Why Your Google Ads Are Generating the Wrong Leads

Wrong leads cost twice: once in advertising spend, and again in the sales time spent politely disposing of them.

You are buying consumer intent for a trade product

Many industrial and specialist terms have a large domestic search volume attached to them. Unless the ad copy and landing page make it obvious that you supply trade, in volume, to a specification, you will collect one-off domestic enquiries all day.

The ad qualifies nobody

An ad is a filter as much as an invitation. Stating minimum order quantities, sectors served, lead times or the fact you supply installers rather than homeowners will reduce clicks — which is the point. Cheaper traffic that never quotes is not a saving.

A good ad repels the wrong buyer as efficiently as it attracts the right one.

Geography is too wide for your delivery model

If you can only serve within a two-hour drive, advertise within a two-hour drive. National reach on a regional service produces enquiries you will decline and a cost per useful lead several times higher than it should be.

The offer attracts price shoppers

Lead with cheap and you inherit the customers who buy on cheap. Lead with the problem you solve, the standard you work to and the evidence behind it, and the enquiries change character within weeks.

Nobody has defined what a good lead is

• Which sectors count as target sectors.
• Minimum order value or project size.
• Geography served.
• Timescales you can realistically meet.

Write those down, mark every enquiry against them for a month, and the account has something honest to optimise towards. Until that exists, everyone is arguing about lead quality from memory.