Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out!
Happy to give you some initial thoughts on this. You've hit on one of the biggest points of confusion in Google Ads right now, and frankly, a lot of the advice out there is either outdated or just plain wrong for someone in your position. It's easy to get overwhelmed when you're just starting out, so lets cut through the noise a bit.
The core problem isn't really "PMax vs Search", it's about control, data, and risk when you have a new store and a small budget. Throwing money at a 'black box' like Performance Max from day one is one of the fastest ways to burn through your cash with very little to show for it. I'll walk you through a much more methodical, sustainable approach that we use to launch new ecommerce brands.
TLDR;
- For new ecommerce stores with no sales data, Performance Max is a trap. It needs data to work effectively and will likely waste your budget on low-quality display traffic.
- Start with a Standard Shopping campaign using a "Single Product Ad Group" (SPAG) structure. This gives you maximum control and clear data on what's working.
- Your first goal isn't sales, it's data. You need to mine your Search Term Reports for high-intent keywords that actual customers are using.
- The most important piece of advice is to understand your numbers first. Use our interactive Break-Even ROAS calculator below to figure out how much you can actually afford to pay for a customer.
- This guide includes a flowchart visualising why PMax fails for new stores and a step-by-step campaign structure to get you started on the right foot.
We'll need to look at why PMax is a trap for new stores...
Let's get this out of the way first. Google is pushing Performance Max (PMax) hard. Their reps will tell you it's the future, that it's the only way to get access to all their inventory (YouTube, Display, Discover, etc.), and that the AI is so clever it'll do all the work for you. And for a massive, established brand with tens of thousands of conversions a month, they're not entirely wrong. But for you, starting with a handful of products and zero sales history, it's a disaster waiting to happen.
Think of it like this: Google's algorithm is a powerful, but very literal, engine. You give it an objective, like "get me sales," and a budget. Without any historical data on what a typical customer looks like for your specific store, it has to guess. And its first guess is to go for the cheapest, easiest-to-reach audience. Where is that? On the Google Display Network, in mobile game apps, and on low-quality YouTube channels. It will spend 80% of your budget showing your product images to people who have zero interest in buying, just to gather "data". You're essentially paying for Google's education at your own expense.
You'll see impressions and maybe some cheap clicks, and you'll think something is happening. But the traffic is junk. They're not looking for your product; your ad just interrupted them. For an established store, PMax can use the pixel data from thousands of past purchasers to know who to target. It can build a detailed profile of a good customer and find more people like them. You don't have that data yet. You're giving it an empty map and telling it to find treasure. It's a recipe for frustration and wasted money. We've taken over so many accounts where small businesses have been told to run PMax from day one and have burned through thousands of pounds with maybe one or two sales to show for it. It's almost predictable.
PMax Campaign Launch
Store has 1,000s of past purchase data points.
Algorithm Analysis
Identifies traits of high-value customers from existing data.
Targeted Scaling
Finds lookalikes and serves ads across networks to qualified buyers.
PMax Campaign Launch
Store has 0 past purchase data points.
Algorithm Guesswork
Spends budget broadly on cheap display/video to "learn".
Budget Burn
Wastes money on low-intent traffic, generating few, if any, sales.
I'd say you need to start with control and clarity...
So, what's the alternative? You go back to basics. You need a structure that gives you control, provides clean data, and lets you learn about your customers without risking your entire budget. This is where Standard Shopping campaigns come in. And specifically, a method called Single Product Ad Groups (SPAGs).
The idea is simple. Instead of lumping all your products into one big campaign and letting Google decide what to do, you isolate them. Since you only have a handful of items, this is perfect. You'll create one Standard Shopping campaign for each product.
The structure looks like this:
- Campaign: Standard Shopping - Product A
- Ad Group: Product A Ad Group
- Product Group: Inside this ad group, you'll see a subdivision for "All products". You'll click into that, and then exclude every single product except for Product A.
