be transparent about shipping upfront. Other culprits are a lack of payment options (no PayPal, etc.) or forcing account creation.

This diagnostic process forces you to look at the whole customer journey. Your problem isn't that your "campaign isn't working". Your problem is that you have a specific leak somewhere in your funnel. This framework will help you find where it is.

You'll need to calculate what you can *really* afford to pay...

You mentioned setting your budget to "5 times above the selling cost of the product". This is a good start, but it's still thinking short-term. It focuses on the first purchase. Great businesses are built on repeat custom. The real question isn't "what does this product sell for?", but "what is a new customer worth to me over their entire lifetime?". This is the Lifetime Value (LTV).

Once you know your LTV, you know what you can *actually* afford to spend to acquire a customer (your Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC). This is the single most empowering metric in marketing. It frees you from the tyranny of trying to get cheap clicks and lets you focus on acquiring high-value customers, even if it costs a bit more upfront.

Let's do some rough maths. It's simpler than it sounds.

• Average Order Value (AOV): What's the average amount a customer spends in one transaction? Let's say £75.
• Purchase Frequency: How many times does a customer buy from you in a year? Let's say 1.5 times.
• Customer Lifetime: How many years do they stay a customer? Let's say 2 years.
• Gross Margin: What's your profit margin on each sale? Let's say 40%.

LTV = (AOV * Purchase Frequency * Customer Lifetime) * Gross Margin

LTV = (£75 * 1.5 * 2) * 0.40 = £225 * 0.40 = £90

In this example, every new customer you acquire is worth £90 in profit to you. A common rule of thumb is to aim for a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £30 to acquire that customer and still have a very healthy, profitable business. Suddenly, a Cost Per Action (CPA) of £25 doesn't look so scary, does it? It looks like a money-printing machine.

Without knowing this number, you're flying blind. You're turning off campaigns that feel 'expensive' but might actually be bringing in your best, most loyal customers. Use the calculator below to get a feel for your own numbers. It will change how you think about your budget and bidding entirely.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

So, to pull this all together. You've been busy polishing the bonnet of the car, but the engine won't start because there's no fuel in the tank. You need to stop focusing on the technical minutiae inside Google Ads and start focusing on the fundamental strategy of your marketing. Here's a summary of what I'd be doing if I were in your shoes.

Working through these strategic points is a lot harder than ticking off a technical checklist, I know. It involves getting deep into the mindset of your customer and being brutally honest about your own website and offer. It's work that many business owners avoid, which is why they end up stuck in a cycle of launching campaigns, seeing no results, and blaming the ad platform.

This is where expert help can make a huge difference. An experienced eye can spot the strategic flaws in minutes that might take you months to uncover. We've seen these patterns play out across hundreds of accounts, from eCommerce stores to B2B software companies. I remember one client with a cleaning products store; their campaigns were doing okay but not great. By applying a more robust strategy, we helped them achieve a 633% return and a 190% increase in revenue. It wasn't about changing the bidding; it was about changing the overall approach.

If you'd like to go through your own campaigns and strategy in this level of detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We'd have a look at your account and website together on a call and give you a tailored list of actionable next steps. It's often the fastest way to get clarity on what really needs fixing.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh