Automotive PPC – Car Parts Store From £500K to £1M in 12 months With Google Ads

Client: Automotive eCommerce – Car Parts, OEM & Aftermarket Spares.

Services provided: Google Ads Management

This is a detailed case study on how to run PPC for auto parts products.

Overview

A global car parts supplier in business since 1995, had struggled to scale its Google Ads campaigns. Before working together, multiple agencies managed the account with little success in driving incremental revenue. On the surface ad accounts seemed like they were performing really well, but it was mostly down to the brand traffic in Google Ads and retargeting campaigns on Facebook, which were driving little to no incremental revenue. Things needed to change.

After a call with Tom (Head Of Marketing) talking about growth goals and account history, we agreed to follow up with a short video audit and a formal proposal for the monthly management of the Google Ads campaigns.

Two days later, I delivered the audit, highlighting quick wins and a few critical issues that easily convinced Tom I was the right man for the job.

Audit Summary

1. The account was overreporting conversions. It had two primary conversion actions, one from Analytics and the other from Google Ads. A rookie mistake that often goes unnoticed.
2. Messy account structure. The brand keywords were mixed with generic campaigns on similar targets, leading Google to overbid for branded terms.
3. Wasted spend on underperforming products. Every account with history will have an average CVR (Conversion rate) and ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). For this example, let’s assume your profit margins are flat across the board. By knowing your average CVR and ROAS, you can work out what % of products are underperforming (say your average CVR is 2%, and breakeven ROAS is 400%, so you look at the last 90 days (depending on the account size) at products that had more than 100 clicks, a conversion rate lower than 2% and a ROAS of less than 400% these will be your underperformers) and take action by
   1. Reviewing product attributes like titles, price and image (These three attributes are the most important and likely to affect the bottom line)
   2. Reviewing the landing page (any obvious issues like poor reviews or unoptimised listing with not much information on the page)
   3. Moving them to a different campaign on lower bids or higher ROAS targets if you’re using smart bidding strategies.
   4. Excluding them from Shopping listings altogether. Sometimes, less is more and better. Don’t be afraid to remove stuff, which is what we did, especially if you’re a retailer.
4. High-margin products & categories were not getting the attention they deserved due to a high number of products in a single campaign. Over 80% of products had no clicks in the last 30 days, and the top spend categories seemed to be low-value products.

Changes

1. Fixed duplicate conversions and set realistic targets focusing on MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio) growth rather than platform the ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) reported in the ad account.
2. Better budget planning. A comprehensive Google Analytics audit with high-level channel analysis concluded that some channels were spending too much, in particular Facebook because it claimed a lot of conversions through retargeting that we assumed would’ve converted anyway, we halved the spend and used that money on Google as a result we doubled the overall revenue.
3. Fixed GMC (Google Merchant Center) disapprovals on a ~40,000 product feed. The rate of disapproved items decreased from 20% to 1%.
4. Restructured the account to accommodate better visibility on high-margin products.
5. Created new native feeds for new countries – Germany, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Italy, France, United States, Australia
6. Introduced profit metrics in January 2024, which allowed us to start reporting net profits in the account and optimise for high-margin products that drove the most profit.
7. Split brand and generic campaigns to have better spend control on the brand, an analysis of Auction Insights revealed that there was barely any competition and there hasn’t been a need to spend as much on branded keywords, we accepted a 60% IS (Impression Share) and instead we used the budget in the generic campaign.
8. Excluded brand from PMax which initially shocked the system, but eventually helped us scale Performance Max campaigns better.
9. Set up a supplemental feed for product exclusions to update with high spend and underperforming products.

Results

It took us a some time and effort to see positive results, and it’s paid off by investing more in generic campaigns, cutting back on brand spend and shifting the budget from underperforming channels like Facebook to Google.

That’s it, if you have any questions, send them to victor@victorserban.com

Cheers,

Victor

PS If you click on my affiliate links, I may earn a tiny commission at no extra cost to you, which helps support my work and earns treats for Paco (my cat), and most of the time, you’ll get an offer, too. Win-win! I only promote products I believe in and personally use.