Turn wasted ad spend into ROI: how a Google Ads audit can unlock new growth

Think your paid ads are killing it? The data might tell a different story. 

Research shows that 76% of PPC budgets are wasted on poorly targeted keywords, oversaturated audiences, or missed opportunities in ad copy and timing. Are you tracking below the average PPC conversion rate of 3.75% across Google search ads? Or maybe your cost-per-click is way above the $3.33 average for B2B Google search ads? If these numbers sound familiar—or if they’re much worse—have you considered why?

An audit is your chance to dig deeper, pinpoint what’s truly driving ROI, and identify what’s underperforming and draining your budget. (9 out of 10 keywords you bid on produce nothing!) 

Whether your goals are to drive leads, boost sales, or increase brand awareness, a strategic audit can expose hidden growth opportunities and provide the clarity you need to make your ad dollars work harder. In fact, companies that perform regular audits report a decrease in PPC costs while increasing conversion rates.

Ready to get into it? Here’s a no-BS, step-by-step guide to optimizing your campaigns for better results.

Step 1: Lock in your goals

Before anything else, get crystal clear on your primary campaign goal. While it’s tempting to expect your campaigns to do everything—generate leads, drive sales, and boost brand awareness— focusing on one clear objective will help you drive every decision you make and prevent you from tossing your budget at vague aspirations.

• Ask yourself: If your campaign only achieves one thing, what should it be? Then set up KPIs that speak to that goal: if it’s leads, measure cost per lead (CPL) and conversion rates; if it’s revenue, you’ll want to track return on ad spend (ROAS) or revenue per lead.

Action step: Define your primary goal, set achievable KPIs, and make sure they’re connected to your larger business goals.

Step 2: Take a high-level look at performance

Now that your goals are clear, it’s time to zoom out and analyze your campaigns from a distance. How do they work together? Are there gaps? Misalignments? This bird’s-eye view will help identify areas where you’re under-performing or highlight standouts relative to your goals.

• Key metrics: Start with total ad spend, lead volume, and CPL. Compare these numbers to the goals you set in Step 1. Are you on track, or do adjustments need to be made?

• Gut check: Be real about your goals. Based on historical performance, is it achievable within your budget? For example, if your budget’s $10,000/month and your CPL is $1,000, getting 50 leads may be a fantasy. Instead, adjust for more reasonable gains, like boosting lead volume by 10% or reducing CPL from $1,000 to $900.

• Campaign performance: Review individual campaign performance over time. Are top click campaigns seeing proportionate conversion volume? If not, your keywords may be too broad, or your offer is misaligned with your audience. Are campaigns driving the bulk of conversion volume restricted by budget? If so, you may need to reevaluate campaign budget allocation. 

• Sitewide performance: No channel works in a vacuum. Since paid search is primarily demand capture, it’s heavily influenced by interactions much earlier in the journey across channels like social, organic search and email. Reviewing sitewide performance is important to understand the interplay and help identify any changes in one stage of the journey that might impact others. Tracking these interactions will help you spot trends, adjust tactics, and make sure each channel pulls its weight in your overall strategy. 

Action step: Review your overall campaign performance, paying close attention to total ad spend, lead volume, and traffic sources. Compare these metrics to your goals and adjust accordingly. If there’s a mismatch between proportional click and conversion volume, dig deeper to find the source. 

Step 3: Account deep-dive

With a macro view in hand, you can now dive deeper into individual campaigns to identify winners and losers. A more granular evaluation helps you pinpoint opportunities for optimization and cut waste where necessary. 

• Segment by funnel stage: Break down your campaigns based on the funnel.

• Top of funnel (awareness): Display and Demand Generation ads

• Middle of funnel (consideration): Retargeting, competitor names, solution-oriented searches

• Bottom of funnel (decision): Brand search, product/service names

• Evaluate by metrics: Review ad spend, lead volume, and CPL by part of the funnel. Ensure that each is serving a distinct purpose and that KPIs align with expectations. If your middle funnel campaigns have a better CPL than your brand campaigns, it’s time to do some digging. However, awareness campaigns may not have any direct conversions but can positively influence branded searches.

• Consider statistical significance: Ensure you’re looking at an appropriate time period if testing a change or evaluating the success of a new campaign. This should account for the length of your sales cycle and the number of clicks and conversions in the given time period. If your industry experiences strong seasonal trends, it might be more insightful to compare performance year-over-year.

