I wish I could total up the number of Google Ads campaigns we’ve managed over the years. It’s in the many thousands. And across all of them, one pattern keeps appearing.
People come to us after spending real money on Google Ads. Traffic is arriving. Nothing is converting. The campaign isn’t working, and they don’t know why. When we look under the bonnet, the answer is almost always the same, and it’s rarely the ads themselves.
What Google Ads actually is and isn’t
When anyone jumps onto Google, they’re trying to do one of two things. Buy something or learn something. Purchase intent or informational intent.
Google Ads should only target purchase intent. Full stop.
In SEO, clicks are free, so you want to capture as many of them as possible across all kinds of search terms. In Google Ads, you’re paying for every click, so you should only be paying for the terms that have a genuine chance of returning your investment. Bottom-of-funnel keywords. People who are ready to act.
If you’re running ads against informational search terms, you’re paying for people who are doing research, not people who are ready to buy. That budget is gone the moment they click.
The grey zone is where it gets expensive. Some search terms sit between transactional and informational. They attract a mix of people ready to purchase and people who are just learning. In MedTech, that grey zone is wide. Clinical search terms often attract researchers, students, professionals doing background reading, and buyers all at once. Bidding on those terms without understanding who’s actually clicking is a fast way to run through a budget with nothing to show for it.
It’s my estimate that 50% of the time someone asks us to run Google Ads or audit an existing campaign, my recommendation is that they shouldn’t be running Google Ads at all. Not yet.
Google Ads is a multiplier, not a solution.
This is an important reframe. Google Ads takes whatever is already happening on your website and amplifies it. If your website converts well, ads bring more of the right people and the results compound. If your website doesn’t convert, ads bring more of the wrong results, faster.
You’re either multiplying your leads or multiplying your misses.
In MedTech, a buyer clicks your ad and lands on your page. They have roughly ten seconds to decide whether they’re in the right place. In that window, they’re clearing three psychological hurdles, and if your page fails any one of them, they hit the back button.
The first is the think test. Within the first three seconds, the part of the brain that reads words is scanning your headline. The words on that page need to match exactly what that person was searching for. Any disconnect and the odds of them leaving skyrocket. This is why vague headlines kill campaigns. We call it a clarity statement for a reason. It needs to give clarity, not describe the company in warm terms that could apply to anyone.
The second is the feel test. This is subconscious, and it happens fast. The photos, the design, the colours, the overall impression of the page. Does it feel credible? Does it feel clinical? In MedTech, a website that feels like a consumer brand will lose the surgeon or procurement officer before they’ve read a word.
The third is the do test. What happens next? Is the next step obvious? Are you directing them deeper into content, or to a clear point of contact? If the page just sits there, they leave.
Pass all three, and you still have work to do. The MedTech buyer is often not ready to enquire on the first visit. They’re in a research phase. Your content needs to be good enough to bring them back, and your retargeting needs to be set up to pick them up when they return.
The three signs you’re not ready for Google Ads yet
First, check your analytics. If people are bouncing quickly or not staying long enough to read, the page isn’t doing its job. Ads will make this worse, not better.
Second, check your calls to action. If the only option on the page is a contact form, you’re asking for commitment before you’ve earned it. MedTech buyers need intermediate steps. Content to read, resources to download, something to come back for.
Third, look at your H1. The big header at the top of your landing page. If it’s waffly, if it describes your company rather than speaking directly to the reason your buyer is there, you’ll fail the think test before anything else gets a chance to work.
What to fix first
Start with the trust audit. Find where your website is leaking confidence and where your messaging is missing the mark. Fix that across the site. This work has real SEO and AI benefits on its own, independently of any paid campaign. Once the messaging is right and the foundation is solid, Google Ads becomes a genuinely powerful next step. LinkedIn Ads too.
We’ve turned business away when we could see the spend would be wasted. It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it’s the right one. A campaign that fails doesn’t just cost money. It costs confidence in the channel, and that takes time to rebuild.
If you’d like to know where you actually stand, the audit is the place to start. If it finds the foundation solid, ads are the natural next step, and we’ll know exactly what to amplify. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you what needs fixing first.
That’s the commitment we make to every client who comes through the door.
