Solved: Optimising Performance Max Campaigns for E-commerce

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your e-commerce shop's ad performance.

I've had a good read through your situation with PMax, and honestly, it's a very common story. It sounds like you're getting caught up in tweaking the campaign structure, thinking that's the magic lever to pull. Tbh, it's usually not. The real problem often lies a bit deeper, in the stuff you're feeding the campaign in the first place. Let's dig into that.

Let's forget about PMax structure for a minute...

Right, first things first. Performance Max is basically a black box. You feed it assets (images, videos, text), audience signals, and a budget, and it goes off and does its thing across all of Google's channels. The algorithm is incredibly powerful, but its main job is to amplify whatever you give it. If you give it average assets and a leaky website, it will just efficiently spend your money finding people who won't buy.

You mentioned you tried a more detailed setup that performed 'slightly better' but cost more. This is a classic symptom. By giving it more specific assets for each category (e.g., hair product videos for the hair product asset group), you gave it slightly better fuel, so it got a slightly better result. But you're still just tinkering with the engine when the real problem might be the quality of the fuel itself, or a massive hole in the fuel tank (your website).

Obsessing over whether to have one campaign or six is a distraction. It's a secondary optimisation you worry about when everything else is already working brilliantly. For now, it’s far more productive to ask a different question: "Why aren't the people who see my ads buying my products?" The answer isn't in your Google Ads account dashboard. It's in your website analytics and in the psychology of your customer.

Before we touch a single campaign setting, we need to act like detectives and follow the money. We need to find out exactly where your potential customers are getting lost, confused, or scared off. This is the only way to stop wasting that €1500-€3500 budget and turn it into profitable revenue.

We'll need to look at your customer journey...

This is where the real work begins. You need to map out the journey from the moment someone sees your ad to the moment they complete a purchase. Every step is a potential failure point. Let's break it down.

You need to look at your core performance metrics, but not just ROAS and CPA. You have to look at the whole funnel. Where do people drop off?

• Impressions -> Clicks (Click-Through Rate - CTR): If you're getting lots of impressions but very few clicks, your ads are the problem. Simple as that. It means people are seeing your products but aren't remotely interested enough to even take a look. This could be because your product images are weak, your ad copy is boring, or your offer isn't compelling. A "good ad strength" score from Google is meaningless if real people are ignoring it. Google is rating the technical components, not the persuasive power.


• Clicks -> Product Page Views: If you're getting a decent amount of clicks, but people aren't sticking around to view specific products, the problem is likely your landing page or your targeting. Either the people clicking aren't the right audience (a signal issue in PMax), or your homepage is cluttered, slow, and confusing, so they leave before they even get to a product.


• Product Page Views -> Adds to Cart (ATC): This is a huge one. If you're getting loads of people looking at your hair oils or liquid soaps but nobody is adding them to the basket, the issue is almost definately on the product page itself. This points to a few potential culprits:
  • Poor Product Photography: Are you just showing the bottle on a white background? Where are the lifestyle shots? The photos of someone with amazing hair after using the product? Videos showing the texture of the soap? You need to sell the result, not just the product.
  • Weak Product Descriptions: Are you just listing ingredients? Or are you telling a story? Explaining the benefits? Addressing their pain points (e.g., "Tired of dry, frizzy hair? Our natural oil blend seals in moisture for a frizz-free shine all day long.").
  • Price/Value Perception: Is your pricing clear? Is it competitive? More importantly, have you demonstrated enough value to justify the price? Without strong branding and trust, any price can seem too high.
  • Lack of Trust: We'll get into this more, but if there are no reviews or testimonials on the page, people will hesitate.


• Adds to Cart -> Purchase: If people are adding items to their cart but not checking out, you have a checkout problem. This is often caused by surprise shipping costs, a long and complicated checkout process, or not offering the right payment methods. This is the final hurdle, and any friction here will kill your conversion rate.

You need to go into your analytics and find the numbers for each of these steps. That data will tell you exactly where to focus your efforts. To make it clearer, I've mapped it out below.

I'd say your 'good' assets might be the problem...

You mentioned your "ad strength is very good" and you have "very good images and videos". I hear this a lot, but I have to challenge it. As I said before, Google's "ad strength" metric is a technical checklist. It checks if you've uploaded enough assets of different sizes, written enough headlines, etc. It does not, and cannot, judge whether those assets are actually persuasive.

For a natural skincare brand, your assets have to do so much heavy lifting. People are skeptical. They've been burned by products that don't work. They're worried about ingredients. Your ads need to break through that skepticism in about three seconds.

What makes a genuinely good asset for your niche?

