If you’re just getting started with Google Ads for your Ecommerce store, there’s a couple of things you should really internalise before starting to spend your marketing budget on these campaigns. The landscape has changed a LOT over the last couple of years and there’s a lot of information out there that’s pretty outdated (even from Google’s side) so here’s what you need to know to avoid falling into the traps of a lot of other Ecommerce accounts out there:
Performance Max:
When I started running campaigns for my clients, Shopping Ads were all the rage and this is only more the case nowadays with so many business owners and agencies running Shopping campaigns and nothing else. I’ve got ten years experience running ads for Ecommerce stores and I can tell you that is the WORST mistake you could make right now.
Instead, start looking at Performance Max campaigns to get started with. These still focus on sales and ROAS but use more machine learning and mean you can appear anywhere on Google’s inventory - wherever your ideal customer is, that’s where your ads will pop up. After shifting my clients over to PMax from Shopping campaigns, I’ve seen incredible results with ROAS easily clearing 500%. Once they’re working, they’re easier to scale than Shopping campaigns, so it’s worth the time investment to implement them.
Beyond PMax:
If you’ve already got Performance Max campaigns firing on all cylinders, make sure to set up your own manually created Search and Retargeting campaigns too! Yes, Performance Max does a bit of this already for you, but it doesn’t do it very well. By setting up separate manually created campaigns for Search and Retargeting, I’ve seen sales volume improvements of anywhere from 20-60%.
Want more actionable strategies for Ecommerce PPC? Check out the rest of our blog posts here!