Action step: Break down performance by funnel stage and campaign. Identify the top-performing keywords and areas for improvement based on specific, relevant metrics.

Step 4: Assess ad spend allocation

At this point, you have a clear view of how your campaigns are performing. Now it’s time to optimize your budget by reallocating resources to the keywords that need them most. Pour more fuel on your top performers, and get ruthless with the bottom 33%—the keywords that are burning cash without results.

• Budget reality check: Use tools like Keyword Planner to estimate how much you’d need to spend to fully fund all of your active keywords. This will help you understand total available spend and offer perspective on how realistic your budget is for the keywords you’re bidding on. 

• Evaluate low impression share: Low impression share means missed opportunities. If your impression share is consistently below 10%, evaluate whether to continue bidding on those terms or redistribute that budget to more effective campaigns.

• Redirect spend based on performance: With your ceiling in mind, decide how to distribute your overall budget. Break your campaigns into the top 33%, middle 33%, and bottom 33% based on performance. Aim to fully fund the top 33%. For the bottom 33%, identify areas of waste and cut underperforming keywords.

Action step: Calculate the budget ceiling for each channel and refocus your budget on the high-impact campaigns and keywords, trimming the waste.

Step 5: Nail down your audience intent 

Your ad copy and landing pages are critical in converting traffic into leads. If your click-through rate (CTR) is low or your bounce rate is high, your messaging might not be resonating with your audience.

• Use search queries to decode intent: Look at actual searches that brought people to your site. Are they aligned with your target audience? If you’re seeing trends in searches that aren’t relevant to your audience or offer, create negative keywords to weed out irrelevant traffic. 

• Align copy with intent: Your ad copy should directly address user intent. If someone is searching for a specific product or service, ensure that your ad speaks directly to their needs and sends them to the most relevant landing page.

• Test CTAs: The call to action (CTA) in the ads should be reflected on the landing page and provide value to the user. If there are multiple CTAs (demo, sign up, learn more), test them to find out which works best. If you have multiple landing pages relevant to the user and product or service, test the CTAs on the landing pages and see which resonates more. 

Action step: Constantly refine your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages to keep the message aligned with audience intent. Run A/B tests on CTAs and content for better engagement. 

Step 6: Use KPIs to monitor performance

You’ve adjusted, optimized, and refined—now it’s time to define what success looks like for your newly optimized campaigns. Establish clear KPIs based on the goal you set in Step 1 and make regular tracking a priority.

• Primary KPIs: These will vary based on your goals but might include metrics like CPL, conversion rate, ROAS, or lead volume.

• Secondary KPIs: Keep an eye on click-through rates (CTR), impression share, and average CPC to ensure your campaigns are running efficiently.

• Ongoing tracking: Regularly monitor your KPIs and make incremental changes to improve performance. Don’t change too many variables at once—focus on small optimizations based on data.

Action step: Monitor, adjust, and iterate. Set clear KPIs and track them regularly. Use these insights to guide ongoing optimizations and ensure your campaigns stay on track.

Final thoughts

A paid ads audit isn’t just a routine check-up–it’s essential for ensuring your campaigns are aligned with your business goals and driving the best possible results. 

By following this step-by-step guide, you’ll be able to confidently assess how your campaigns are performing and where to make strategic adjustments. Define your goals, align your budget with performance, and continue to optimize based on data. 

With these steps, you’ll be well on your way to more efficient, high-performing campaigns.

Need a little extra support with your ad strategy? We’re here to help you make every dollar count.

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Breaking up with cold emails – a 3 part blog series

Part 3: Cold emailing vs. ad-based strategies: which one is worth your marketing dollars? – The Solution

A solution-driven guide to smarter lead generation strategies.

This is Part 3 of a 3-part series where we dive into why cold emailing is no longer effective and what you should do instead. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 to continue learning about better lead generation tactics.

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When it comes to lead generation, marketers are increasingly being pushed to stretch their budgets while still being expected to drive strong lead volume. Cold emailing might seem like the cheaper option, but when you dig into the details, it becomes clear that the true cost goes way beyond the initial spend. Let’s break it down.