• It's not just a product shot: A clean photo of the bottle is fine for your product page, but for an ad? It's boring. You need lifestyle images. Someone with beautiful skin smiling, someone enjoying a relaxing bath with your products, a video showing the rich lather of the soap. You need to sell the feeling, the outcome.
• User-Generated Content (UGC) is gold: A polished, professional ad can sometimes feel corporate and untrustworthy. A simple, authentic video from a real customer talking about how much they love your hair oil? That's incredibly powerful. It feels real. We've had several SaaS clients see really good results with UGC videos, and for e-commerce, it's even more potent.
• Before-and-After content: For skincare and hair care, this is a classic for a reason. It provides undeniable proof. It could be for hair frizz, skin clarity, anything. Just be careful with platform policies here, some are stricter than others.
• Your copy needs to follow a formula: Don't just say "Natural Liquid Soap - Buy Now". Use a proven copywriting framework like Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) or Before-After-Bridge (BAB).
  
  Example (BAB):
  Before: Still fighting with dry, flaky skin no matter what moisturiser you use?
  After: Imagine waking up with skin that feels soft, hydrated, and calm all day long.
  Bridge: Our Hyaluronic Acid & Aloe Vera soap cleanses without stripping your skin's natural barrier, locking in moisture from the moment you step out of the shower.

This kind of shift in thinking—from "providing assets" to "creating persuasive arguments"—is massive. Your CPA and ROAS are a direct reflection of how persuasive your marketing is. Right now, it sounds like it isn't very persuasive, regardless of what Google's dashboard says.

You probably should focus on building trust...

Let's assume you fix your ads and get the right people to the right product pages. There's still another huge wall they have to climb before they'll give you their credit card details: trust.

For a small e-commerce shop, especially one selling products people put on their skin, trust is not a 'nice-to-have'. It's everything. You are competing with massive, established brands that people already know and trust. Why should they take a chance on you?

Your website has to scream "We are a legitimate, trustworthy business that sells high-quality products." How do you do that?

• Customer Reviews are Non-Negotiable: You need reviews on every single product page. Not just star ratings, but written testimonials. If you don't have any, run a promotion for existing customers to encourage them to leave a review. New customers look for social proof more than anything else.
• Showcase Trust Badges: These can be from secure payment processors (Stripe, PayPal), any certifications your products have (e.g., organic, cruelty-free), or publications you've been featured in. It might seem like a small thing, but these visual cues subconsciously reassure visitors.
• Have a Professional 'About Us' Page: Tell your story. Who are you? Why did you start this brand? People connect with people. A faceless, generic store is much harder to trust than one with a real person and a real mission behind it.
• Clear Contact Information and Policies: Make it easy to find your contact details, shipping policy, and return policy. Hiding this information looks shady and makes customers nervous. If something goes wrong, they want to know they can get in touch.

I remember working on a campaign for a handcrafted jewellery store. Their ads were getting clicks, but sales were dead. We looked at the site. The photos were okay, prices were fair. But there wasn't a single customer review, no mention of the artist, no clear return policy. It felt anonymous and risky. We spent two weeks just focusing on adding those trust elements. We added a section with photos of the artist at her workbench, pulled in reviews from her Etsy page, and made the shipping/returns info prominent. The conversion rate nearly doubled without us touching the ads. The traffic was always there; the trust wasn't.

You'll need to think beyond Google...

Okay, let's talk channels. You're new to PMax and you're putting your entire budget into it. That's a big risk, especially when it might not even be the best platform for your products.

PMax, and Google Ads in general, is brilliant at capturing existing demand. People go to Google to search for a solution to a problem they already have ("buy natural soap for sensitive skin"). This is powerful, but it's only one part of the market.

Skincare and beauty products are often discovery-based purchases. People aren't necessarily searching for them, but they see an interesting ad on social media, get intrigued, and make an impulse buy. This is where platforms like Meta (Facebook & Instagram) and even Pinterest can be incredibly effective.

I've seen this work time and time again for e-commerce clients. One campaign we worked on for a cleaning products company hit a 633% return on ad spend, and another for women's apparel achieved a 691% return, both heavily using Meta Ads.

Why? Because on Meta, you don't have to wait for people to search for you. You can proactively put your products in front of your ideal customer based on their interests (e.g., people who follow brands like LUSH, who are interested in 'organic skincare', 'veganism', or 'sustainable products'). You can tell a story with video ads and carousels in a way that's much harder with a simple Google Shopping ad.

This doesn't mean you should abandon Google. But you should seriously consider reallocating some of that €3500 budget to test Meta. A 70/30 or 60/40 split between Google and Meta could give you a much more balanced and resilient advertising strategy. You capture existing demand with Google and create new demand with Meta.

