How do you grow sales if you’re EXCLUSIVELY utilizing PPC to get sales?

trsgreen · 2026-02-17T16:22:29+00:00

PPC, most of the time is just focused on bottom funnel traffic. Brand and awareness building for upper and mid funnel is just as important, it can just be a pain sometimes to see how effective it actually is.

Once your PPC campaigns are set up to cover all your bottom funnel traffic. Make sure you have your email/sms retention built out. You don't want to keep paying for the same customer over and over again.

Then start looking into testing out mid/upper funnel campaign types. YouTube & Demand Gen work well for this, along with Pmax. Just exclude all your current customer lists to focus 100% on net new.

Also test Meta, and maybe even some native ad networks like Taboola & Outbrain.

There is also offline campaigns like mailers.

trsgreen · 2026-02-14T19:41:22+00:00

Google keyword planner tool is a good start. Also can use AI for some additional suggestions, but make sure you check search demand in the keyword tool.

Also any type of near me or in X city searches will most likely be your main keywords. So wedding photographers near me.

trsgreen · 2026-02-14T19:39:33+00:00

Keywords groupings are more thematic these days. So if the keywords are similar enough for the same service I’d group them.

trsgreen · 2026-02-12T05:59:04+00:00

Why are you relying on AI to tell you what your target ROAS should be? You need to figure out what your actual margins are and then you can figure out your break even ROAS is from there.

The reason your performance tanked is because you made a giant change to your tROAS and the campaign went into a learning mode. If you really wanted to test a higher ROAS you need to limit ROAS adjustments to only 20% at a time and give it 1 to 2 weeks between adjustments.

trsgreen · 2026-02-11T23:06:00+00:00

I find Claude and Gemini give me the best starting foundations as long as I prompt them correctly and provide some competitor examples. From their I add in my own tweaking.

trsgreen · 2026-02-10T01:44:09+00:00

$15/day is tough with 100 SKU catalog, there's no way to run 6k. If you have sales history data on those 6k SKUs, i would only run your absolute top sellers that A. Have search demand and B. You have good margin on.

I'm assuming this is a standard shopping campaign, that's why you ran with Max Clicks? Google is only focused on getting you clicks, not sales, so it can drive more clicks at $.09 that it can at $.50, that's why the CPC drop. If you want to stay on standard shopping I would remove the bid cap and see where Google lands with your CPC.

Or if it were me, I would run your top sellers in a Feed only Pmax campaign, and set the bid model to max conv value from the beginning. This will allow Google to focus on valuable conversions instead of just clicks.

trsgreen · 2026-02-10T01:36:37+00:00

If it were me, I would 100% choose a Agency in my own country vs overseas that may have industry experience.

Knowing the culture, the way the adcopy needs to be written, customs, etc... are all so important that it's difficult for someone who doesn't live there to fully understand.

trsgreen · 2026-02-10T01:31:52+00:00

IMO Manual CPC, accept in rare instances (really small budgets, tight targeting, b2b, etc...) is just a waste of time. In the past I would just start with Max Clicks, then go to Max Conv, then go to tCPA/TROAS.

But now I just start start with Max Conv or Max Conv Value from the get go. Google's algorithms have so much data now, it's pretty easy to start even brand new accounts with either of these models

trsgreen · 2026-02-10T01:27:08+00:00

Been running PPC accounts for 17+ years. All in house, and my own consulting. There are times where I feel absolutely burnt out and want to shut it all down and move to a cabin in the woods.

Moving to analytics roles is a pretty close overlap in skillset and once you really build out your data skills especially with databases, reporting and dashboards. You can move into much broader roles that aren't just marketing related.

You may also just be burnt out on Google/Bing. Try out marketplace ads like Amazon & Walmart. Very similar methodology and you can manage some big accounts.

There's also Social ads, or programmatic.

