Five ways local businesses waste ad budget — and how to check each one

1. No conversion tracking

Without conversion tracking, Google optimises toward whoever clicks most. Clicks are all it can see, so it finds you the cheapest clicks — which are almost never the most valuable ones.

Check: open Google Ads, go to Goals, and look at whether conversions are recorded and whether the numbers roughly match the enquiries you actually received. If conversions read zero, or wildly overstate reality, that is where to start.

2. Broad match with no negative keywords

Broad match keywords will happily show your ad for "how to fix laminate flooring yourself" and "flooring installer jobs Calgary". You pay for both.

Check: run the Search Terms report for the last 30 days and read it. If more than a quarter of the terms are irrelevant, your negative keyword list is doing nothing.

3. Everything pointing at the homepage

Somebody searching for one specific service should land on a page about that service. Sending them to a homepage adds a navigation step, and a predictable share of people do not take it.

4. No geographic exclusions

Default location settings include people "regularly in or showing interest in" your area — which can mean somebody in another province researching Calgary. For a business that only serves a 20km radius, that setting alone can waste a meaningful share of spend.

5. Ads running when nobody answers

If your ads run at 11pm and the enquiry is a phone call, you are paying for calls that ring out. Ad scheduling should mirror the hours you can actually respond, unless there is a form-based path that works overnight.

The pattern

None of these are budget problems. All five are configuration problems, and all five can be fixed in an afternoon by someone who knows where to look. That is why we audit before recommending any increase in spend.