The potential returns can be significant if you get it right. Play around with this calculator to see how different ROAS targets could impact your revenue.

Here's how I would structure your Meta Ads...

If you do decide to test Meta, you can't just throw all your products into one ad and hope for the best. You need a proper structure that guides customers through a journey. I always prioritise audiences based on how 'warm' they are—meaning, how familiar they are with your brand.

This is often called a ToFu/MoFu/BoFu funnel (Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, Bottom of Funnel).

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting:
This is where you find new people who have never heard of you. Your goal here is to introduce your brand and products. You're not necessarily going for the hard sell immediately.

• Audiences: You'd start with detailed targeting. Create ad sets based on interests like 'Natural skincare', 'Lush Cosmetics', 'The Body Shop', 'Vegan beauty', 'Etsy shoppers', etc. You could also create Lookalike audiences based on your website visitors or past purchasers once you have enough data.
• Creative: Use engaging video ads showing your products in use, or eye-catching carousel ads that showcase a range of products from one of your categories (e.g., your hair care line). The goal is to stop the scroll and get them curious.
• Objective: You'd still optimise for Conversions (Purchases), but you should expect a lower ROAS from this cold traffic.

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Re-engagement:
This is for people who have shown some interest but haven't gone deep into your site. They might have watched one of your videos or visited your homepage.

• Audiences: Retarget people who have watched 50% of your video ads, engaged with your Instagram or Facebook page, or visited your website in the last 30 days (but exclude those who added to cart).
• Creative: Show them something different. Maybe customer testimonials, a video explaining the benefits of your key ingredients, or highlight a specific collection. You're building more familiarity and trust.

3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Retargeting:
This is your money-maker. These are people who are very close to buying. They've visited product pages or even added items to their cart.

• Audiences: Retarget people who have Viewed Content or Added to Cart in the last 7-14 days (exclude purchasers). This audience is small but highly valuable.
• Creative: Be direct. Show them the exact product they looked at using a Dynamic Product Ad. Offer a small incentive like "Free shipping on your first order" or a 10% discount code to nudge them over the line. Create a sense of urgency.

By structuring your campaigns this way, you create a logical flow. You introduce new people at the top, nurture their interest in the middle, and convert them at the bottom. This is a much more strategic approach than just running one big campaign and hoping for the best. It's how we consistently drive high returns for our e-commerce clients.

So, what about that PMax setup?

Right, let's circle back to your original question, now that we've covered the more important stuff. How should you set up your Performance Max campaign?

Assuming you've fixed your assets, shored up trust on your website, and have a clear understanding of your funnel, here's what I would recommend:

Start with one consolidated campaign. With a budget of up to €3500/month, you don't want to spread your data too thin across multiple campaigns. PMax thrives on data. The more conversion data you can feed into a single campaign, the faster it will learn and the better it will perform.

However, within that one campaign, you absolutely should use seperate asset groups for each of your 6 product categories.

Why? Because it allows you to maintain relevance.

• Your 'hair products' asset group should only have images, videos, and headlines about hair products.
• Your 'liquid soap' asset group should only have assets about liquid soap.
• Your audience signals for the hair products group can be tailored to people interested in hair care, while the signals for your 'packages' group could be geared towards gift shoppers or people looking for value sets.

This structure gives the PMax algorithm the best of both worlds. It has a large pool of conversion data from the overall campaign to learn from, but it can also serve highly relevant ads to specific users based on the category they're interested in. It's more effective than a single, generic asset group and more data-efficient than six seperate campaigns.

Only consider breaking out a category into its own campaign if two conditions are met:
1. That category is consistently generating the vast majority of your sales and has a much higher ROAS than the others.
2. Your budget increases significantly, allowing you to dedicate enough spend to a seperate campaign for it to exit the learning phase and perform optimally.

For now, one campaign, multiple themed asset groups. That's your best bet. But remember, this is the final 10% of the puzzle. The other 90% is everything we've talked about above.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This is a lot to take in, I know. Paid advertising, especially for e-commerce, has a lot of moving parts. It's not just about the ads themselves. It's about the entire customer experience. Here's a summary of the plan I'd suggest you follow.

Working through this list will be far more effective than continuing to tweak campaign settings and hoping for a different result. It requires stepping back from the ad platform and looking at your business from the customer's perspective.

It's a lot of work, and getting it right requires experience. The difference between an average campaign and a great one often comes down to dozens of small adjustments in targeting, creative, and on-site optimisation that an expert can spot quickly. If you'd like to get a second pair of eyes on your setup and discuss a more detailed strategy tailored specifically to your brand, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review everything together.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh