Perfecting a Google Shopping Campaign
eCommerce PPC Marketing
When Angelica Dewlow, Marketing Director at Location Sound, reached out to Obiyan Infotech about PPC marketing, it was an idea she had been considering for a while. Location Sound is a B2B distributor specializing in audio recording and production equipment for professional studios. To develop a PPC strategy tailored to their niche, Angelica turned to Obiyan Infotech.
Initially, the focus was on Search Ads, but the conversation quickly shifted to Google Shopping. For many eCommerce PPC clients, we recommend Google Shopping Ads since they allow the use of images, are more cost-effective than text ads, and often yield higher conversion rates. The only challenge with Google Shopping is managing a well-structured product feed. This feed contains the essential data—product names, descriptions, images, and more—that Google uses to populate Shopping Ads. To launch an effective Google Shopping campaign for Location Sound, we needed to ensure their feed was properly formatted. “I’m a one-person shop in this marketing department,” Angelica shared. “It felt a bit overwhelming at first, but luckily, most of the groundwork was already in place.”
Angelica had already made our job significantly easier by optimizing her site for SEO marketing prior to starting PPC. While SEO and PPC are distinct strategies, they are closely connected. In this case, properly formatted product titles and descriptions—originally structured to rank well in Google Search—also aligned perfectly with the way Google populates Shopping Ads. This saved us considerable time in both setup and testing. When asked what advice she would give to merchants new to PPC, Angelica shared, “My biggest advice is to ensure your site is optimized beforehand, or the campaign rollout will be delayed. Have your feed set up in advance—it can take weeks to get right.”
Whenever we launch a PPC campaign, the initial phase is all about testing. For the first few months, we keep ad spend low while we identify which products convert best and push the campaign into the profit zone. Every business is different—even two companies in the same industry may see success with entirely different products. This is why we ask all eCommerce PPC clients at Obiyan to commit to at least three months. Optimizing a Google Shopping campaign takes time, as we need data before making strategic bidding decisions.
During Location Sound’s campaign, we encountered an unexpected hurdle. We successfully tested ads for the first two months, but month three had historically been a slow period for them, and they opted to pause ad spend, believing it wouldn’t yield strong results. In situations like this, we typically recommend reducing ad spend instead of stopping completely. Not only does this allow continued testing of high-ROI products, but it also helps maintain trust with Google. Unlike Search Ads, which can be switched on and off like a faucet, Google Shopping requires ongoing engagement. Merchants who consistently maintain their feed and campaign activity tend to receive better placements at lower costs. While we had built trust with Google over two months, pausing the campaign reset our standing—leaving us with more data, but back at square one in terms of our reputation with Google.
When we restarted the campaign in early Month 4, we aimed to recover lost ground by placing aggressive bids, signaling to Google that Location Sound was back and ready to compete. Fortunately, this coincided with the moment when all our research and testing came together, and the campaign finally started to gain momentum.
By identifying the most profitable products to prioritize, we achieved a staggering 1,900% return on ad spend in Month 4, generating an additional $11,000 in revenue. With a refined strategy focused on high-ticket items, the campaign continued to perform strongly—delivering an 833% return on ad spend in Month 5 and an impressive 936% return on ad spend in Month 6.
A key breakthrough in the Location Sound PPC campaign came with the implementation of RLSA remarketing. RLSA, or Remarketing Lists for Search Ads, allows us to track users who previously clicked on an ad and adjust bids if they search for the same keywords again. However, Google requires at least 1,000 previous users in a list before RLSA can be activated, meaning we had to run the campaign for some time before leveraging this strategy.
Once eligible, we increased bids for returning visitors to see if it improved conversions—and for Location Sound, the results were phenomenal. In Month 5, RLSA-generated traffic achieved an astonishing 10,639% return on investment. We apply RLSA testing to all our PPC clients and find that it delivers significant gains for about two-thirds of the merchants we work with.
A successful eCommerce PPC marketing campaign often comes down to patience and fine-tuning. With Location Sound, our testing phase took longer than anticipated, but once everything aligned, the results exceeded even our expectations. If your Google Ads campaign isn’t delivering the results you hoped for, it might be time to see how a few months of strategic, expert-led testing can transform your outcomes. Get in touch with the eCommerce PPC specialists and discover what your campaign could achieve when every piece falls perfectly into place.