Getting clicks is easy, but conversions are where the real challenge lies. While mastering the basics is crucial, hidden issues in your campaign settings could be quietly undermining your performance and wasting your budget. Here’s a breakdown of eight common campaign setting mistakes, along with solutions, that might be killing your conversions.
1. Problems with first position
While being at the top sounds great, it can quickly use up your budget without delivering better results. First position typically gets more clicks but fewer conversions, especially with smaller budgets.
How to fix this:
a. Optimise your positioning:
- Reserve position 1 for brand terms
- Target positions 2-4 for commercial keywords
- Save your budget for high-intent searches
- Set your CPCs to 70% of what position 1 typically costs
2. Location targeting backfires
Dynamic location insertion might appear useful, but it often results in a frustrating user experience. If the wrong city names are shown, it can confuse users and prompt them to leave your site.
How to fix this:
a. Create dedicated campaigns for key cities:
- 1 campaign per main city
- Write city names directly into ad copy and match them with corresponding landing pages
b. Set proper targeting:
- Focus on “People in” your selected locations
- Add a 10–15-mile radius for coverage
- Exclude areas you don’t serve
3. Shopping campaign priority
When multiple shopping campaigns of yours compete at the same priority level, they fight over the same products, driving up costs and confuses which products show for what searches.
How to fix this:
a. Set clear priorities:
- High: Bestsellers and seasonal items
- Medium: Regular products
- Low: Clearance or low-margin items
b. Add negative keywords to separate campaigns
4. Mixed up conversion actions
Incorrect conversion actions in your sets can lead campaigns to optimise for the wrong goals, such as focusing on newsletter sign ups instead of actual sales.
How to fix this:
a. Check your conversion settings:
- Review all active conversion actions
- Remove low-value actions from sets
- Assign clear values to each action
b. Separate conversions into two sets:
- Primary Goals: Sales or leads
- Secondary Goals: Downloads or signups
5. Missing IP exclusions
Every time your team views or interacts with your own ads, it wastes your budget and skews your click analytics.
How to fix this:
a. Gather IP addresses for:
- Office locations
- Remote workers
- Agencies managing your campaigns
b. Add these IPs to exclusions at the account level
6. Ad Extensions at the wrong times
Showing extensions when your business isn’t active leads to wasted clicks, as you can’t engage or convert customers at those times. For example, call extensions active at 3am or location extensions during Christmas can use your budget without gaining any leads.
How to fix this:
a. Align with your business:
- Schedule call extensions to match your business hours
- Align location extensions with your open office hours
- Add holiday-specific schedules to prevent inactive hours from showing extensions
7. Wasted retargeting efforts
Retargeting often includes everyone, even users who only interacted for a few seconds, leading to budget waste on individuals who didn’t show real interest.
How to fix this:
a. Set smarter audiences:
- Include: Cart abandons, 2+ page views
- Exclude: Bounces, single-page visits
b. Create engagement tiers:
- High Intent: Cart abandoners or users who viewed pricing pages
- Medium Intent: Product page viewers
- Low Intent: Blog or homepage visitors
8. Underperforming locations
Cities with low conversion rates can quietly drag down your campaign performance without being obvious in top-level metrics.
How to fix this:
a. Analyse location reports to identify cities with high costs but low conversions, and compare CPAs across different regions
b. Take action:
- Exclude underperforming cities
- Reduce bids for weak regions
- Reallocate budgets to strong-performing locations
Conclusion
Optimising your PPC campaigns goes beyond the basics. Fixing these hidden issues in your campaign settings can unlock better performance, save your budget, and boost conversions.
Got questions or need an audit? Reach out—we’re here to help level up your campaigns.
The PK Team