Google Ads Tips for B2C E-commerce – My Experience with B2C Ads… Thoughts?

Hey everyone,

Before I go into details, here’s some background: I run an agency and help a bunch of brands with their marketing. Right now, I manage about 30 accounts and have spent around $100 million on Meta and Google Ads in the past 3 years. I hope this helps anyone trying to make Google Ads work better!

P.S. I’m using ChatGPT to organize my thoughts so they’re easier to follow.

For Single Product Sales

If you’re selling just one product, here’s what I recommend:

  1. Run a Brand Campaign:
    • Put at least 10% of your budget towards brand campaigns.
    • This will help you track costs for your brand terms, stop competitors from bidding on your brand name, and keep CPAs low by targeting high ROAS.
    • Best for businesses spending over $1,000 a week.
  2. Set Up a PMAX Campaign (Excluding Brand):
    • Make sure to exclude your brand terms so you don’t steal your own traffic.
    • Use PMAX insights to find high-performing non-brand search terms.
    • Set up non-brand search campaigns using these insights with exact match keywords to keep things precise and avoid waste.
  3. Not Google-related - Move to a Subscription Model:
    • I’ve tried so many times to make single product sales work, and it does, but it’s hard. You need to constantly adjust for fluctuating CPAs.
    • If possible, moving to a subscription-based model can help. Subscriptions bring in predictable revenue and make it easier to manage CPAs and profitability.

For Multi-Product E-commerce

If you sell a bunch of different products or categories, here’s the strategy I use:

  1. Product-Split PMAX Campaigns:
    • Create separate PMAX campaigns for each product category (like socks, t-shirts, jeans, etc.).
    • Start without a target CPA, let the campaigns learn, and then optimize and shift the budget to the best-performing ones. But don’t forget the others – they still have potential!
  2. Brand Campaigns Are Still Important:
    • Keep bidding on your brand terms for the same reasons: tracking costs, defending your brand, and lowering CPA.
    • Around 10% of total spend should be enough.
  3. Non-Brand Search Campaigns:
    • Stick to exact match keywords to minimize waste.
    • Start with a daily budget of £100–£150 for your first campaign and only try broad match if you’re ready to take on a bit of risk.

Experimenting with Other Ideas

Here are some extra thoughts and tips:

  1. Non-Brand Search:
    • Non-brand search is getting more competitive.
    • Use exact match for the best results; broad match can be useful if you have the budget to experiment.
    • I haven’t seen a huge difference between segmenting non-brand by campaign or ad group. I’m curious if others have had success with this.
  2. Turn Off Display Network & Third-Party Search:
    • These often waste your budget with little return. Make sure they’re off.
  3. DemandGen Campaigns:
    • If you’re spending $10,000–$20,000 per week on Google, try DemandGen.
    • It’s a brand awareness tool like PMAX but with longer conversion windows (30-90 days).
    • DemandGen uses YouTube and Display more and can increase branded search volume over time.
    • Allow 8-12 weeks to fully learn and scale.

Final Thoughts

This post is based on my experience working with different e-commerce brands. If you’re in B2C, these strategies should work for you. I’ll write another post for B2B soon. Let me know your thoughts or experiences in the comments!

I’m actually surprised this post has real value. I kept reading, waiting to find something wrong, but you’re spot on with everything. These are the same strategies we use at my agency.

One of my biggest annoyances with Google was how they pushed everyone to move to broad match and run PMax campaigns with no restrictions, especially when they first launched these changes 3 years ago. That’s a downside of being a premier partner – we get all the beta tools, but they come with plenty of issues. (Discovery campaigns are a great example – they messed up a lot of client campaigns.) We still see problems when onboarding new clients.

Great advice though, my marketing friend. :pray:t3:

@Zen
Yeah, those Google moves are frustrating, and they rarely seem to prioritize the user experience :joy:. It’s wild how many people still stick with those methods though!

Thanks for sharing this! When do you think PMax is better than just using Search campaigns?

Blake said:
Thanks for sharing this! When do you think PMax is better than just using Search campaigns?

Maybe in the beginning when your budget is low and search is harder to optimize. Search might cost more to get the same results.

@Briar
Oh, interesting. I thought Search would have higher ROI but limited volume, so you’d use PMax to scale up. So you’re saying PMax is better for smaller budgets?

Blake said:
@Briar
Oh, interesting. I thought Search would have higher ROI but limited volume, so you’d use PMax to scale up. So you’re saying PMax is better for smaller budgets?

It’s more about ease. You could get a great ROAS with Search, but I worry you’d end up spending a lot to get there :thinking:.

Money.

I usually tell my clients to stick to 1-5% for Branded Search. These campaigns do have high ROAS but usually don’t bring in new revenue. You probably would have gotten these conversions anyway. But, defending your brand against competitors is key. What do you think?