Are you using the right match type for Google Search ads? Here are some examples of how match type determines which queries trigger your ads. There's exact match type, there's phrase match type, and there is broad match type.
Here's an example of exact match type. So for us, we ran ads for two keywords: "white label media buying" and "media buying agency white label." So what does this mean in practice? When people type in "white label media buying," our ads will appear. When people type in "media buying white label," our ads will appear. And that's it; that's exact match. If your keywords are "shoes for men," your ads can appear for "shoes men," "men's shoes," "men shoe," and "shoes for a man." The exact match type is very narrow.
The next example of a match type for Google Search ads is phrase match. So let's say your keywords are "tennis shoes." Your ads will appear for "shoes for tennis," "buy tennis shoes on sale," "red tennis shoes," and "comfortable tennis sneakers," for example. So you can see that there are qualifiers here ("sale") and that synonyms ("sneakers") can trigger your ads too. If you're not getting the right activity on your Google Search ads - you're getting clicks but no leads or sales - you could be going too broad. See if things improve when you narrow down your match type to exact.
Let's use "low carb diet plan" for our broad-match example. Your ads will appear when people search for "carb free foods," "low carb diets," "low calorie recipes," "Mediterranean diet books," "low carbohydrate dietary program," etc. You get the essence of the search phrase, but you also get a lot of words that are not in your phrase.
So the idea here is that you really want to be able to narrow down your keywords. I often say that if you're not getting the right actions on your keyword, niche down and look for performance. You'll get lower scale, and it'll be more expensive to get a click, but these will be the right people.
