Google Ads for eCommerce: The Ultimate Guide

But hold on! Before we can get started, we need to make sure your eCommerce business is set up and ready to scale.

eCommerce Business Planning: 

Must-Haves Before Building a Google Ads Campaign

You are hereby (lovingly) forbidden from building a Google Ads campaign until you have the following six items:

1. Reasonable monthly spend
2. Appropriate time expectations
3. Quality website 
4. Enough margins to support a traffic campaign
5. Unique selling proposition
6. No one-off products
7. Completed customer avatars and assets
8. Robust data feed
9. Average order values that support paid traffic

Let’s explain:

1. Reasonable monthly spend

Think of your monthly budget early on as an investment.

You are buying data you need to understand what works in your campaign, what doesn’t, and where to make changes—in a reasonable amount of time.

With that investment, Google will start to build an audience specifically for you that you will capitalize on later. And it will be worth it! You *must* have enough monthly ad spend to accumulate enough accurate data for testing and optimizing down the road.

For context, here at Solutions 8, we won’t take a client whose budget is under $1500/month (and even then, we strongly recommend a minimum of $2000).

Budget under $1500 per month? Maybe you want to hold off until it’s more feasible.

Google is a learning algorithm. The first three months are going to be the most “painful” part of your campaigns. Which brings us to our next requirement:

2. Appropriate time expectations

It bears repeating that Google is a learning machine. And learning takes time.

In fact, we’re asking Google to do some pretty spectacular behavioral analysis.

In the past, our rule of thumb was that it took 90 days for a campaign to be fully optimized and ready to see some results. 

This meant after 90 days, we would have enough data to determine whether or not the campaign would work long term. 

But with the introduction of Performance Max, the 90-day guideline no longer applies. Instead, it takes roughly 45 days just to see what you’ve built and how it’s going to work. 

Essentially, Day 46 is now Day 0. 

Once Google has gathered and analyzed all the available data, then you can start to see how the foundation you put into place will perform over time. 

Put simply, it takes time to successfully optimize a campaign and position it to scale. But more often than not, being patient during that initial learning period pays off in the long run.

3. Quality website

This one may sound obvious, but here goes:

Your ads will send prospective customers to your site. Therefore, you need an appealing, easy-to-navigate website. 

See, we live in the age of the educated consumer. Long gone are the days of the ol’ click-to-convert model.

Site visitors want value. 

They want to learn. 

They want to feel connected and understood.

Your website should be full of quilty content that showcases your products, learning materials, readily available answers to common questions—all in a website that is fast and easy to navigate.

And with Performance Max in the mix, a campaign-type with more reach and a greater ability to learn from your site, SEO and quality content has never been more important.

This is why you need more than a single page website. You need to help them get to know your product and who you are.

Oh, when it comes to eCommerce platforms, particularly ones that integrate beautifully with Google Ads, Shopify is our fave and will be the platform we use in this guide.

4. Enough margins to support a traffic campaign

Running ads takes money. Can your profit margins support these campaigns?

See, you can have a 100% profit margin—but if you’re selling $2 items, your campaigns still might not be profitable.

Unless you have a higher cart value than the original price.

In other words, your products need to be priced highly enough (with the profit margin to support it); otherwise, you’ll rely on customers adding more to their cart than the single advertised product alone (i.e. more bang for your advertising buck).

Quick Tip!

Do you have slim margins but think customers will buy more than one product to make up for it? 

There is a way to keep track of your average cart value once you set up your Google Ads campaign. Here’s how: 

1. Sign into your Google Ads account >
2. Campaigns >
3. Inside columns >
4. Modify columns >
5. Custom columns >
6. Click on the ‘+’ symbol >
7. Name: (you can call it “Avg. Cart Value”) >

Formula: Conv. Value (by conv. time) / Conversions (by conv. time)
*If you don’t use the “by time,” the last possible 30 days may not be all there 

5. Unique selling proposition

What’s your unique selling proposition? What makes your company/product different from everyone else?

The more heavily saturated your market, the harder it’s going to be to turn a profit from Google Ads. So, what makes you different? 

And *ahem* being the cheapest option isn’t the answer.

Think about your favorite products: what makes them your favorite? Is it the company’s dependable return policy? The quality of the product? The materials used?

Your unique selling proposition is key for the success of your campaigns—specifically longevity and return traffic. After all, it’s six times less expensive to sell to an existing customer than a new one.

6. No one-off products

If you have customizable products (think products that are personalized with engravings, birthstone colors, or photos), this isn’t directed at you.

But when it comes to one-offs, Google Ads will not work.

To reiterate, one-offs are products that you can only sell once (like a unique, one-of-a-kind painting).

And therein lies the problem:

When you make a sale through Google Ads, it is Google’s job to try to recreate that cycle. It’s a learning machine!

But because single products can only sell once, Google has no way to recreate that process.

So, Google uses GTINs to identify and categorize products. But when you sell a one-off product (a single GTIN), that code disappears forever (bye, bye, valuable data).

Do you produce handmade products?

Consider creating multiples of the same product-type (ceramic bowls, for example) and simply acknowledge that they might vary slightly in design due to the nature of handmade products.

Your first sale is always your most expensive in Google Ads. You don’t want every sale to be your first.

7. Completed customer avatars and assets

You need to know the people you sell to on a very deep level: who are they? Where do they live? What do they read? What are their goals? What are their pain points? We do this by creating customer profiles (avatars).

Now, a lot of business owners think in terms of demographics—not avatars.