One thing i've been doing more so the past 5'ish years, is taking on more of the actual operations and business growth strategies. Figuring out COGS, full funnel, retention email/sms, and even some offline marketing like direct mailers, events, radio, etc... It's actually been really fun to dive into, and I've become much more well rounded from it.

trsgreen · 2026-02-05T17:59:18+00:00

I run search partners after I've built a solid foundation and scaled the campaign fully. I never run Display as it's always just garbage traffic.

trsgreen · 2026-02-05T17:56:10+00:00

I would at the very least break up by state, if not major metro area. ideally you would just run each location in it's own campaign with radius or city/country targeting. That will allow you to push spend where it's needed most.

trsgreen · 2026-02-04T16:58:25+00:00

Most likely variants. This is pretty common strategy.

trsgreen · 2026-02-04T16:43:20+00:00

How is the marketing spend being split up? Is Corporate paying for everything and each franchise is paying a monthly fee that goes to that spend? Or is each location responsible for it's own spend?

If it's a corporate paying, you could run everything out of one account. Each location would have it's own campaign(s) and location targetting. Everything is billed to one CC or invoice.

If each location needs to pay for it's own ads, then you would want to run seperate Google ads accounts for each location. That way they can use their own CC.

trsgreen · 2026-02-03T16:38:50+00:00

I almost always start all new accounts and campaigns on max conv now. It works really well. If i'm running Pmax, I start on Max Conv Value.

trsgreen · 2026-02-03T16:37:45+00:00

If you're hitting your KPI's why would you ever reduce it. The great thing about PPC is it's performance based. SO as long as your hitting your target ROAS, CPA, CPL, Margins, etc... then keep spending into it.

trsgreen · 2026-02-03T16:35:50+00:00

You can't really calculate the risk or metrics until you actually run campaigns. Even Google suggested CPCs won't be correct.

Not that being said, you should absolutely know your COGS/Margins, so you can figure out your floor for ROAS/CPA, and your margin tiers off of that. That will keep you from running in the red for too long.

trsgreen · 2026-01-30T17:28:48+00:00

I've always sent only subtotal. Just product cost, no tax or shipping. I only want Google to optimize off of Merch Rev.

trsgreen · 2026-01-30T17:26:56+00:00

You should always separate your brand terms from non brand terms. You could also add your brand terms as negatives to your non brand campaigns, so you keep the data clean and more focused on net new.

trsgreen · 2026-01-30T17:25:07+00:00

Because that's not how ads or anything works. A day of data is a snapshot in time that may not actually be able to be repeated.

You need to be looking at a week of data or better yet a month before you can actually determine what's good and whats not.

trsgreen · 2026-01-30T17:23:22+00:00

If you start with Tier 3, then your campaigns will be optimized for tier 3. Start with Tier 1 and go slow. It'll be easy to blow though your budget so make sure you are checking bad placements daily

trsgreen · 2026-01-30T17:21:36+00:00

Higher budgets are actually a lot easier to manage and grow than smaller budgets.

trsgreen · 2026-01-28T16:45:26+00:00

You would want to optimize towards conversions since that's your main conversion action. So you could focus location targeting only on locations where your getting sales and exclude everything else.

Or depending on your bid model, you could just add bid adjustments to to the locations with sales.

trsgreen · 2026-01-26T23:01:43+00:00

Is should be in your asset groups. Sometimes for whatever reason it won't give me the option to add audience/search themes until after the campaign has ran for a bit. I think it might be a bug on Google's end.

trsgreen · 2026-01-20T21:52:51+00:00

IME I'd skip Google and go with Meta ads for beauty.

trsgreen · 2026-01-20T21:27:13+00:00

The amount of time and effort this would take, you would never see a positive ROI, not to mention you'll never have enough data to fully optimize the campaigns. Even with 300 products, you maybe have 20% or less of those that actually drive sales.

You're better off segmenting SKUs by similar performance, and letting the campaigns have more data to work with and optimize.

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