The high costs of cold email: not as “cheap” as it looks

Let’s take a look at a common data provider and an ABM (Account-Based Marketing) solution. Broadly, we’ll call these “cold contact” strategies – where you're sending messages to people who haven't engaged with you or requested any communication from you. 

Key takeaways

• Terminus: Not terrible. With a cost per lead (CPL) of $37, it seems reasonable, but the customer acquisition cost (CAC) of $927 is still on the high side, and that’s because of low sales conversion.

• ZoomInfo: A trainwreck. The CPL skyrockets to $745, and with zero sales, the CAC can’t even be calculated. Oof.

Though costs may seem cheaper up-front compared to a full demand gen strategy, the numbers tell a less than stellar story. Overall, you end up with an average CPL of $71 and a staggering CAC of $1,855 for cold contact campaigns. That’s like paying first-class prices for a coach seat. 

Ad-based strategy: a smarter way to spend

On the other hand, let’s take a look at the performance of some standard demand gen and demand capture ad channels.

Key takeaways

• Google Ads comes out swinging with a stellar CPL of $40 and an impressive CAC of $118. With 51 sales, it’s clearly the top performer here.

• LinkedIn offers high-quality leads but needs work on conversions—no sales here, making the CAC shoot up. It might need more optimization, but for awareness and top-of-funnel activities, it’s a solid option.

• Bing and Capterra are quite expensive, but Capterra’s single sale proves that lead quality can sometimes justify the cost.

Aggregate analysis: cold contact vs. ad-based strategy

Though cold contact vendors may offer a cost-effective contact rate or initial CPL, the quality is inconsistent at best, impacting CAC and skewing the cost comparison in favor of channels that drive better lead quality. 

Treating contacts holistically: an overlooked perk of an ad-based strategy

Comparing a cold email strategy to a robust demand generation strategy is a lopsided comparison. A well rounded ad strategy covers three main portions of the sales funnel: brand awareness, demand generation, and demand capture. In contrast, cold email is a more transactional one-time interaction that stretches the term “strategy” to its limits. 

With an integrated marketing strategy, you can repurpose existing content across owned channels like LinkedIn and YouTube to build and maintain relationships with your target audience. While this initial interaction likely won’t generate any flashy KPIs, it’s essential for positioning your product or service, highlighting your unique value, and making a strong first impression. 

From this foundation, you can continue to provide value, answer questions, and help prospects understand the problem you solve and how you do it differently. As you build rapport and trust, the likelihood increases that they will choose you when they are ready to make a decision or recommend you to others. 

Once prospects are ready to purchase, they typically have a short, targeted list of contenders. By this stage, they’ve likely made their decision but want to ensure due diligence. At this point, it’s essential to retarget them with relevant messaging, ensuring your brand shows up first in their searches. Once they’re ready to talk, they become a lead, and if you’ve done your job right as marketers, your sales conversations will focus on closing rather than selling.

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Previous posts in this series:

Cold emailing isn't cutting it - Part 2: The Breakdown

Why cold emails suck - Part 1: The Rant

Breaking up with cold emails – a 3 part blog series

Part 2: Why cold emailing isn’t cutting it anymore (and what you should do instead) – The Breakdown

A breakdown of compliance issues, deliverability challenges, and the real costs of cold emailing today.

This is Part 2 of a 3-part series where we dive into why cold emailing is no longer effective and what you should do instead. Check out Part 1 and Part 3 to continue learning about better lead generation tactics.

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Cold contacting (also called “cold emailing”) used to be the golden ticket for B2B lead generation. Need new clients or customers? Just fire up your outbound email list and hit send! But with recent changes in email sending guidelines from Google and Yahoo, along with compliance regulations like GDPR, CASL, and others, what was once an effective strategy has become an operational headache that can lead to serious issues for your other email efforts and even costly fines for compliance violations. And worse yet, cold email engagement and conversion rates are plummeting like a stone.

So how exactly do you stop throwing money at fruitless marketing campaigns and start seeing some real ROI? We’ll break down the true costs of non-permission-based email campaigns and poor deliverability – and show how you can (and should) shift your focus to consent-based marketing, leverage demand generation ads, and use omnichannel approaches like LinkedIn messaging and remarketing. These tactics not only align with compliance but deliver better ROI and higher-quality leads that are actually interested in what you have to say.

