In the competitive world of Google Ads, not all products in your Shopping Ads or Product Listing Ads (PLAs) perform equally. While some items generate impressive returns, others are quietly draining your budget, delivering minimal results. It’s essential to evaluate your PPC Shopping strategy and identify the heroes, sidekicks, zombies, and villains in your campaigns.
The Heroes: Your Superstars 🦸
Within every Google Ads campaign, there are products that shine—your heroes. These are the superstars of your PPC Shopping and PLA campaigns, driving up to 80% of your Shopping Ads revenue. Google’s algorithms favor these products because they have reliable data and a strong performance history.
However, these heroes usually represent only about 20% of your product feed. In a feed of 10,000 items, only 2,000 might be classified as heroes, meaning that a significant portion of your product listings are not pulling their weight. Optimizing your PPC strategy means understanding how to support not just these top performers but also the other products in your Google Ads campaigns.
The Zombies: Potential Powerhouses in Limbo 🧟
Then there are the zombies—products that get minimal clicks or impressions in your Shopping Ads or PLAs. These underperforming products can make up over 60% of the items in a typical Merchant Centre feed. Despite their low visibility, these zombies have the potential to perform well if given the right attention.
These products are often overlooked in PPC Shopping strategies, left to underperform in the background. By segmenting and optimizing these products within your Google Ads campaigns, you can potentially turn these zombies into valuable contributors to your overall PPC success.
The Sidekicks: Underappreciated Assets ⭐
Sidekicks are the products that show promise but haven’t yet reached their full potential in your PPC Shopping campaigns. They generate some sales but don’t yet qualify as heroes in your Google Ads account. Despite their potential, they often don’t get the attention they deserve.
To maximize your PPC Shopping and PLA efforts, it’s crucial to focus on these sidekicks. By adjusting your bidding strategies, setting lower ROAS targets, and improving creative assets, these products can become significant contributors to your Shopping Ads revenue.
The Villains: Budget-Draining Underperformers 🦹
Villains in your Google Ads campaigns are those products that seem promising but end up consuming a large portion of your budget with little return. In many PPC Shopping accounts, these underperforming products can take up around 50% of the total budget, making them a costly part of your PLA strategy.
While these villains might still bring in traffic and conversions, they don’t perform as well as other products in your feed. Identifying and managing these products is key to optimizing your PPC Shopping and PLA campaigns, ensuring that your budget is spent effectively.
Strategies for Growth: Optimizing Your PPC Shopping Campaigns
To achieve sustainable growth in your Google Ads campaigns, it’s crucial to balance the different types of products in your feed. Here are a few strategies to help you optimize your PPC Shopping and PLA efforts:
- Incentivize Your Bidding Strategies: Focus on promoting sidekicks by setting lower ROAS targets, enhancing creative assets, and refining account segmentation. This approach will help these products gain traction in your Shopping Ads and PLA campaigns.
- Pull Back on Villains: Identify and exclude villain products that are consuming too much of your Google Ads budget without delivering strong results. Consider segmenting them into separate PPC campaigns where they can be more closely monitored.
- Give Zombies a Fighting Chance: Don’t let underperforming products go unnoticed in your PPC Shopping strategy. Create dedicated asset groups and creative sets for these items, especially new or seasonal products that may need a bit of extra attention to succeed.
- Analyze Your Product-Level Data: Google Ads reports conversions at the product level, but this doesn’t always mean the clicked product is the one that converted. It’s important to analyze your data to understand which products are driving conversions and which may need more support in your PPC campaigns.
Check out Product Hero for more hero, villan, zombie and sidekick information!
Conclusion: The Power of a Balanced PPC Shopping Strategy
In Google Ads, not every product is a hero. However, with careful management, you can ensure that your sidekicks are empowered, your zombies are revived, and your villains are kept in check. By understanding the different roles products play in your PPC Shopping and PLA campaigns, you can optimise your strategy and make your budget work harder for you.
Remember, success in PPC Shopping isn’t just about finding and promoting your heroes—it’s about knowing when to give sidekicks and zombies a chance to step into the spotlight and when to rein in the villains that are draining your budget.
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Highlighted from Chris Nightingale below, kick out your villains, level up your sidekicks and see what works for your account.
