Are you tired of the same snooze-fest PPC “best practices” on improving your Google Ads account?
It’s a new year, and we’re getting creative!
Instead of another optimization guide, let’s explore the fastest path to advertising disaster.
What if two mysterious marketing execs named Judy make a bet with you that you can’t tank your account in a matter of days?
Consider this your step-by-step guide to proving them wrong – and a sarcastic tour of common paid search pitfalls along the way.
(Our apologies in advance if any of this ends up in a Google snippet or Perplexity answer.)
Day 1: Make sure nobody wants your offer
If you’re looking to destroy your Google Ads performance, this is the single most effective strategy.
You can’t bid-manage your way out of an offer that doesn’t convert.
Your offer – the product, price, and positioning – is what someone gets in exchange for converting.
The less appealing or harder to understand it is, the less likely your ads will succeed.
Here are three sure-fire ways to dial up friction and frustration:
Attract the wrong crowd: Use lead magnets and incentives that aren’t specific to your target market. Your sales team will drown in leads who’ve never heard of you and don’t want your services. But hey, your CPL will look amazing!
Keep them guessing: Keep landing pages vague. Skip key info like features, benefits, and shipping details. On lead gen forms, don’t explain what happens after someone fills it out. If someone really wants it, they’ll figure it out, right?
Avoid product-market fit: Seven words: “If you build it, they will come.” Launch blindly without ever speaking to your target market. Get zero sales. Spend money on ads. Still get zero sales. But since you paid for clicks – voilà! It’s no longer an offer problem; it’s an ads problem!
Day 2: Champion bad takes
Here’s another foolproof way to sabotage Google Ads without needing a login, and it’s perfect for leadership.
Grab on to the belief that “paid search doesn’t work” and never let go.
When reviewing paid search reports, always ask, “How do we know we couldn’t have gotten that organically?” and don’t even wait for an answer.
Invest in upper funnel campaigns, and demand immediate bottom-of-funnel results. Consider it a failure of the platform when that doesn’t work.
Hyperfocus on click costs. Make CPCs your KPI, and let “clicks should always cost less” be your mantra. Ask why your CPC isn’t lower each time you review the metric.
Set impossible growth goals that aren’t aligned with your ads investment, consumer demand, or past performance.
Call them “stretch goals,” but become outraged when targets aren’t hit. You’re a luminary – people want this from you.
The important thing is to be uncurious, suspicious, and dismissive at all times. Even a brilliant paid search team can’t succeed if leadership refuses to let them.
Day 3: Trash your conversion tracking
What even is a conversion? Nobody knows.
It’s not standardized, so embrace the chaos and track whatever you want.
Here are some tried-and-true methods to mess up your data:
If it fires, it counts. Skip debugging and de-duping. Double the tags, double the sources, double the fun!
No judgment. Treat “scroll 50% for 30 seconds” the same as “purchase complete.” Give all actions equal weight, make them primary conversions, and stick to aggregate reporting.
What happens offline stays offline.
Keep it casual. Use names like “Event 1” or “Test Conversion,” so no one really knows what’s being tracked.
Trust, but don’t verify. Use platform data as your source of truth and never compare it to your CRM or actual sales numbers.
Not only will you have no idea what’s working, but Google won’t either, so it’ll optimize for all the wrong outcomes.
Bonus tip: If your conversion tracking breaks, don’t bother with the data exclusions feature. Always forward, never back.
Day 4: Say ‘yes’ to every Google Ads recommendation
You’ve spent your whole life playing it safe – proceeding with caution, carefully analyzing, and looking both ways before crossing a busy street.
It’s time to step into your main character energy and say “yes”… to Google.
Don’t overthink it. Actually, don’t think at all. Just say “yes” to every recommendation that comes your way.
Broad match keywords? Sure, why not?
Raise your budget? Only one question: How high?
Auto-applied suggestions? Go ahead, Google, live your truth.
Every word from your account rep is now a mandate. Every low optimization score or ad strength is now your top priority to address.
Watch your account do a complete 180. Because it was never really about the destination, it was about the journey.
Burn your permission slip to say no to Google. This is your moment of “yes.”
Day 5: Use AI and ML to overcomplicate everything
“It’s not about refining your workflow; it’s about deploying generative AI at scale without a strategy.”
Sure, there are smart ways to use AI to learn about your audience, create messaging, and process large data sets.
But let’s be honest: narrowing in on appropriate use cases takes effort, and effort is so 2015.
Today’s hottest companies are blowing six figures a month on ChatGPT-generated ads with no sales to show for it. But you don’t need those budgets to get the same results!
And why stop at ad generation?
You can use ML-driven algorithms to overcomplicate your account structure, automate decisions with zero context, and remove humans from tasks that desperately need human oversight.
You’ll know you’re on the fast track to ruin when someone suggests prioritizing strategy over scaling, and your only response is, “But we’ve already invested so much in the tool!”
Because nothing says “visionary” like being so focused on the future that you let your account implode before you even get there.
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
Day 6: Un-structure your account
Your Google Ads account likely includes multiple campaign types, segments, networks, bid strategies, and initiatives.
Very confusing. Very complicated.