As a fashion advertiser, it's a common struggle: how to boost online sales. Sometimes the answer is simple, but requires delving into the mechanisms that lie deep within the structure of the campaign.
Read on to find out how I tripled this client's sales and revenues, even while rebranding.
I’m going to show you how to fix issues related to:
I’ll also discuss tips and best practices for maximizing the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaign.
Check out the results my client achieved in just three months. From July 1st to September 9th, revenue shot up by $4,000 with 170 sales made.
While we were scaling up ad spend, the cost-per-sale actually decreased.
Compare that to the previous period and it’s clear how much of an improvement it actually is.
Let's dive into the metrics (above): we saw a whopping 326 percent increase across the board, with a 13 percent drop in cost per sale – that is serious Return on Investment (ROI) growth.
When I dug into this account, I noticed a major issue with conversions and analytics. It turns out that 'add-to-carts' and 'checkout starts' were mistakenly set as primary conversions.
Primary Conversions are conversion actions that are reported in the 'Conversions' column in Reports and used for bidding.
This meant that Google was treating these actions as actual revenue. As a result, the account was spending money in the wrong places, sending it off course. I could see that this mistake had been made from the very beginning, during the initial setup.
It's no wonder the account wasn't performing as well as it could have been. Fixing this issue was a top priority to get the account back on track.
Once I switched that over, Google began targeting purchases directly, rather than hitting ‘add-to-carts’ and attracting ‘window shoppers.’
Furthermore, I set up enhanced conversion tracking on this account, which takes users who are logged into their Gmail or YouTube but whose cookies are not enabled. This hash data allows Google to track more of these sales, so we can get more attribution. The result is enhanced conversion revenue with improved tracking.
Next, I noticed that the main Performance Max bid strategies were limiting the account's potential. The previous agency had set a target ROI goal the account had never been able to achieve. This was causing Google to hesitate, refusing to spend the budget. The account was essentially stagnant, with only a few sales per day. To really optimize Performance Max, there needs to be a minimum of one sale per day. So, we needed to aim for 30 sales per day to make a real impact.
So, I decided to ditch the ROI goal and set a maximized conversion goal instead. This would increase sales volume and help my client hit the ROI target as a natural consequence. The result? Sales volume skyrocketed compared to the previous period. This not only helped the company hit the ROI target but also decreased the cost-per-sale. By letting Google scale and expand, this client was able to achieve what was previously impossible under an artificial target.
Now, the Performance Max account structure was the fun part. When I took over this account, I noticed a major issue with the Performance Max campaigns.
There were two campaigns, each structured around product categories like jewelry, accessories, and gloves. While this structure is acceptable, it led to a problem. When launching new campaigns, all products were lumped into a single listing group, which cannibalized the performance of the account.
Listing Groups are part of a campaign’s asset group. They are made up of listings, which are sets of products.
Here's what happened: an old campaign was shut off, but all its products were still in a single listing group. Performance Max automatically puts all products into a new listing group if it's not segmented properly.
As a result, revenue was being directed to a brand new Performance Max campaign, which wasn't optimized and had conflicting products. This issue can seriously hurt the account's overall performance.
To fix the issue, I reorganized the listing groups to allow for proper segmentation of Performance Max campaigns. This way, each campaign could be optimized individually.
I also revisited the audience signals. I noticed that the old signals were a mix of different audience types, which made it difficult to determine which ones were performing well.
Audience Signal: a feature that helps Google's machine learn and optimize campaigns for better performance by identifying the audiences most likely to convert.
To address this, I separated the audience signals into distinct groups, making it clear which ones were driving results and which ones needed attention. This new structure allowed us to scale successful campaigns and trim underperforming ones with confidence.
Those broad in-market segments might be useful, but they don't give us the granularity we need to understand our audience. For example, are we targeting young adults or retirees looking for sunglasses?
We need to segment our audience properly to understand how they're performing and optimize our campaigns accordingly.
To address this issue, I switched to more targeted custom segments, which typically perform better. These segments are built using top-performing keywords from our Insights and Reports.
During the company's rebranding process, I also tested different copy messaging to see what resonated with our audience. I used Chat GPT to guide the copy and tested it against other versions.
A marketing angle is a method of conveying information about a specific product offered to potential customers.
By isolating the test, I was able to see how the Chat GPT-guided copy performed compared to the control group.
The results showed a higher conversion rate, indicating that we were attracting better-qualified users - a key performance indicator (KPI) for our campaigns. This experiment demonstrated the value of testing and refining our messaging to connect with our audience more effectively.
Finally, I tackled another crucial issue in the account: disapproved items and items on warning. To fully optimize the account, I knew I had to address these issues.
I used a Google Merchant Center supplemental feed to meticulously filter through each item, ensuring that only approved and compliant products were being promoted.
Supplemental Feeds: provide data that supplements product data in one or more primary feeds. They can't add or remove products, or be used as standalone feeds.
To further optimize product data, I leveraged the supplemental feed to add a cluster of product data from the Shopify app. This was a more efficient process within the Merchant Center. I updated titles based on search terms and insights, placing frequently appearing keywords at the forefront to boost click-through rates (CTR) and reduce cost-per-click (CPC).
When I noticed missing data, I added it to every product and ensured I could segment using custom labels based on trending insights. For instance, if I saw that 'Barbie' movie-themed products were trending, I would create a custom label to segment them out and group them separately. This allowed me to optimize their performance and maximize their visibility.
So, data optimizations are one of the most significant actions that can be taken with Performance Max after the conversion tracking front end is set up. It’s important to make sure the back end and product data is complete as well as optimized and segmented based on what’s evident in the Google ads account.
In this account analysis, we uncovered four key problems hindering performance: analytics and tracking off-target, suboptimal Performance Max bid strategies, poorly structured Performance Max Campaigns as well as inadequate data optimizations in the Google Merchant Data Center. By implementing solutions to these issues, we were able to optimize the account for better performance and finally see a stronger online presence.
Shorten your learning curve, make the most of your resources, an maximize your impact both online and off.
Ted is the founder of TGQ Marketing a PPC, Analytics and CRO agency focused on client results.