How To Make Better Decisions In Google Ads

As a Google Ads coach, I am in Google accounts all day and talking though business decisions with owners and marketers and there are some common mistakes I see in accounts.

Often when I start asking questions the business owner will expose their though process. And when I see mistakes it often stems from overthinking, reacting emotionally to daily data swings or even holding onto unprofitable campaigns due to sunk costs or the time spend gathering all the creative to run that campaign (Performance Max).

Here is the advice that I give on those calls that helps my clients make better decisions in their accounts.

Reject Binary Thinking & Create More Options

When we look inside ad ads account and see that it might not be converting many people resort to binary “either/or” choices. For example should they run a Demand Gen campaign or a stand alone YouTube campaign.

My advice: When a campaign or an ad group is underperforming or not converting the impulse is often binary: keep it going or turn it off. Instead I recommend a few alternatives.

• Lower the Target CPA or Target ROAS bidding threshold

• Adjust the keyword match types (shift from broad to exact)

• Test new headlines or a new landing page before pausing the campaign

• Look at different success metrics or see if their is a halo effect to the campaign

Eliminate Sunk Cost by Asking “If I Started From Scratch…”

Suck costs often prevent people from making the necessary changes because they can’t get over the past effort or investment. They just think, “this campaign used to work”. Or “we put all this money into new YouTube creative”. I always ask the client, “If you were starting this campaign from scratch would you do this or would you do that instead?”

Often times when someone is running an account they have been working on for years they often refuse to pause legacy campaigns, high volume keywords, or complex account structures because they spent weeks building them or were convinced to run them based on watching YouTube all day.

In my coaching calls I challenge this by asking clients:

“If you had to set this up today, knowing how much Google Ads has evolved and knowing this is not how the platform works today would you still use this campaign structure?”

If the answer is no, often times my client will go down the path of a restructure or even pause a complex campaign without hesitation and the day to day management becomes easier while the account performs better.

Replace Subjectivity with Data Driven Objectivity

I find this concept the most important when I am working with business owners who are running their own ads. The decision has become much harder because they are emotionally attached to the outcome. Good decisions around how to spend money in marketing often times requires stepping back and viewing the data and situation objectively.

How I help clients apply this:

I always advice that it easy to get attached to ad copy you personally wrote or an ad that you visually connect to and that you love. Google ads requires that you are objective based on metrics. It is better to look at the campaigns on cost per acquisition (cpa), return on ad spend (roas) and conversions.

Batch Strategic Choices vs Daily Execution

Hard decisions become complicated when you are in the middle of executing them. This leads to overthinking and poor calls. Instead I like to recommend that my clients have dedicated recurring time-blocks to make decisions deliberately.

With Google Ads, if you are in the middle of adding negatives or simply checking the account it can be very tempting to make knee-jerk tweaks and deviate from the plan and strategy. You can also end up disrupting smart bidding if you do something drastic in a campaign.

I recommend that my clients set up separate time to add negatives, update ad copy and then spend time making strategy calls like reallocating budgets or changing a bid strategy at a different time. Sometimes it is better to establish a fixed weekly or bi-weekly schedule to make macro account decisions all at once.

Be Proactive Instead of Reactive

When you keep sitting back and delaying decision making, your lack of a decision becomes a risk in itself. Seeking out decisions and making them before they turn into big issues prevents compounding damage from doing nothing.

In Google Ads, I often see this take shape when someone has a gut feeling the agency is not doing good work but just keeps waiting it out. I also see this happen when a business owner wants to wait and see vs actively looking for issues in the account.

I often recommend creating a list of negatives that you know you never want to serve on instead of waiting to serve on these terms (aka cheap, jobs, careers, etc)

I also recommend monitoring the impression share metrics as well to understand what the competitive market is like in Google before a bidding-war starts.

Evaluate Risk Using “Worst-Case” Scenarios

High-return decisions like spending money in Google always come with risk. To overcome hesitation I like to ask my client, “what is the worst thing that can happen, can we live with that wasted spend and how will we respond and chang?”

Scaling spend, testing AI Max, leaning into broad mach or switching a bid strategy always feels risky.

I recommend that my clients mitigate risk by creating budget scripts, looking at the account daily or multiple times a week, setting a spending cap, using bid caps (sometimes), or even creating rules in the account so you can test ideas but also get an alert if something becomes a problem.

This is all about knowing your downside exposure. It is a good policy when it comes to Google Ads.

Final Takeaways

Clear thinking when working in Google Ads beats frantic clicking and accepting Google recommenations.

When you stop reacting to every data blip and start making deliberate, structured decisions, Google Ads becomes far less chaotic and far more profitable and predictable.

The businesses that do well in Google Ads aren’t the ones who obsess over every single thing in Google Ads; they’re the ones who build decision systems that keep them objective, proactive, and focused on what actually moves the account and the business forward.