You then repeat this for Product B, Product C, and so on. Yes, it's a bit more work to set up. It might take you an hour instead of ten minutes. But the benefits are huge:
- Budget Control: You can set a specific daily budget for each product. Is one product your hero item with the best margins? Give it more budget. Is another a lower-priority test? Give it a smaller budget. You are in complete control of where your money goes.
- Bid Control: You can set a specific Max CPC bid for each product. This is impossible in PMax. You can start with a low bid and slowly increase it until you find the sweet spot for traffic and cost. - Crystal Clear Data: This is the most important part. When you look at your "Campaign: Standard Shopping - Product A", every single metric—clicks, impressions, cost, conversions, ROAS—belongs *only* to Product A. There's no guesswork. If it's not selling, you know it's Product A that has the problem. If it's selling brilliantly, you know Product A is your winner. This clean data is the foundation of everything you will do next.
With this setup, your initial goal isn't even to make a profit. Your goal is to gather data cheaply and efficiently. You're trying to prove a concept for each product. Can this product, at this price, advertised on Google, generate a sale? The SPAG structure gives you the clearest possible answer to that question.
You probably should be mining for gold in your Search Terms...
Once your SPAG campaigns have been running for a week or two and you've got some clicks (and hopefully a sale or two!), you can perform the single most valuable task in Google Ads: analysing the Search Term Report.
This report shows you the *exact* phrases people typed into Google right before they clicked on your product ad. This isn't a guess based on interests; this is pure, unfiltered customer intent. It is absolute gold dust. You'll find it in each campaign under the "Keywords" tab > "Search Terms".
As you review this list, you'll do two things:
1. Build a Negative Keyword List: You will inevitably find search terms that are completely irrelevant. If you sell "premium leather dog collars," you might see clicks from people searching for "cheap nylon dog collars" or "how to fix a broken dog collar". Every time someone clicks your ad from one of these searches, you've wasted money. You need to add words like "cheap," "nylon," "fix," "repair," "free" to your campaign's negative keyword list. This is like plugging leaks in a bucket. It's a continuous process that makes your campaigns more and more efficient over time, ensuring your budget is only spent on relevant searches.
2. Identify Your "Money" Keywords: Amongst the noise, you'll see the gems. These are the search terms that are converting into sales. They might be specific, long-tail keywords like "handmade brown leather collar for spaniel" or broader terms like "luxury dog accessories uk". These are the terms you want to double down on.
Once you have a list of these proven, high-converting keywords from your Shopping campaigns, you can then launch your first Standard Search campaign. But you're not guessing at keywords anymore. You're building a campaign based on real data of what already works for *your* store. This completely de-risks your entry into Search ads and gives you a massive advantage over competitors who are just guessing. You're using Shopping as a research tool to fund a highly profitable Search campaign.
You'll need to know your numbers inside and out...
This all sounds great, but it's pointless if you don't know what a "good" result actually looks like. The most common mistake I see new store owners make is chasing a high Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) without knowing what their *actual* target should be. A 4x ROAS might be amazing for one business and disastrous for another.
You need to calculate your Break-Even ROAS. This is the ROAS you need to achieve just to cover the cost of the product and the ad spend, leaving you with zero profit. Any ROAS above this number is profit.
The calculation is simple: Break-Even ROAS = 1 / Gross Profit Margin %
Let's break that down. Your Gross Profit Margin is the percentage of the sale price that's left after you've paid for the product itself (your Cost of Goods Sold, or COGS).
- Sale Price: £50
- Cost of Goods (from Alibaba, incl. shipping to you): £15
- Gross Profit: £50 - £15 = £35
- Gross Profit Margin: £35 / £50 = 0.70 or 70%
So, your Break-Even ROAS is 1 / 0.70 = 1.43x (or 143%).