If you’re tired of your emails getting ghosted or flagged as spam, it’s time to break up with cold contacting and switch to strategies that prioritize engagement and value. We'll show you how to make the smart move and put your money where it matters—into ad-based strategies that work for you and your audience.

Compliance challenges: the 3 biggest downsides to cold emailing in 2024 and beyond

Besides genuinely annoying your prospects, there are some serious drawbacks to cold emailing in modern marketing.

Cold emailing often means skating on thin ice with laws like GDPR in the EU and CASL in Canada. If you don’t have explicit consent, you risk hefty fines and legal headaches. Some vendors like ZoomInfo or Apollo might provide you with vast contact lists, but there’s no guarantee they meet compliance standards—especially when targeting regions with strict opt-in policies.

Deliverability and spam issues

Do your email campaigns end up in the spam folder more often than in the recipient’s inbox? That’s because recipients haven’t given their blessing to receive your emails. Sending unsolicited emails without proper consent can tank your domain’s reputation, reduce deliverability of all of your company’s emails, and lead to costly compliance violations.

Low engagement and conversion rates

Recipients of cold emails typically have low interest levels since they didn’t sign up to hear from you. They may have no familiarity with your brand and aren’t likely to take the desired actions — resulting in poor engagement metrics and higher costs per lead, not to mention frustration in your sales funnel. 

In our experience, most cold emails suffer from one of the most egregious faults: they don't get their audience right. If you can’t send your message to the right people, then the chance of it being relevant is slim. 

It’s not a good look for your brand

Let’s imagine your email actually reaches the recipient's inbox, they see the subject line, and decide to open it. If it's a cold email with a hard sales pitch, you'll likely turn them off immediately. For someone who doesn't know you, this is a bad first impression—you're now associated with unsolicited outreach. Instead of sparking engagement, you've alienated a potential lead, and this negative experience may hurt your chances when they need your services later.

The true cost of cold contacting gone wrong 

Now that we've established the main concerns of cold emailing, it's time to take a look at the consequences. We’ve broken down the hidden (and not-so-hidden) costs of running non-compliant cold email campaigns, how declining deliverability impacts your bottom line, and why adopting a consent-based marketing strategy could save your reputation—and your wallet.

Monetary costs of email compliance violations

Email compliance is no joke. Sending unsolicited emails without proper consent can result in fines that go up to millions. Let’s look at some of the heavyweights in legislation and what a single misstep could mean for your business. 

Please note: We are not attorneys and this is not legal advice. The following are general guidelines that showcase potential fines for violating certain legislations. To get the most accurate risk assessment, we recommend working with an experienced attorney.

GDPR violations

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the strictest legislations. If you’re caught emailing EU residents without explicit consent, you could face fines of up to €20 million or 4% of your global annual revenue (whichever is higher). So, if your company pulls in €500 million a year, you’re looking at a potential fine of €20 million. All for an ill-advised cold contact. Ouch.

CASL violations

The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) is also a strict legislation that governs who you can and can't email. Violating CASL’s rules can cost you up to CAD $10 million per violation for corporations. If you’re targeting Canadian recipients without proper consent, that’s a risk you can’t afford to take.

CCPA violations

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the updated CPRA, fines can reach $7,500 per intentional violation. The laws give California residents the right to know what data is being collected about them, to delete the data, and to opt out of the sale of their data.

Country-specific fines

In addition to regional regulations like GDPR, certain countries like Germany have also enacted their own legislation that covers electronic communication. Pay attention to country-specific penalties and additional scrutiny, not to mention potential legal fees and reputation damage.

Declining email deliverability: the silent budget killer

Inbox placement, also known as email deliverability, is whether emails land in the inbox or in the spam folder (or just don’t get delivered at all). For obvious reasons, businesses should care about whether their emails are making it to their final destination (to the recipient). 

Even if you manage to navigate the regulatory minefield of collecting data and sending marketing emails, poor email deliverability can silently drain your marketing budget and impact your brand reputation. When emails don’t make it to the inbox due to a block or get flagged as spam, it means fewer eyes on your message, lower engagement, and ultimately, fewer leads. 

Let’s break down why declining deliverability can cause cascading problems for your company:

• If your SDR/BDR (sales dev) outbound emails are sent to mostly cold email lists/non permissioned email lists, then the poor email deliverability from those emails WILL negatively impact your marketing emails (newsletters, customer emails, nurtures, etc). 

