As you know, I spend a lot of time talking about “traffic”.

Usually it’s the paid variety though.

But at the weekend, I was reminded of where the term I use every day actually came from.

Ryan and I escaped down to Cornwall on Friday.

I knew it was a long way, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how long it would take – we left at 12:30pm and didn’t arrive until gone 6.

Anyway, while we were heading down the M5, I suddenly realised just how many people were coming up the other way towards the Midlands.

For over an hour we drove past traffic queuing North, and as each mile ticked on the more I dreaded our Sunday trip home, which we couldn’t delay, since Ryan needed to be back at work on Monday morning.

What we’d failed to plan for was the fact that this was the last weekend of the summer holidays and the roads would be diabolical, and in the end it meant us getting up at a ridiculous hour on Sunday morning just to avoid the traffic and arrive home at a sensible hour.

As they say, failing to prepare is preparing to fail, and it’s a phrase that’s incredibly true of Google Ads.

A good Google Ads campaign will have been prepared to within an inch of its life, not just at keyword, ad group and ad set level, but at budget level too.

Asking some simple questions can help you prepare far more effectively:

How quickly do you need a return on investment?

Do you know how many conversions you need per month to pay for your ad spend?

How long can you afford to ‘cash flow’ your ad spend?

Do you know what you’re going to do with the lead you’ve generated to drive them over the line?

Nine times out of ten, a bad Google Ads campaign is the result of a lack of thinking, and this can be easily eradicated just by stopping, planning and avoiding the equivalent of a super early morning up the M5.