The #1 Mistake Founders Make With Ads

Why You're Not Ready to Run Ads (yet)

Every founder feels the itch: "Let's turn on Google Ads or Meta Ads and see what happens." It's such an easy itch to scratch, assuming your conversion tracking is set up correctly and you've deeply thought about the post-click experience and you've created a $100m offer that people feel stupid saying "no" to. If you haven't done those things yet, then scratching that itch will bleed…profusely.

But assuming your conversion tracking is set up correctly and the landing page connects with the ad experience and your offer is that good. If your site is slow, invisible, or leaky then you're buying waste. You're buying more blood (to scratch the scratching itch analogy to death).

⚡ Paid ads only compound what already exists. If what exists is broken the you scale the inefficiency. ⚡

And then you look like an idiot…burning money and blaming Google/Meta for being idiots and not understanding what a beautiful unicorn of a brand you are. The smarter play would be to fix the foundation first so every ad dollar is used sending traffic to a properly working funnel.

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The Audit Lens (What You Should Check Before Spending)

Before you pour money into ads, run a quick audit on your site. Most founders skip this step and end up paying for traffic that bounces, leaks, or never even finds them. Here's how to know if your foundation is solid enough for paid to scale:

Performance
Your site only gets one chance to load before a visitor leaves. If it takes more than a few seconds, they're gone.

• Run a speed test. Anything under 70/100 on Google's tool is a 🚨 red flag.

• If key elements don't load immediately, you're buying bounce traffic, not buyers.

Side note: some people get obsessed with Core Web Vitals. I don't, because it focuses too much on specific metrics instead of ensuring that the user experience is optimal. It can be useful, but only as it relates to an optimal user experience. However, I always recommend that you stay out of the red.

Technical Health
Google's crawl budget is finite. If it's wasted on broken or irrelevant pages, you won't rank where it matters. And the more garbage you give to Google, the less frequent it will crawl…and that's how you get yourself into a death spiral.

• Check for errors, duplicates, or junk pages. Google shouldn't crawl garbage. Your unindexed to indexed ratio is a good signal. A 2:1 ratio is too damn high.

• Review your sitemap. A messy sitemap tells Google you don't know what's important. I've even seen cases where URLs included in the sitemap submitted to Google contained 'no index' rule.

Visibility
Even if your site is clean and fast, it doesn't mean Google trusts you. Authority is earned. If your domain authority is under 10, you're basically a stranger on the internet. Your competitors are already friends.

And local visibility is even harsher. If you're not showing up in Maps or local search, you're invisible to buyers with the strongest intent.

• Low authority = invisible against trusted competitors.

• No presence in Maps = missing the buyers most likely to convert.

Conversion Funnel
Traffic without a clear path is wasted traffic. Even if people land, they won't convert if the funnel leaks. Remember, people don't like to think on websites. They like to act. Your website might feel intuitive…to you. But unlike you, site visitors haven't visited the site 45,000 times in the last day. So if your CTA is vague, hidden, surrounded by noise then the brain starts freaking out:

• “Where am I supposed to click?”

• “Is this safe?”

• “Am I committing to something I’ll regret?”

That pause is conversion death. You won't recover. We trust what feels easy to understand. A crystal-clear CTA, both visually and verbally, gets the click. Anything else makes the brain scan for an escape route. Your CTA should feel like the next obvious move.

Why Sequencing Matters

Founders love speed. And speed is definitely a superpower. But speed in the wrong order is chaos. Making sure the foundation is solid takes time and only really works in the right sequence.

• Crawl and indexation first. If Google is crawling junk URLs, slow-loading archives, or duplicate pages, your speed work is meaningless.

• Canonical + schema second. Schema is how you talk to Google in its own language. But if your canonical signals are broken, Google ignores your schema because it doesn't know which page is "real."

• Content library third. You need a critical mass of unique, useful content that is internally linked, most likely in a hub and spoke format. Think: service pages, blog posts, resource hubs that prove your site is more than a placeholder. Content is how you signal expertise and build trust.

• Navigation last. Menus are how humans experience your site. But if you redesign navigation before your service or product pages exist, you'll rebuild it twice (or three times).

The order matters because mis-sequencing creates rework, and rework kills momentum.

A Sample Sprint Timeline

Month 1 = Quick Wins
This is about fixing the "front door." Customers (and Google) should be able to find and open the front door.

• Homepage SEO: single, clear headline + one primary CTA.

• Indexation: remove junk URLs, fix canonicals, clean sitemap.

• Visibility: connect and clean up your Google Business Profile so you actually appear where people search.

Month 2 = Foundation
Now you're building the house with real rooms people can walk through.

• Build real product/service pages with unique copy.

• Start a content library (blog, resources, case studies) to prove expertise and give Google something to rank.

• Simplify forms → fewer fields, mobile-friendly, frictionless.

• Add internal linking so Google sees a connected site, not scattered pages.

Month 3 = Scale
Once the foundation and content exist, you can finally design for flow and growth.

• Refactor navigation into a professional structure (Solutions / Industries / Company / Contact).

• Expand local presence: Google Maps, Bing, Apple listings.

• Lock in trust signals: security, duplicate cleanup, structured schema refinements.

Scaling plays like this with the Growth Marketing OS

Fixing crawl errors or building a content library might sound like one-off projects. But the real challenge is creating a repeatable system that keeps stacking wins without reinventing the wheel every quarter.

That's what the Growth Marketing OS is designed for.

Inside, you'll find:

• Opportunity filters to rank fixes and growth ideas by impact, confidence, and ease.

• Testing frameworks to validate changes before rolling them across your entire funnel.

• Execution checklists for plays like sitemap cleanup, content rollout, or navigation rebuild so nothing gets lost between idea and implementation.

If you’re a founder or startup operator, the Growth Marketing OS turns sequencing into a system. That means the next time your site stalls out or a competitor outranks you, you've got a framework for firing back fast, without burning months of cash chasing shiny objects.

Until next week,

Adam

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