• If you don't regularly clean up your inactive email lists and send non-permission-based emails from your domain or subdomain (email.company.com or company.com) it can harm your domain reputation. This means all emails you send could be negatively impacted – including customer emails, sales emails, and more.

• Companies like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and more have highly complex spam filtering rules that work to block millions and millions of spam messages every day. By not making good choices, you’re signaling to these email providers that you’re no different than the spammers they’re trying to block. 

• Bad domain reputations will snowball, meaning they’re likely to get worse and worse, while taking longer to show improvement if you implement mitigation actions. Companies like Google (Gmail and Google Workspace) are less likely to help you get your emails inboxed if you’re struggling with a bad sender reputation. (ICYMI, over 6 million businesses worldwide use Google Workspace.)

• It only takes a few complaints to push your spam rate to 0.1%. What’s crucial to understand here is that many B2B senders are unaware of their actual email deliverability rates because platforms like Google don’t share that data. This detail is especially important for someone managing digital content or marketing strategy, where understanding deliverability can have a direct impact on campaign success.

• With a lower deliverability rate, fewer emails reach recipients’ inboxes, resulting in a lower overall lead acquisition ROI.

• Poor deliverability means you’ll need to spend more to reach the same number of potential leads. This drives up your cost per lead (CPL) and makes campaigns much less efficient.

• Additionally, your email marketing platform likely has a strict compliance policy. Poor deliverability can lead to account suspensions, adding to the headache and potential costs.

It only takes a few complaints to push your spam rate to 0.1%.

Email deliverability is an incredibly complex and nebulous topic, and we can’t fit all of our thoughts in this article alone. But the main thing to remember is that you can’t act like a spammer and expect to be treated differently. As a B2B sender, you won’t know your spam complaint rate but keeping spam complaints low is still important. And to achieve this, you truly need to focus on consent-based marketing strategies.

How to break up with cold contacting (without the drama)

1. Shift to consent-based marketing

Focus on growing your opt-in database through value-driven content tailored to your target audience(s) on owned channels like your website and social media. Make sure to implement robust lead capture mechanisms with clear consent language to meet compliance requirements for GDPR, CASL, and other regional laws.

2. Leverage demand generation ads

To boost awareness and engagement, leverage content marketing, social media, and SEO. Platforms like LinkedIn and Google Ads can help you reach target accounts and guide them through your sales funnel. Additionally, remarketing ads can help you stay top-of-mind with prospects who have already shown interest, keeping your brand visible as they move closer to making a decision.

3. Implement demand capture tactics

Leverage high-intent channels like Google Search Ads and Capterra to capture leads who are actively searching for solutions. To maximize the effectiveness of these efforts, ensure your landing pages and ad copy are optimized for higher lead-to-opportunity conversion rates, making it easier to turn interest into action.

4. Utilize omnichannel approaches

Create a coordinated outreach strategy by combining LinkedIn messaging, email, and targeted ads, ensuring compliance while delivering value. Focus on building relationships through non-intrusive channels like social engagement, webinars, and industry events to foster trust and connection with your audience. 5. Invest in tech and data

5. Invest in tech and data

Invest in a unified tech stack that supports multi-touch tracking and a well-rounded media strategy to drive both demand generation and demand capture. Use CRM tools to efficiently track consent and manage data, while automating lead segmentation, consent tracking, and compliance monitoring. At every stage, ensure your content and offers are aligned to deliver value and guide your contacts smoothly through their journey.

The bottom line: why choose ad-based over cold contact

Cold contacting is becoming a risky tactic. With compliance penalties and poor deliverability rates costing more than they’re worth, it’s time to rethink your strategy. Ad-based strategies may appear more costly upfront but they deliver significantly more value in terms of lead quality and compliance safety. Plus, you’ll sleep better knowing you’re on the right side of the law!

By shifting your focus to consent-based marketing and ad-based strategies, you’ll help ensure you’re reaching the right audience, staying compliant, and maximizing your ROI. After all, there’s no point in sending an email if no one’s ever going to see it!

Ready to break up with cold emailing? Give demand generation and capture a shot—you won’t regret it.

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Next: Continue to Part 3 to learn what strategies to use instead of cold emailing.

Previous: Why cold emails suck - Part 1: The Rant