5 Costly Google Ads Mistakes CMOs Make

CMOs face high expectations. They must drive growth, manage multimillion-dollar budgets, and prove marketing’s impact on revenue. Yet many struggle with skepticism from executives and even themselves:

• Harvard Business Review found that “80% of CEOs don’t trust or are unimpressed with their CMOs.” (“Why CMOs Never Last“)
• Forbes reported that “fewer than half of CMOs believe they can prove the value of their organization’s efforts.” (“Hard Truths Every CMO Must Face“)

It’s no surprise, then, that CMOs can become short-sighted. And that is fatal when it comes to Google Ads lead generation.

Prometheus PPC has helped CMOs and business owners generate over $200M in Google Ads revenue. Here are the top 5 Google Ads mistakes that we see CMOs make.

Mistake #1: Ignoring critical conversion data

This could be costing you tens of thousands of dollars without you even realizing it.

CMOs live on data. They will painstakingly:

✅ Track investments and results across all measurable metrics.
✅ Track and attribute performance to each advertising channel and funnel.
✅ Drive their sales teams to pump data into their CRM, tracking and scoring leads.

Yet there is often a glaring oversight: How much of this data gets fed back into Google Ads?

Most companies will at least track raw leads in Google Ads (form submissions, phone calls). But how many upload qualified leads? Or assign meaningful values to those leads? And configure conversion tracking to properly weight all this data?

It takes work. There are technical hurdles and a long-term commitment. But nothing will do more to improve your lead quality and ROI that complete and accurate conversion tracking.

How much is bad data costing you? We find and fix errors like this all the time. Schedule your complimentary audit.

Learn more about the importance of complete conversion tracking: “Why You Must Track Qualified Leads in Google Ads”

Mistake #2: Demanding busywork

Winning at Google Ads takes time and patience.

Each of these make-or-break optimizations requires analysis of large amounts of stable data:

• Leveraging Smart Bidding strategies, which require algorithmic learning
• Running A/B experiments for campaigns, ads and landing pages
• Refining segmented targeting: keywords, locations, audiences, ad schedule and more

To demand that someone be “always optimizing” a Google Ads account is a strategic mistake. You create activity without progress. And you will not be able to determine why your lead generation is failing!

Mistake #3: Fixating on short-term data

Google Ads performance will fluctuate, even when nothing changes in the account. The key is to avoid overreacting and instead focus on long-term trends.

I’ve had CMOs and business owners send me messages like:

“Great leads this week. Keep doing what you’re doing!”

Then the next week:

“Sales calls tanked this week. What on earth broke?”

Sometimes a weekly fluctuation was the result of an account change. But 90% of the time the answer to either message is the same—it’s just normal random variation.

CMOs operate under constant pressure to deliver immediate results. But reacting impulsively to short-term fluctuations undermines long-term growth. A more careful, data-driven approach ensures sustained success.

Mistake #4: Fixating on secondary metrics

What ultimately matters to a CMO when it comes to advertising? Two things:

• Business profit (ad revenue – ad expense)
• Business profitability (ad revenue / ad expense)

All other metrics can serve as helpful means to those ends, but they are not the ends themselves.

It might feel nice to have a high-CTR, low-CPC and low-CPA Google Ads account with high ad exposure. But the exact opposite might be required to maximize actual business performance.

Mistake #5: Hiring an in-house manager

Do you have a large advertising account driving more than ~300,000 clicks per month?

If not, then why would you dedicate an employee to your Google Ads account management?

Sometimes a CMO will feel they should hire a dedicated in-house resource because Google Ads is critical for their business. This is usually a mistake.

Compared to a specialist Google Ads agency team, an in-house manager:

❌ Has skill gaps that only get worse as they focus on a single account over time
❌ Gives you only one set of eyes on your account
❌ May require ongoing supervision
❌ Is a larger total expense

But it’s even worse than that:

Why? Simply because they need something to do every day.

Most in-house Google Ads managers feel pressure to “look busy” even when the best move is patience. Instead of letting Smart Bidding optimize, they constantly adjust bids, tweak keywords, and overcomplicate account structures. This “perpetual tweaking” means your campaigns never stabilize. It prevents machine learning from doing what it does best: optimizing for profit.

In fact, if you wanted to sabotage your Google Ads campaigns, daily busywork would be the perfect strategy.

What should you do instead? Let data—not activity—drive results. Expert Google Ads agencies optimize when needed and let machine learning work. That’s how we eliminate wasted budget and drive real ROI. (See case studies)

Book your free audit and see how a Google Ads specialist agency can save your account!

Summary

CMOs have it tough. They have too many projects, people and budgets to manage, all while struggling to demonstrate measurable results.

Save yourself time, money and headaches. Avoid these 5 mistakes to save thousands in ad spend while generating higher-quality leads.

Want more to avoid more mistakes? See our exhaustive list of Google Ads pitfalls.

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