Paying for ads but the phone doesn't ring? 5 things to check first
· 4 min read · Dario Gutiesco
The short version
- Click your own ads. Many send people to a broken, slow or wrong page.
- Keywords translated word for word into Spanish often miss what people actually type.
- If you can't tell which ad brought which enquiry, you can't tell what to stop paying for.
Contents
You pay every month for ads. The dashboard says people click. But the phone stays quiet and the inbox is empty. Before you raise the budget or change agency, check these five things. In my experience the problem is rarely the ad itself. It is what happens after the click.
1. The ad sends people to a broken or wrong page
Start here, because it is the cheapest to find. Open your phone, search the way a client would, and click your own ads. All of them.
Look at where you land. Is it the homepage, when the ad promised one specific service? Is it a page that no longer exists? A form that doesn’t send? A page that takes so long to load that you would leave yourself?
Each of these turns a paid click into nothing. The ad platform still counts the click, so the report looks fine. Nobody sees the problem unless they click through like a client would.
The fix is simple. Every ad should land on the page that answers exactly what the ad promised, with one clear way to get in touch.
2. The keywords were translated, not researched
If you serve Spanish speakers, this one matters. A keyword list is often built in German or English and then translated. The translation is correct. But it is not what people type.
People search the way they talk. They use their own words, their own spelling, sometimes a mix of two languages. A Mexican, a Colombian and a Spaniard may each search for the same service with different words.
So don’t trust the translation. Ask a few Spanish speakers how they would look for a business like yours. Look at the search terms report in your ad account, if you have access. You will often find that you are paying for words nobody uses, and missing the ones everybody does.
3. Nobody can change the website quickly
Think about the last time you wanted to change one line on your website. How long did it take? Who did you have to ask?
If the answer is weeks, or “the person who built it is hard to reach”, your ads are stuck too. You can’t test a better headline. You can’t add the page an ad needs. You can’t fix the form that stopped working.
Ads work best when you can learn and adjust. That needs a site you, or someone close to you, can change in a day. If every change is a small project, the site is slowing down everything you pay for.
4. The site was hacked or isn’t maintained
This one is less visible, and it does real damage. Websites run on software that needs updates. When nobody does them, things break quietly. A plugin stops working. The form stops sending. In worse cases, the site gets hacked and starts showing spam or sending visitors somewhere else.
Search engines and browsers may then warn people before they even reach you. Some visitors will see that warning and turn around. You keep paying for the click either way.
Ask a simple question: who updates the site, and when did it last happen? If nobody can answer, that is your answer. A site needs someone responsible for it, every month, not only when something is visibly wrong.
5. You can’t see which ad brought which enquiry
This is the one that hides all the others. If an enquiry comes in, can you say where it came from? Which ad, which keyword, which campaign?
Most businesses can’t. The ad platform knows the click. The inbox knows the email. The phone knows the call. Nothing connects them. So you can’t tell which ads bring clients and which ones only bring clicks.
Without that link, every decision is a guess. You keep paying for what doesn’t work because you can’t see it, and you can’t put more into what does.
Start small. Ask every new enquiry how they found you, and write it down in one place. Then make sure your website forms record where the visitor came from. That alone changes the conversation with your agency.
What to take from this
None of these five checks is about writing better ads. They are about the path after the click: the page, the words, the site, and what happens to the enquiry when it arrives.
Go through them in order. You can do the first one today, on your phone. By the end you will know whether you have an ad problem, or a problem that ads only make more expensive.
What to do next
- 1 Click every live ad on your phone and write down where each one lands.
- 2 Ask two Spanish speakers what they would type to find a business like yours, and compare it with your keyword list.
- 3 Find out who can change your website, and how long a small change takes them.
- 4 Check when your website software was last updated, and who is responsible for it.
- 5 Add one question to your enquiry form or phone script: how did you find us?
Questions
Should I stop the ads while I check?
Usually not. Most of these checks take an afternoon. Pause only the ads that land on a broken page, and fix those first.
Can I do these checks without a developer?
The first, second and fifth, yes. For the website and its updates you need whoever built it, or someone who can look at it for you.
Is it the agency's fault?
Sometimes. More often, nobody owns the whole path from ad to answered enquiry. The agency runs the ads, someone else runs the site, and the phone sits with a third person.
I've worked in operations, project management, sales and marketing. That's how I see where a business breaks.
Rather have this built than build it yourself? Get my free audit.
Tell me where your week goes. You get a written Time & Money Map of what can come back.
Get my free audit