E-commerce PPC
E-commerce PPC planned around margin, stock and the customer's second order
E-commerce PPC is paid advertising for online shops, measured on whether each sale is profitable after the ad that won it. We plan Google Shopping, Performance Max, search, Meta and remarketing together for e-commerce brands, with targets set by product margin and decisions informed by stock, seasonality and how often customers come back.
In short
- Targets by margin, not one shop-wide ROAS
- Prospecting and retargeting kept apart
- New and returning customers reported separately
Not sure where to start? We review your account, tracking and landing pages first, in writing.
Why online shops need a different approach
A lead generation business wants one thing from an ad: an enquiry. A shop has hundreds of products with different margins, prices and stock levels, and a customer who might buy once or twenty times. Treating every sale as equal is the most expensive mistake in e-commerce advertising.
| Decision | What most shops do | What we do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Targets | One ROAS target for everything | A break-even and target ROAS for each margin band |
| Budget | Split by campaign type | Split by product group and season, moved weekly |
| Stock | Ads keep running on products about to sell out | Feed labels pause or reduce bids on low stock |
| Customers | Every sale counted the same | New customers reported separately from repeat orders |
| Retargeting | Mixed into prospecting campaigns | Run and reported separately so it cannot inflate results |
The channel mix for a typical shop
- 01Google Shopping and Performance MaxThe foundation: product ads for people already searching. Covered in detail on Google Shopping management.
- 02SearchFor category terms and high-value products where a text ad and a category page outperform a single product listing.
- 03Meta AdsProspecting to new audiences with creative that shows the product in use, and catalogue ads for people who viewed products. See Meta Ads.
- 04RemarketingBasket and product-view audiences, kept to a sensible frequency and judged against what those people would have bought anyway. See remarketing.
The site matters as much as the ads
Ads bring people to a product page; the page decides whether they buy. Slow pages on mobile, delivery costs revealed at checkout and product photos that do not answer the obvious questions cost more conversions than any bidding change can recover. We look at the shop as part of the audit, and the team behind this site builds fast e-commerce sites as well, so we can fix what we find rather than just list it.
Related
Where this connects
Google Shopping and Performance Max
Product feeds, Merchant Center and Shopping campaigns that report profit, not clicks.
Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram)
Prospecting, retargeting and creative testing on Facebook and Instagram.
Remarketing and retargeting
Bringing back the visitors who almost bought, without following them round the internet.
ROAS calculator
Return on ad spend, break-even ROAS and target ROAS for your margin.
Questions people ask us
What is a good ROAS for an online shop?
There is no universal figure. The ROAS you need depends on your gross margin: at 40% margin you break even at 2.5x and need more to make a profit. A good ROAS is one above your break-even with room for the profit you want.
Should I advertise every product?
Usually not equally. Low-margin products and items that rarely sell can be grouped into a low-priority campaign or excluded, so the budget goes to products that can carry the cost of advertising.
Is Meta or Google better for e-commerce?
They do different jobs. Google captures people already searching for the product; Meta finds people who did not know they wanted it. Most shops that grow use both, with Google first.
Can you help with Black Friday and seasonal peaks?
Yes. Peaks are planned weeks ahead: feed promotions, budgets raised in stages, and seasonality adjustments in Google Ads so automated bidding expects the change in conversion rate.
Stop guessing. Start scaling.
Find out where your paid advertising is losing money and where the next profitable campaign is hiding. The audit is free and you keep it whatever you decide.