This means that for every £1 you spend on ads, you need to make back £1.43 in revenue just to break even. If your campaign reports a ROAS of 1.5x, you're making a tiny profit. If it's at 3x, you're doing very well. If it's at 1.2x, you are losing money on every single sale.
Knowing this number is your guiding star. It tells you which campaigns are working and which are failing. It informs your bidding strategy. Without it, you are flying completely blind. I've built a simple calculator for you below to play around with your own numbers.
Interactive Break-Even ROAS Calculator
You'll probably need to become a detective...
Finally, remember that Google Ads is just one part of the puzzle. It can bring the right people to your store, but it can't force them to buy. If your campaigns are getting clicks but no sales, the problem often isn't the ads—it's the website.
You need to look at your entire funnel and identify where people are dropping off. We do this for all our ecommerce clients, and it's where we often find the biggest opportunities for growth.
- -> Low Impressions: Your bids might be too low, or your product feed might have errors. Check Google Merchant Center for any disapprovals.
- -> Low Click-Through Rate (CTR): If people see your ad but don't click, the problem is likely your main product image or your price. Is your image clear and appealing? Is your price competitive? Are you showing shipping costs upfront in Merchant Center? A low CTR on Shopping is often a price or image problem.
- -> High Clicks, but low Add to Carts: People are interested enough to click, but something on your product page is putting them off. This is a huge area to investigate. Are your product photos high-quality? Do you have multiple angles, maybe a video? Is your product description persuasive and detailed? Does your site look trustworthy? A lack of reviews, a clunky design, or a confusing layout can kill conversions here.
- -> High Add to Carts, but low Purchases: This is the final hurdle. People want your product, but something in the checkout process is stopping them. The number one culprit is unexpected shipping costs. Be transparent about shipping as early as possible. Other issues could be a long and complicated checkout form, not offering enough payment options (like PayPal or Apple Pay), or technical glitches.
By analysing your website analytics alongside your Google Ads data, you can pinpoint the exact stage where you're losing potential customers and focus your efforts on fixing that specific problem. It's a much more effective approach than just blindly changing your ad bids and hoping for the best.
This methodical, data-driven approach is how you build a sustainable advertising strategy from the ground up. It’s not as fast or as "automated" as throwing a PMax campaign at the wall, but it's smarter, safer, and will teach you more about your business and your customers than any black box algorithm ever could. You build a solid foundation of data, you plug the leaks in your funnel, and *then* you can start thinking about scaling and more advanced automation.
I hope this gives you a much clearer path forward and a bit more confidence in tackling Google Ads. It can seem complex, but by focusing on control and data first, you put yourself in the best possible position to succeed.
This is the main advice I have for you:
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a step-by-step plan. This is the framework we use to launch new ecommerce accounts profitably and sustainably.
| Phase | Action Plan | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Foundation |
|
You cannot optimise what you cannot measure. Knowing your numbers is non-negotiable before spending a single pound. |
| 2. Controlled Testing |
|
This provides maximum control and gives you clean, unambiguous performance data for each individual product. Avoid PMax completely at this stage. |
| 3. Data Mining |
|
This is the most critical step. You are using real customer data to refine your targeting and stop wasting money. |
| 4. Expansion |
|
You are de-risking your search ads by building them on a foundation of data, not guesswork. This is far more effective than a broad keyword strategy. |
| 5. On-Site Optimisation |
|
Your ads can only do so much. The biggest gains often come from fixing problems on your own website. |
| 6. Intelligent Scaling |
|
Automation and scaling tools work best when you can feed them high-quality data. You've now earned the right to use them effectively. |
Starting this way is more work, there's no doubt about it. But it's the difference between gambling and investing. You're investing in data and learning, building a solid foundation that will pay dividends for years to come, rather than just pulling the lever on the PMax slot machine and hoping for a jackpot.
If you'd like to go over your specific products and get a second pair of eyes on your setup, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we can walk through this process together on a call. Sometimes it just helps to talk it through with someone who's done it hundreds of times before.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh