-
Spent $15.9K on Google Ads, only got $7–8K return what went wrong?
Posted by on September 5, 2025 at 4:39 pmHey everyone,
I ran a series of Google Ads campaigns last year, and I’d really appreciate some outside perspective because I feel like I burned a lot of money without the return I expected. Here are the stats:
• Total Spend: $15.9K
• Clicks: 10.4K
• Impressions: 261K
• CTR: ~3.9%
• Avg CPC: $1.53
• Conversions: ~1.27K
• Conversion Rate: 12.22%
• Actual Revenue Generated: around $7–8KCampaign types I ran:
• Web Development – Generics (Search)
• Ecommerce Store Development (Search)
• Web Development – Generics (Max Conversions)
• Conversions Web Direct Calls (Search)
• Performance Max (Pmax – July)
• Conversions Web Onsite (Search)
• Language Generics Conv Onsite (Search)
• Performance Marketing Sales (Search)Most of these were paused later, but in total, this is how the spend added up.
I expected at least breakeven or some profit, but I ended up almost 50% down. Looking back, I’m wondering if it’s:
• Poor campaign structure?
• Wrong keyword targeting?
• Bad landing pages?
• Or just unrealistic expectations for the niche/industry?Would love your honest thoughts — if you were managing this account, where would you say I went wrong, and what would you have done differently?
Thanks in advance for any feedback, I’m trying to learn from this before I spend another dollar
-
1 Reply
-
Start at the source. Is the service your offering good? Why would someone pick you over the next guy?
The best ppc ads in the world can’t overcome a crappy offer.
-
It’s impossible to tell what you did wrong without looking at the account itself and knowing about you project, resources, goals, expectations, the market, timelines etc. But this industry of web dev is extremely competitive and commoditized
-
DM me and I can take a look.
-
With the limited context. Your CTR reflects something off with the ad copy & keyword targeting. A good enough CTR generally falls above 8% mark.
For that, you need to have keyword focus, social proof, numbers & some USPs to make it interesting.
The generic keyword targeting or not having tight enough ad groups might have shown your ads to the wrong audience
Did you perform market analysis & competitor research to come up with a specific offer in a commoditized market?
Also, p max is not ideal for lead gen. Stick to search campaigns only to get quality leads with that budget
As for the landing page, try getting the conversion rate above 20% to make your campaigns profitable. You have to nail the offer for each service, have solid social proof like reviews, testimonials, brush up your portfolio there & focus the design on being professional
You also didn’t expand on the lead quality, were most leads junk or they were asking for cheap services?
-
You spent 1.5k per month? And distributed it across all those different campaigns?
-
It could be your site and something stopping more customers from converting. You spent about $2K per campaign, so you could have spent too little over the length each campaign ran for. Your campaign set up is likely an issue as well. Maybe money wasted on search terms that don’t make a lot of sense. The search term report could tell you if you spent on the wrong customer queries.
-
Hi,
What was the goal of your campaigns?
Leads?
Sales?There’s not really enough information here to fully understand the issue.
-
It’s your conversion tracking (a large part of it, not all of it, obvi). I do not believe you generated leads at $12 each. If that were possible for agencies, I would have started running ads for my agency a long time ago, lol. I’m willing to bet you were likely tracking the wrong conversion.
-
This is all lead gen. What is your MQL, SQL and BQL lead scoring and remarketing strategy?
I can tell the pre-click is decent with a 12+ conversion rate. Sounds like the post click conversions are falling off to seal the deal.
-
What did you count as conversion? 1.27k conversions is crazy for web dev agency. Also you spent 16k running around trying to get frozen shit to stick to a glass building. Why so many campaigns? 3 months is not long enough time, rather take that money and focus on something.
-
You bought a bunch of fake traffic on the search and display network. Google.com search clicks for “Shopify developer” have to be at least $20.
-
Your CPC and conversion rate were fine, but keywords and landing pages didn’t align with high value intent so conversions didn’t generate enough revenue to cover ad spend.
-
Isn’t AdWords ROI mostly negative these days? I can’t find anyone with real profitable campaigns in years.
-
Quick update since a lot of people have been DM’ing me.
I already made the mistake once of working with an overseas agency and don’t want to repeat that. This time I’d really prefer to connect with people here in the US, ideally around DFW, Austin, San Antonio, or Dallas. I’d love to actually sit down in person, grab a coffee, talk business, and build some trust before handing over the account.
If you’re not local, please don’t take it the wrong way I just don’t want to waste anyone’s time (or mine). Really appreciate all the comments and advice so far, it’s been super helpful.
-
12% conversion rate and a CPC of $1.53 so you’re paying $12.5 a lead. That’s a great result. I’m guessing your landing page is misleading or missing so key information.
People clearly want what your ads and landing page are offering, it’s something after that point that is putting them off.
Log in to reply.