Google Ads has a reputation as an expensive way to lose money, and for most advertisers that reputation is completely earned. They switch it on, spend a fortune, get a trickle of junk leads, and conclude "Google does not work for us."
Google works fine. The problem is almost always the same single thing: intent. Fix that, and the exact same budget stops bleeding and starts buying customers.
Not all searches are created equal
Someone typing "what is cold plunge therapy" is curious. Someone typing "cold plunge tub buy near me" is reaching for a wallet. These are wildly different humans, and paying the same to reach both is how you set money on fire. Most accounts pour budget into curiosity searches that will never convert, then blame the platform for the empty pipeline.
You are not buying clicks on Google. You are buying intent. Buy the wrong intent and every click is a small donation.
Where the money leaks
- Bidding on broad, curious searches instead of ready-to-buy ones.
- No negative keywords, so you pay for searches that will never buy.
- Sending every click to the homepage instead of a page that matches the search.
- Optimizing for clicks instead of customers — cheap traffic that never converts.
- Ignoring the message match between what they searched, what your ad promised, and what the page delivers.
The fix is intent, end to end
Winning on Google means chasing buyers, not browsers: targeting high-intent searches, ruthlessly filtering out the wrong ones, and matching each ad to a page that delivers exactly what the searcher wanted. Do that and your cost per customer can fall through the floor — same platform, same budget, completely different result.
We rebuild Google campaigns around intent — so every dollar chases someone with their wallet already half out. If Google feels like a money pit, you do not have a Google problem. You have an intent problem. Let's fix it.