When you see your hard-earned money leaving your business each month on ads that do not seem to be working, the move is usually one of two. Some people panic and turn the ads off. That is likely the worst thing you can do. For many online businesses, marketing is where most customers come from, and once you lose visibility, it is very hard to regain it, especially given how competitive it has become.
Others do the opposite. They rapidly increase ad spend, hoping that spending more will magically fix the problem, only to have the ads fail.
The mindset is right because growth requires an investment, but blindly doing that is a fast way to make things even worse. On a very small budget, increasing spend can help unlock more volume and better results. But once you are already spending a reasonable amount, adding more money without fixing the true problem can signal to Google that returns don’t matter to you. You are effectively saying you just want volume. For businesses that need a strong return on ad spend to survive, this can be extremely dangerous.
Some large companies can live with a 200% to 300% return because of scale, margins and their high customer Lifetime value. Many growing businesses cannot. A drop in return can be the difference between profitable growth and a sore wound that just keeps bleeding cash. So what do you do instead? The answer is not more budget (without the support). It is fixing these three things that actually make a difference.
In this blog, we will go over some of the most basic yet effective things to look at before impulsively increasing ad spend.
Why are my ads not working
Most major paid ad problems come down to one of three areas.
– Your account structure
– Your creative
– Your landing pages
If any of these are weak, no additional budget will fix them. In fact, spending more can just make the problem bigger and, obviously, more costly.
Account structure and why it matters
The way your Google Ads account is structured changes everything. This includes which campaigns you are running, how they are made, and how Google learns from the data you feed it. While every industry and budget is different and has different needs, there are two campaign types that almost every serious ad account should have in 2026.
Search campaigns
These are built around high-intent searches. People are actively looking for your service or your brand. Clicks do tend to cost more, but they convert better and ultimately balance out. This is where you capture demand that already exists, ready for you to grab. Running at least two versions of your search ads with slight differences lets you improve performance over time without making risky changes that could significantly affect your performance.
Performance Max
Performance Max was met with a lot of scepticism when it was first released, and rightly so. But when it is set up correctly, it can be extremely powerful – especially given how much Google is investing in and researching AI. It allows Google to test creative combinations, audiences and placements on a large scale. It works especially well for general product/service campaigns and for seasonal ranges where the theme changes but the business stays the same.
Smart use of asset groups lets you rotate messaging and focus while keeping all the learning in one place. When something works, Google pushes it harder, and your return improves over time.
There are other campaign types that have their place, but search and Performance Max generally form the backbone of most accounts nowadays.
Why Creative Now Drives Paid Ad Performance
Creative used to support ads. Now it is often the thing that decides, will this win or not?
In modern-day paid advertising, creative is often cited as responsible for 65% to 70% of ad performance. This is because platforms now rely heavily on machine learning rather than set-in-stone technical rules. They show your ads to people who engage with them by testing many combinations. If your creative does not resonate, the algorithm moves on very quickly. This means paid advertising can be deemed as easier or harder depending on your position in persuasion and branding. It is much harder if you rely on textbook Google tweaks that used to be prominent or don’t have a clear, defined brand message and purpose.
Good creative stops someone from scrolling. It sets expectations of your brand. It makes people want to click and find out more. When that happens, the platforms reward you with better traffic at a lower cost – and if you pair that with increasing ad spend, you are in a great position for growth.
How important is your landing page?
Your landing page is one of the most underestimated factors of performance in marketing.
It does not matter how good your ad is if the page it sends people to does not deliver. A landing page needs to strike a balance between relevance and appeal. When people click and leave quickly, Google sees that as a bad experience. Your ad quality declines, and costs can rise over time. The simplest way to spot a landing page problem is this. If you get clicks but no enquiries or sales, the page is almost always the issue.
If you track conversions, you will see this clearly in low conversion rates compared to industry benchmarks. If you do not track yet, you have to rely on lead quality and enquiry volume from your internal business knowledge, which can make it hard to attribute.
This is why paid ads and websites cannot be treated as completely separate. One does not work without the other, and you ned them in sync to truly drive growth.
Why spending more makes things worse
When your structure, creative or landing pages are all wrong, increasing the budget just burns more money, with a broken system. Google learns from what you give it. If the data shows people click but do not convert, bounce, or do not engage, the platform optimises around that. You end up paying more for traffic that just doesn’t work. This is why businesses often feel like ads get more expensive over time. This suggests the system reacts to bad signals and altered learning.
Fix the root problem, and the same budget suddenly goes much further, and leads to much more positive results.
Where teclan can help you
These problems, outlind above, are exactly why teclan does not treat paid ads like they haven’t changed in years, we keep on top of things, experiment with new ideas and iterate to help you grow your business. We look at the full growth picture – long-term goals, short-term steps and an omnichannel approach that helps grow your business across all customer touchpoints. When your website, ads and strategy work together with your goals, increasing ad spend becomes a lever for real scaling, not desperate growth.
That is the difference between just spending money on ads and actually investing in your business growth. Get in touch today to discuss what we can do for you.
