I cut a supplement brand’s Google adpend by 50% and revenue stayed the same

by | Nov 18, 2022 | Uncategorized

I cut a Google Ad account’s spend by 50% and revenue stayed the same.
Here’s how:

(Don’t let the Google Ads screenshot deceive you)

As you see in Google Ads, spend & revenue clearly dropped.
But did revenue actually drop?

This screenshot from Northbeam shows revenue staying fairly consistent, while spend drops.

Google Ads is notorious for overspending, especially when it’s being used as your store’s “inner funnel” traffic.

For most stores, Google is essentially retargeting your efforts on paid social.

So how did this happen?

First, the accounts attribution windows were set WAY too high.
30 day click
7 day engaged-view
7 day view

Engaged view takes 10 second video views from PMAX and attributes them as click-conversions.

We cut those down to 7/1/1 to optimize for shorter purchase windows.

Second, this account had RLSAs and was spending less than $200/day.

This basically splits search campaigns into “prospecting” and “retargeting”.

Google’s retargeting audiences aren’t great for branded search & they were likely excluding high-intent traffic by accident.

Third, this account was spending on way too many broad “ingredient-based” terms.

These terms never convert, usually because the intent behind them is people looking for information.

“What does XYZ ingredient do?”

Google any ingredient, and you’ll either find:
– Information on page 1
– Bulk wholesale pricing for manufacturers

These simply aren’t great DTC keywords to bid on.

This account happened to be overspending by about $3k/month.

What would you do with an extra 3k/month?
Some of you are wasting more as we speak.

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