7 Common Google Ads Mistakes Australian Businesses Should Avoid

Google Search, Ads, and Cloud create A$53.4 billion in economic activity for enterprises.

What does this mean for businesses in Australia? Your best bet to market your business is through Google Ads. 

Google Ads are an effective technique to generate rapid traffic to your website. However, unlike SEO, you pay for every click, so if your Ads campaign isn’t optimised, it may quickly become quite costly. 

Previously, we learned how to optimise Google Ads for maximum ROI in 2025, explored Google Ads campaign tips for small businesses in Australia, and discussed Google Ads automation. Today, we’ll talk about Google Ads mistakes—the most common errors businesses make. 

Here are the most common Google Ads errors for businesses, along with recommendations for avoiding them and getting the most value for your money.

Common Google Ads Mistakes in Australia and How to Fix Them?

Instead of spending all of your money on bogus and useless marketing campaigns, try to get a consultation from a digital marketing agency in Adelaide. 

Even then, just know the blunders even marketers can make when planning and running Google ads for their business. 

• Advertising Without Understanding Profit Margins

Some companies focus solely on revenue and leads, but is that all you need? No.

You need to focus on brand awareness and visibility as well. 

You are building a foundation and a name here. Therefore, traffic is equally important, as this data will help you analyse performance trends, identify opportunities, and ultimately create a strategy to maximise profit margins. Advertisers must understand their profit margins to accurately analyse and optimise their campaigns accurately.

Smart advertisers take the time to calculate a new customer’s lifetime worth to determine how much they can afford to spend on acquisition.

How to Get it Right 

• Determine how much you can afford to pay each lead.
• What proportion of leads does your team convert to sales?
• Calculate the average number of transactions, average order value, and gross profit margin, then deduct marketing and running expenditures to determine your average net profit per client.
• At the absolute least, determine your goal return on ad spend (ROAS) and break it down per product or service category. 

You may then adjust your Google Ads bidding methods and account to achieve the desired results.

• Forgetting to Include Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are a way to instruct Google not to display your ad when specific words are entered. This is valuable for ensuring that you are not paying for clicks on keywords that do not have the desired intent.

All too frequently, we take over Google Ads accounts with no bad keywords. These businesses are probably wasting a percentage of their budget on keywords that will never convert. 

How to Get it Right

• Keep an eye on the search phrase report.
• Begin with the obvious stuff (such as single letters).
• Be careful with your match types.
• Do not accidentally block excellent traffic.
• Check frequently – Google only shows you some of your queries. 

• Not Using Sitelink Extensions.

Let’s take the example of a marketing agency in Adelaide that offers website design, SaaS landing page design, and custom app development services, too, but the home page just mentions SEO, digital marketing, and content writing.

Now, to get the most out of a search like “best web designing agency,” use site link extensions (like mini submenus under your ads). This allows the user to simply identify the most relevant page to their search and visit the page that best matches their demands. 

How To Get It Right?

• Include relevant ad extensions such as site link, call, and location extensions. For example, a Melbourne-based business working with an AdWords specialist in Adelaide could benefit from a location extension to assist nearby customers in finding their actual stores.
• Examine your campaign’s performance and alter extensions based on their effectiveness. 

• Auto-applying Recommendations

We get it; automation is tempting, and you just want to relax and let the tool handle everything. However, these tools still have a long way to go before they can plan and run campaigns like any creative marketer. 

Over the last few years, Google Ads has made recommendations directly in the platform to try and help advertisers optimise their campaigns.

While some suggestions are useful and can help you achieve your goals, it’s worth noting that most are based on “best practices” across a wide range of accounts and don’t necessarily consider your specific account goals.

How To Get It Right?

• Keep these automated recommendations turned off, but make a monthly schedule to enter into your Google Ads account and specifically analyse the advice Google provides.
• You can discard any that do not make sense to you while reviewing and applying the ones that do.  

• Not Targeting Your Geo-targeting

Geo-targeting allows you to choose where you want your search advertising to display. This is a highly suggested method because it helps you to focus on the most appropriate places where your prospects live. However, if done incorrectly, you may end up wasting a significant amount of money!

How To Get It Right?

Use Google’s geographic targeting option to limit your audience to the places where you operate. If your company is local, such as a Google Ads agency in Australia, limit your targeting to this region.

• Not Testing Ad Copy

Ad copy is a critical component of your Google Ads campaign performance. A fascinating ad can entice more viewers to click on your landing page, bringing you one step closer to generating leads. However, the advertisements are merely short snippets with a headline and a description of a few characters. So, should you discuss your quality offering, expertise, price range, or something else?

Having 2 to 4 ads per Ad Group allows you to test numerous variations and analyse the data to see which ones perform best. Pausing ineffective advertisements and replacing them with another variety enables you to continuously assess success and refine to ensure the most effective ads for your campaign. 

How To Get It Right?

• Have anywhere from 2-4 active ad variants in each ad group.
• Let those run against each other for some time so each has a good amount of data. (This varies based on accounts, but one month is a decent rule of thumb.)
• Pause the underperforming variants, then write new variants to take their place, each time ensuring you have 2-4 variants active in the ad group.

As you test more variants, you’ll find what works well for your accounts and what doesn’t. 

• Failing to Track Conversions

Running a Google Ads campaign without conversion monitoring is analogous to driving without a map: You may be moving but have no idea whether you’re going in the correct direction. Conversion monitoring is vital since it provides measurable information about how effective your ads are.

This wastes the budget on underperforming ads and reduces the ability to invest more in high-performing ones. It also means you can’t optimise for return on investment, putting your company at risk of inefficiency and lower profitability.  

How To Get It Right?

• First, you’ll enable conversion monitoring from your Google Ads account for critical actions that will help you achieve your business objectives.
• After you’ve set up conversion tracking, analyse the data to determine which campaigns are doing best and then allocate your budget. 

Conclusion

Now, if you have been in this place, you know how to fix Google Ads mistakes. But we recommend having an expert on board to get it right this time. 

We are an Adelaide SEO Marketing agency with the most amazing Google Ads experts ready to help your business thrive. Whether you’re looking to avoid Google Ads mistakes in Australia or optimise your campaigns for better results, we’ve got you covered.

Looking for the best Google Ads Adelaide services? Get in touch now and maximise the value of every dollar you spend on advertising.