Google ads account structure- Performance marketing begins here!

Read time: 4.5 minutes

Back in 2019, I was managing performance marketing for the e-commerce version of fbb- one of the fashion brands under the future group.

RoAS for fbb when I took over was 2- not great. The good news though, lot's can be done to increase this.

From there, fbb went on to become the only fashion e-commerce player in India with a 42% increase in RoAS in a single calendar year.

Google decided to publish the story of fbb as a case study.

When the RoAS is low; a performance marketer has to do 2 things:

1. Work on low hanging fruits to make the numbers slightly better

2. Identify & fix problems at the grass-root level

Both solutions are easier said than done.

Typically, some low-hanging opportunities are- working on the user funnel, user experience, fixing targeting etc.

Some of the long-term fixes are- redefining the platform strategy, changing the backend of the website, and fixing the account structure of the ads platform.

The reason above falls under long-term is because these changes will have a major impact on a business topline in the short-term.

And as a performance marketer, you have to convince various business stakeholders that what you are doing is healthy for the business in the long term.

Once, done right, a robust account structure lays the foundation of an agile, logical, machine-friendly e-commerce business.

Such is the importance of your Google ads account structure.

But why does the account structure matters at the first place:

Similar to the above quote: performance marketing starts with your own house, with your own Google account.

Doesn't matter that your audience will never get a sneak peek at your account structure but Google's understanding of a good ad starts from its setup.

Hence, the better & neater the structure of your ad account, the higher your chances to score better with Google ads.

The vintage of an ad account also plays a role here. But it is not something you and I can influence. So we will not talk about the uncontrollable here.

What is account structuring anyway?

Account structuring is the arrangement of campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords and other targeting methods to improve performance reporting and make change management easier.

In a very basic sense, this is how accounts are structured on Google:

For example, if you run a fashion website, your basic account structure can look like this:

Prima facie, there is nothing wrong in this structure and most of the accounts that you will find will be structured in a similar manner

But, Devil is in the detail!

Dig deeper & you will unravel what doesn't come out in agency reviews.

With Search ads, if you are thinking slightly long-term, you will primarily have to create 5 type of campaigns:

• Brand

• Brand + Product

• Category

• Competitor brand name

• Competitor + Product

You do not have to activate all of these at once.

But in order to make full use of Google search power, bifurcate your campaign strategy like mentioned above.

Let's talk about each campaign type:

1. Brand campaign type: this will give you conversion at the lowest cost. I also suggest that you should have a brand campaign running, It just protects your ranking if a competition is bidding on the keyword.

Remember, while it is legal for competition to bid on your keyword, they cannot use your trademarked words, including the name of your brand.

If you notice that your competition is violating this Google policy you can flag it with Google and Google will take your competition's ad down.

If you are a slightly known brand, you can negate the brand keywords that do not have a buying intent from your brand search campaigns. Like, login, customer service, careers, complaints etc. Someone looking for these services does not have the intent to shop, hence to optimize costs, it is better to negate such keywords from brand search campaigns.

Also, try to use as many as 4 extensions with brand ads. You end up getting more real estate on the search result page. Hence bettering your chances for a click.

This is how 4 extensions can look like

2. Brand + Product campaign type: If your brand has a good brand recall, then people also start looking for your brand + product names. Like 'mamaearth facewash' has a monthly search volume of 1.65L. 'mamaearth shampoo' has a volume of 50k searches a month.

For similar reason mentioned under 'Brand campaign type', it is sensible to do ads on brand + product name.

Phrase and exact match ad types is a good approach here and you do not have to break the ads down into different categories. For example, mamaearth can run ads from the 1 ad group for both shampoo and facewash to better optimise the cost on keywords with low CPCs and better conversions.

You can also run shopping ads for these campaign types for better CTRs. In my experience, it is better to run both search and shopping ads. You will anyway be charged by Google on a click basis.

For ex., mamaearth relies on shopping ads for such queries:

Shopping ads run on the feed of your website, hence negating non-shopping intent keywords becomes more critical in this case.

3. Category campaign type: This is the most tricky to crack, and takes the most time and money to get right.

If your brand is new or if you have recently taken over an account. It is recommended that you create different category campaigns for different categories on your website.

I strongly believe that the category campaign structure should be similar to that of your website structure. It is the best way to keep your account clean & reduce the chances of making mistakes.

For example, if the structure of your website is like this:

Then your campaign structure for category campaign type should also be similar to the above:

Brands with heavy pockets run a different kind of category search ads- Dynamic search ads (DSAs). In this case, Google picks up products from your website or product feed on its own and serves ads to users. This can be a different campaign type altogether under google search.

