The most deceptive number in your Google Ads account

Google’s algorithm is smart. But sometimes, it can get “too smart.”

Its job is to find your highest-converting customers and push your ads to them.

The problem is, those high-converting customers aren’t always the ones you want it to focus on.

Let me explain…

Our team was auditing a brand's account and noticed something strange in their performance metrics.

At first glance, they were crushing it with a 6.96X ROAS.

They got there in a pretty short timeframe, with CPAs way under target.

But for some reason, they just couldn’t scale further.

When we looked into the account, we quickly saw the reason why.

That 6.96X ROAS I was talking about?

It turned out to be a smokescreen.

Under the curtains, they were getting an 11.82X ROAS from branded search.

But non-branded traffic? People who haven’t heard about the brand?

It was generating a flat 0X ROAS.

Zero.

The thing is…

This wasn’t what the brand wanted (or expected) at all.

They thought they were running prospecting campaigns. They assumed they were reaching new audiences.

But their setup was designed to do the exact opposite.

They fell into a common trap we call “traffic bleed”.

This happens when branded and non-branded keywords get mixed up in the same campaigns.

Since branded terms convert at 3-5x higher rates, Google naturally favors them.

As a result…

Instead of pushing your ads to new people, it funnels budget to the easy wins—people already searching for you.

Your branded terms suck up all the budget, leaving prospecting terms dry.

Which results in a deceiving number on your dashboard. 

You see that you’re “getting new customers” with solid ROAS…

But most (and sometimes, all) of them are about to buy anyway.

It’s a tricky problem, but the solution is straightforward.

And when you do this right, it’s like shifting your account into the fast lane.

In the short term, you’ll see a quick boost in performance.

Like this brand, for example, we transformed their ROAS from 5.89 to 9.76 in 16 days.

And in the long run, it opens the floodgates for your prospecting campaigns to scale.

To get there, you need a setup that blocks traffic bleed and fixes it the moment it arises.

We created a YouTube video walking you through how we do that for our clients.

A few things we cover:

• Our 5-part framework for segmenting branded and non-branded traffic

• The 1-minute fix to turn PMax into fully prospecting campaigns

• Exactly how much budget to allocate towards branded and non-branded campaigns

• The one thing you must do after segmenting your traffic (I’ve seen brands who skip this get worse performance than before).

• And many more on campaign structure, bidding strategy, settings, etc

Check out the full breakdown right here.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn

How we can help:

• Get a free Google ads audit: For brands spending more than $20k/mo. or making over 1 million annually, we’ll identify the key bottlenecks in your account, and turn it into a free 90-day scaling plan. Click here.

• Get our E-commerce Growth Toolkit: Get access to our free resources and tools including the Product Feed & GMC Optimization Checklist, YouTube Shorts Ads Playbook, and 12 Plug-and-Play Dashboards. Click here.

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