Adwords ads not running

I have contacted adwords over 10 times, each agent tells me something that contradicts the last and doesn't work and I'm getting nowhere. I have set up a call only ad and set the budget to higher than the est. top page bid and they said my budget is fine. I'm getting zero impressions on most key words, and in the last 30 days my top performing ad had 5 impressions with 1 click, CTR of 20%. It says that my ads are not showing due to low ad rank, adwords support says that happens when expected CTR is low, when I ask what a good CTR is they said 1%, mine is at 20% so how can they expect it to be low with only 5 impressions so far and 20% CTR? They can never give me a clear answer as to why it has low ad rank only irrelevant suggestions like my keyword is not relevant to my business, my keyword is exactly what my business is about. One agent says add more keywords, the other says use less keywords, I get nowhere and it's been frustrating. I eventually asked to speak with a supervisor. She gave me more irrelevent suggestions, like change my keyword type from broad match to phrase type. To me this sounds like we are making the keywords more efficient, this would be a nice solution if I had tons of impressions and low CTR, but she insists she is confident this will resolve the issue. I ask for a follow up in a week, she agrees, I get no follow up and my ads still don't work. The two 'clicks' or calls that it registered and cost me $7.39 didn't even lead to a call, same with the months before where I paid about $30 for clicks but I never received any calls on those days. So the ads are not working and I'm getting charged for non-existent clicks.

I am about to give up on Google. Has anyone had a similar experience or have recommendations on what to do next?

 

How many impressions are you expecting from your keywords? This can be found out in the keyword tool.

What is your QS? It probably doesn't show since there is little data so far, just five impressions. But a low QS will lower impressions.

To say that you have a CTR of 20% is not statistically relevant with just one click.

There is no such thing as a "good CTR" and for anyone to say any percentage is deceiving. CTR is highly influenced by position as well as many other things. The best metric is QS so again, what is it if it is showing?

Ad ranking is based on your bid and your QS. What is the "going bid" for the keywords you are using? Even if your QS is 10, bidding much lower than the going rate may give you few impressions if there are many others bidding on the same keywords because you can bet a few have QS of 7 to 10. If other advertisers bid $1, those with QS of 10 have an ad rank of 1000. Even if your QS is 10 and bidding half that, your ad rank is ony 500 and anyone with a better ad rank will show above you and more often.

You say your keywords are relevant so I'll take your word for it. But I've often heard the same and they were not relevant. To be more specific, they were too generic, the difference between bidding on "shoes" when one should be bidding on "women's shoes".

The agents at Google don't have practical experience for the most part using Adwords. They likely get minimal training and read from scripts so they are not really the first ones to approach. You can get the occasional good one but it's really a crap shoot. So getting suggestions or comments like using broad match (use modified broad match), adding more keywords or that you need to get a 1% CTR is not at all helpful. Remember too that they are not there to build your campaign for you as Adwords is a self-serve system.

Google Adwords is an advertising platform. You get the priviledge of advertising there. What happens when your ads are clicked is not their concern. You need to convince that click to do your desired action. Besides, two clicks and no leads yet is not statistically significant. You can't expect every visit to your site to turn into a conversion, even with proper keywords and doing everything right.

Suggestion: put the campaign on hold. Learn how to make it better. Make your landing page better too. You can do this yourself but sometimes it's just best to get a professional.

 

Thanks for your reply. I'm not expecting too much, just more than the zero that I'm getting now. I mentioned the 20% CTR because I think it's ridiculous they are judging the keywords quality based off of 5 impressions and 1 click. It's a personal chef business and the key words are extremely relevant such as "Personal Chef" Or "Los Angeles Personal Chef" or "Meal Prep" "hire a personal chef" etc, I have about 60-70 relevant keywords. The top 10 are getting 1-7 impressions and "meal prep" is received 214, the rest are zero - and this is in the span of two months. The quality score for these keywords are 3/10 the others either don't say or have "Another creative in the ad group was selected over this one." Also, these are call only ads so no landing pages. I'm also bidding $6-7 on these keywords, the est. first page bid is about $0.43-$11 but there are about 50 keywords within my $6 range that are getting just about no impressions at all due to low ad rank/quality score. How can they judge the quality score if my keywords are extremely relevant and they didn't even give them a chance to run.

 

I don't think your "meal prep" keyword is relevant based on the type of business you have. It's too broad and can mean or be part of many other things. For example, that phrase is part of searches such as "meal prep containers" and "meal prep plans" which you certainly don't want to show for. You do want to show for "meal prep companies" on the other hand so you need to expand your too-narrow meal prep theme.

I can't think of 60-70 keywords for this business, you surely did more research than I did and you know your business more than I do but that number seems high. I see that LA gets an average of 1600 searches on meal prep each month so with a QS of only 3, getting just over 200 of those is about right, if you bid around $2 as the keyword tool suggests.

You don't say but my guess is that you have one group for all those keywords. If so, split them them up into themes and have ads for each.

Your main problem is your QS which means your ads are not attractive enough (not getting a higher click rate than your competitors). This is one reason to split into smaller groups. You can't have an ad that caters to all those keywords. Ads will and should be different if you target "meal prep" vs "personal chef". It's also a chance to try different hooks. I too often see advertisers splitting their groups but using the same or nearly the same ads and that sorts of defeats the purpose.

 

I think you are doing something wrong. These are main reasons you may get disapproved by Adwords
Your ad mentions themes deemed inappropriate by Google
Your ad makes mention of copyrighted content
You included your company’s business phone number in the ad text
Your ad text is too long
Your ad contains “trick-to-click” text
Your ad has too many exclamation points
You can also get more information from this complete guide of Google Adwords
http://blog.boldigital.com/bold-google-adwords-guide