eCommerce PPC · Google Shopping · Performance Max

Paid search for product businesses where revenue matters more than ROAS screenshots.

Shopping, Performance Max and search campaigns built around your margins, your stock and how your buyers actually search, for catalogues that run to thousands of technical products.

Start with the Multi-Channel Audit Talk about PPC
  • Feed optimised, not just exported
  • Segmented by margin and stock
  • Phone orders in the numbers

Why specialist products are different

A blended ROAS hides where the money is.

A parts retailer with eight thousand SKUs does not have one return on ad spend. It has a fast moving consumables range on thin margin, a slow moving range of high value assemblies, seasonal lines that only matter for ten weeks, and a handful of products it would rather not sell online at all. Report one number across all of that and it is meaningless.

Google’s automation is good, but it optimises to what it is told. Give Performance Max a single target across the account and it will happily pour budget into whatever converts cheapest, which is usually the low margin line and the branded searches you would have won anyway.

The work is structure. Google Shopping management and product feed optimisation so the feed describes products the way buyers search. Campaigns segmented so budget follows contribution. Brand and non brand separated, new customers distinguished from repeat, and revenue measured in a way that includes the buyer who saw the ad, checked the part number, and phoned. That is what eCommerce PPC consultancy means here.

What the work covers

The parts of eCommerce PPC that decide profit.

  1. 01

    Merchant Center

    Product feed optimisation

    Titles written for how buyers search: brand, part number, fitment, size. Attributes completed. Supplemental feeds for margin, stock and seasonality as custom labels. How much needs changing depends on what the platform already produces.

  2. 02

    Structure

    Segmentation

    Campaigns and asset groups split by product group, margin band and stock status, so a consumable and a capital item are not bidding for the same budget.

  3. 03

    Demand

    Brand and non brand

    Branded demand isolated so its results do not flatter the account. Non brand judged on what it adds.

  4. 04

    Customers

    New versus returning

    Repeat and trade customers who would have ordered anyway kept out of the acquisition numbers, so growth is real growth.

  5. 05

    Measurement

    Conversion tracking

    Ads, GA4 and Merchant Center reconciled with the order system. Phone orders attributed. Returns and cancellations accounted for.

    →
  6. 06

    Commercial

    Product level decisions

    Which products earn their spend and which should be excluded, reviewed on contribution, not on clicks.

Shopping versus search versus Performance Max

Three campaign types. Different jobs.

Most accounts run all three. The question is what each is for.

Typical setupArlieo setup
Standard Shopping One campaign, all products Control campaigns for priority products, margin bands and brand exclusions
Performance Max Everything in one asset group Asset groups by product group with feed labels, brand exclusions applied, new customer goals where they apply
Search Broad match on category words Part number, model and fitment terms, with negatives built from real search terms
Bidding One target ROAS Targets set per segment from margin, not from a default
Reporting Platform ROAS Revenue and contribution by product group, including phone

First ninety days

What happens, in order.

  1. 01

    Reconcile.

    Ads, GA4, Merchant Center and orders compared. Discrepancies explained before anything is optimised.

  2. 02

    Optimise the feed.

    Titles, attributes, supplemental data, as far as the existing feed needs. Disapprovals and quality issues cleared.

  3. 03

    Segment and restructure.

    Campaigns by product group and margin. Brand isolated. Negatives applied.

  4. 04

    Fix the landing.

    Product and category pages checked for stock, price, compatibility and the phone number.

  5. 05

    Scale by contribution.

    Budget moved to what pays, reported monthly against revenue and margin.

Questions about eCommerce PPC.

Do you work with Performance Max?

Yes. It is effective when structured and fed properly, and expensive when left to its defaults. Product group asset groups, feed labels for margin and brand exclusions, applied with the understanding that they reduce rather than eliminate brand spend, are the difference.

Our feed comes straight from the platform. Is that a problem?

Often. Platform exports tend to use internal product names and leave attributes empty, where buyers search by part number, fitment and size. The feed should be actively optimised rather than accepted as exported. How much work that is depends on the platform and the catalogue; sometimes titles and a supplemental feed are enough, sometimes more.

Can you track phone orders?

Yes. Call tracking on landing pages and, where the order system allows, matching phone orders back to the session. Without it, Shopping for technical products is judged on a fraction of its real revenue.

What about Bing or Microsoft Ads?

Worth considering, with the same discipline as Google. It tends to be sold on volume, and run without proper search term control it wastes money just as easily. Usually added after Google is structured, using the same feed and segmentation.

Do you manage the spend or just advise?

Both are available. The audit comes first either way, because the account structure and the tracking decide what is possible.

Related.

Find out what your Shopping spend is really returning.

Feed, structure, tracking and landing pages reviewed together, with a written report on what to fix first.

Start with the Multi-Channel Audit Talk about PPC