When Google Ads Campaigns Don't Go as Planned: A Sydney Café Success Story
When Google Ads Campaigns Don't Go as Planned: A Sydney Café Success Story
What happens when Google Ads don't run according to plan? That's exactly what we experienced when running ads for one of our hospitality clients—a café in the heart of the Sydney CBD looking to launch a new dinner service.
The Initial Campaign Strategy
Our client wanted to drive bookings for a new Tapas Dinner service scheduled for selected nights of the week. We set up:
- A booking platform via Now Book It
- Conversion tracking for online reservations
- Compelling ad copy targeting dinner bookings
- Campaign goals focused on reservation conversions
Everything was in place for what we thought would be a successful campaign launch.
The Challenge: Despite having professional setup and compelling ad copy, we only achieved a single booking throughout the entire initial campaign period.
The Difficult Conversation
As you can imagine, this was a challenging conversation to have with our client. However, something didn't quite add up.
Anecdotally, our client mentioned that while they weren't receiving bookings for the Tapas Dinner service, they were seeing a significantly higher volume of walk-ins for their main café service during the day.
This observation prompted us to dive deeper into the Google Ads metrics and data.
The Unexpected Discovery
On closer inspection, we found that the ads had driven 93 in-person visits to the café service during the day. We discovered this by reviewing the "local – get directions conversion" metric, which measures how many people click "Get Directions" to the café after seeing the ad.
How "Get Directions" Conversions Work
When users click "Get Directions," it opens Google Maps, allowing them to navigate to the café from their current location.
Important Privacy Note: The conversion tracking measures direction requests but cannot confirm if people actually visited the café due to privacy restrictions. This limitation is crucial to understand when analyzing campaign performance.
Our conversation with the client evolved: "We weren't driving conversions for the Tapas Service, but we are driving café visits during the day, and here's the data to support that."
We highlighted the tracking limitations and began exploring integration options with their digital loyalty program, which is part of their point-of-sale system.
The Strategic Pivot
This campaign became a valuable learning experience for our client. In fact, other cafés in the area had attempted similar dinner services and also failed to attract the necessary foot traffic to justify the offering.
The Decision: Based on the campaign results, we made the strategic decision with our client to discontinue the Tapas Dinner service and focus exclusively on driving in-person visits to the café during the day.
Leveraging Existing Data for Quick Wins
Because we already had two months of conversion data from the previous campaign, we were able to:
- Achieve quicker optimizations
- Set a target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) based on previous ad spend
- Establish a baseline of search terms that were already converting
The Results
With our refined strategy, we achieved 23 "Get-directions" conversions in only three days!
This was an exceptional result, especially considering that Google Ads campaigns typically take a couple of months to start showing meaningful returns. We were able to quickly demonstrate the campaign's value to our client.
What's Next: Future Optimizations
We have several initiatives planned to further optimize this campaign:
1. Loyalty Program Integration
Implement an integration with the café's loyalty card system (part of their point-of-sale). This will allow us to:
- Match visitors with their digital footprint
- Track actual café visits, not just direction requests
- Measure true conversion rates
2. Financial Analysis
Work with our client to better understand conversion financials by:
- Drilling into the Average Order Value (AoV) of each in-person café visit
- Quantifying the real Return on Investment (ROI) of the ad spend
- Establishing clear profitability metrics
3. Continued Growth
Continue to grow and optimize this Google Ads campaign for the café. These are early days, so it's only the beginning!
Key Takeaways
This case study demonstrates several important lessons about Google Ads campaigns:
- Be Flexible: Initial campaign goals may not align with actual results—be prepared to pivot based on data
- Look Beyond Primary Metrics: Sometimes the real value is in unexpected conversions
- Use Privacy-Aware Tracking: Understand the limitations of conversion tracking and find creative solutions
- Leverage Historical Data: Previous campaign data can accelerate optimization for new strategies
- Client Communication is Key: Transparent conversations about results, even negative ones, build trust and enable better decisions
Running Google Ads for Your Sydney Business? Our team specializes in hospitality and local business advertising. Contact us to discuss how we can optimize your Google Ads campaigns or explore our Google Ads services.
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