The downside of this campaign is lesser control over bids, products being advertised and ad copies. These are mostly automated ads with minimal human intervention. 

If you have room to experiment, you can do that with DSA ads but keep in mind above mentioned cons.

4. Competitor campaign type: This campaign is not necessary for every industry or player.

But if you are working in a highly competitive space with respect to google search ads and there are a few more established brands in your space. You can consider doing campaigns on competitor keywords.

In this case, you show your ads on a competitor brand name. For example, Nike showing ads on adidas keywords.

The downside of these campaigns is that CPCs rates are high and conversion rates are less, the only upside is that you may convert some of the competitor's audience. I do not recommend this for small players or if you are a newbie to search ads.

5. Competition + Product campaign type: In this case, run search ads on the competitor's brand name plus their product category.

For example, if you work at Nykaa, you can show a Nykaa ad on 'sugar cosmetics matte lipstick' search.

There are no half-measures when you go behind the competition.

You must decide on the category in which you wish to play them (do not play a bigger, deep pocket player in all the categories) choose 2-4 relevant ones.

Choose the categories where you have more options than your competition and go for those categories.

When you go behind your competitor's brand keyword for 2-4 categories then do all the match types, phrase, broad and exact, like I said no half-measure. So that when you evaluate the performance, you look at more complete numbers.

6. RLSA campaign type: with Remarketing list search ads (RLSA), you typically show remarketing ads on the search to the people who have already visited a page of your website.

This campaign will have least money allocated and you need to have remarketing pool of at least 1000 people to run this ad.

Usually, targetting people who came to your website from a branded search or your past shoppers convert at the highest conversion rates here.

Most of the brands create 1 RLSA campaign to either retarget the people who visit a specific page or to retarget people who came to the website from a specific campaign. 99% of the time I suggest the former approach because you cast a wider net to get incremental conversions.

7. Display campaign type: These ads run across google search and display networks. Just 2 types of ad groups are good here; one for awareness and the other for remarketing.

If you are a small business, avoid getting into display ads altogether. The only reason why small businesses can look to do display ads is to create awareness with a new campaign (which could be 2-3 times a year).

Remarketing with display ads work when you have a sizeable audience. Small businesses can take months or about a year to create such an audience size.

8. Video campaign type: These campaigns run on YouTube largely. And keep your structure simple here. Just 2 ad groups. One for cold or prospecting because YT is turning out to be a great channel to find new audiences to drive sales. And the other is remarketing on your subscribers, website visitors etc.

You can add more ad groups to the video campaign type if you are running ads for more than 1 category. For example, boAt can setup 2 different ad groups for headphones and smartwatches.

9. Discovery campaign type: Google discovery ads are highly visual ads used to target a specific audience.

The discovery campaign ads appear across Google feeds on YouTube, the Google search app & the Gmail app.

I recommend using 1-2 discovery ads for prospecting users to drive conversions.

Usually, these ads need a bit of time to stabilize and give results hence small businesses can stay from it.

Plus if you are already doing performance max campaigns, then you do not need to run a discovery campaign separately if the goal is to get leads or sales.

10. Performance max campaign type: This is a new addition by Google and works decently well to drive sales volume and value.

Performance max campaigns run across google network, and they work even better if your provide initial audience signal to google for it to understand the audience to which you wish to show ads.

Hence, brands create different theme-based ads with performance max. Here, themes are these audience signals. If the signals you are giving are diverse, then create different thematic performance max campaigns.

Bonus Tip- If you see that Dynamic search ads or performance max ads are working too well to be realistic from 1st week of their setup, go back and check the contribution of branded searches. Because these 2 campaign types use the highest automation, they cut across your branded conversions giving you extremely healthy results.

Like I said in the beginning, dig deep and the devil will unravel.

In this case, negate branded searches from Dynamic search and performance max ads to reveal the true results.

That's it for today folks!

Structure your google ads right to build a strong foundation.

You will always have the upper hand against your competition if your account structure is neat.

This is one of the most underrated performance marketing strategies.

If you wish to learn Google ads in-depth, here is an on-demand Google ads course for you which will definitely cost you less than the Valentines' day gift you are planning 😅

Did you check out the reel I posted last night on Mamaearth's SEO strategy?

8000+ people have watched it already. Watch it now.

Hope you have an awesome weekend ahead!

Cheers,

Apurv

PS, want to hire me as a consultant or a mentor? Or want me to get on a call with you? Block my time.