The Campaign Isn't Working: What to Check, in Order

When a campaign produces no results, the typical reaction is to remake the creative. Sometimes that's right, but it's also the most expensive move: better to get there after ruling out the mundane causes, which are more common than people expect.

First: is the campaign actually running?

Ads under review, daily budget exhausted by mid-morning, an audience too narrow to reach, restrictions on the account. These are five-minute checks and they resolve a fair share of cases.

Second: do people land where they should?

A link to the wrong page, a page slow to open on mobile data, a form that fails on a phone. The campaign is paying for visits that cannot turn into anything.

Third: does the message match the page?

If the ad promises one thing and the page describes another, arrivals leave within seconds. It's the most frequent non-technical cause, and it shows as very low time on page across all paid sources.

Fourth: is the audience the right one?

• Does the geographic area match where you can actually serve?
• Do age and interests match who buys, or who you imagine buys?
• Are you excluding existing customers where reaching them again makes no sense?

Only at the end: the creative

If everything else is in order and the numbers stay flat, then the problem is what people see and read. At that point, though, you tackle it knowing you aren't remaking something for a cause that lay elsewhere.

Remaking the creative before checking the landing page often means replacing the part that was working.