I use search campaigns in most accounts. These are pay-per-click ads that appear at the top of the search result when someone uses Google.

Here’s how I ensure search is profitable for you:

• Ensure you’re going after longtail keywords that aren’t too top-of-funnel (it’s very easy to waste money, otherwise).

• Group your keywords by theme so your ads and landing pages are always relevant (for better conversion rates).

• Create relevant and super-clickable ads and ad assets.

• Ensure you have the right bid strategy.

• Reduce wasted spend with ongoing negative keywords.

• Continuously optimise so you’re showing to the right people at the right time (squeezing as much as I can from your budget).

• Ensure you’re always growing with new keywords.

As much as Google wants you to believe otherwise - Shopping isn’t dead. I use proven strategies to ensure you’re showcasing your products to the right people at the right time.

Some of the ways I ensure shopping is profitable for your eComm biz:

• Super granular campaign setup (I don’t treat your low-ticket items the same as your high-ticket ones).

• Feed optimisation - This is a biggie that is often under-utilised. I don’t set and forget your shopping campaigns. I continuously optimise your product attributes in Google Merchant Centre (titles, product types, everything).

• Reduce wasted spend with ongoing negative keywords.

• Continuously optimise so you’re showing to the right people at the right time.

Controversial, but I love a PMAX campaign (when used at the right time).

They’re not quite there yet for lead gen, but they work well for most eComm stores.

Ultimately, manual oversight is what sets an okay PMAX campaign apart from a great one. We don’t want to hand over all our control to the Google-Gods (and there are ways to do that).

Here are some of the ways I execute a PMAX strategy (if you have enough data for smart AI):

• Group relevant products into their own PMAX campaigns for more control.

• Utilise scripts for more reporting/data.

• Segment products so that I can treat low-ticket items differently than high-ticket ones.

• Optimise the audiences and ad assets.

• Most importantly, feed optimisation - a biggie that is often under-utilised. I continuously optimise your product attributes in Google Merchant Centre (titles, product types, everything) so that the AI understands what you’re selling and shows it to the right customers.

Nowadays, most user journeys take between 20 and 500 touchpoints, and most of those happen online. (Source: Think with Google).

So, you don’t want to do all the heavy lifting and then have a competitor swoop in at the last minute.

Here are some of the ways I utilise remarketing to close sales/leads:

• Segment audiences by action (all site visitors, product viewers, more than 2 minutes on the site, etc).

• Segment audiences by time frame (someone on your site three days ago will perform very differently from someone who was on your site 45 days ago).

• Match your creative with the right audience.

• Utilise Display and/or YouTube.

• Overlay your audiences in search, shopping, and/or PMAX.

Whereas search and shopping are all about getting in front of people who already know that they want the product/service you’re offering; video campaigns are all about getting in front of cold traffic.

YouTube ads are a great way to get cheap brand awareness (once you’ve captured all the low-hanging fruit and are wondering, “what’s next?”)

Whilst Google’s Display Network is nowhere near as effective as Social, it can still be a powerful supplemental strategy.

I’ll utilise either:

• An “evergreen” strategy, which is always on.

• Or I’ll use a seasonal strategy, which will only run when we want to promote new products or sales.

For most, the display campaign will only show to primed remarketing audiences.

But, for those wanting to feed the funnel with new traffic, I’ll target cold audiences (eg demographic, in-market, affinity, custom segments, placements, and more).