When organising Performance Max or Buying campaigns, construction and segmentation are sometimes among the many first concerns.
Your strategy will depend on the account’s measurement, conversion quantity and general enterprise targets.
This text explores the benefits and drawbacks of the commonest marketing campaign segmentation strategies, together with:
- A single “one measurement suits all” marketing campaign.
- Segmentation by greatest sellers, product attributes, location, profitability and person sort.
- A complete product matrix strategy.
1. One marketing campaign suits all
This strategy is frequent for small accounts that don’t generate excessive ranges of conversions, making segmentation troublesome to justify.
I discover that fifty conversions each 30 days is a good threshold for sustaining ROAS and CPA targets.
Utilizing only one marketing campaign can also be frequent for medium-sized accounts, notably these with high-end merchandise, excessive common order values (AOV) or in service-based industries like SaaS and insurance coverage, the place CPCs and CPAs are excessive.
Until you could have a big price range or are bidding on micro-conversions, reaching 50 conversions each 30 days is usually a difficult goal.
Account managers typically phase for the sake of segmentation.
Extra campaigns could make the account seem extra structured and justify our function. Nevertheless, when marketing campaign conversion numbers fall to between 10-20 per thirty days, consolidating again to 1 marketing campaign typically improves promoting conversion knowledge.
Benefits
- Information guidelines in PPC, and when one marketing campaign has all the info, it has loads of energy. That bit of jewellery in “The Lord of the Rings” had extra cumulative energy than the smaller rings mixed earlier than being melted down into one. (There’s one sentence I by no means thought I’d ever write, however hopefully you get the purpose.)
- If in case you have a comparatively small product catalog and a low variance of pricing/margins in your greatest sellers, there shall be much less or a have to phase. That is typically the case with D2C accounts.
Disadvantages
- Successfully, there isn’t a product differentiation in your promoting. Even when utilizing good bidding, you’re nonetheless lumping the poorest-performing merchandise in with the most effective sellers. This leads to wasted spend.
- You might have little to no management concerning product prioritization and are handing the keys over to Google’s algorithm with good bidding. Google is aware of loads, however not all the things about your product catalog.
2. Phase by greatest sellers
In case your fundamental purpose is to generate essentially the most income, specializing in greatest sellers is sensible.
This strategy is frequent when you could have sufficient conversion knowledge.
Prioritize selling top-selling merchandise and restrict spending on those who don’t carry out effectively.
Benefits
- Far more management of pushing merchandise which have bought effectively or that you’re anticipating to promote effectively because of seasonality.
- Can effectively combine promotional merchandise and property through tailor-made asset teams, promo extensions, worth extensions, and so on. No want for separate campaigns.
- Comparatively low effort to tier segments through Customized labels.
- The product evaluation course of can vary from utilizing solely Google Advertisements knowledge to together with GA4 or platform knowledge.
- An efficient technique to scale conversion numbers and worth.
Disadvantages
- Principally based mostly on earlier knowledge somewhat than present/future.
- Might not go well with companies the place income is basically price-sensitive and pricing/promotions are up to date commonly. What bought effectively final month might not carry out effectively this month.
- Not all companies’ fundamental precedence is to drive income. Concentrate on greatest sellers wouldn’t facilitate their key goal.
3. Phase by product attributes
That is typically the simplest entry level into marketing campaign segmentation. Information comparable to model and product class are necessary feed attributes, making them available with out the necessity for {custom} labels.
Many companies additionally allocate budgets based mostly on model or product sort, so structuring campaigns this manner is usually essentially the most pure start line.
Benefits
- Collective knowledge inside the Advertisements platform permits for minimal time allocation with product evaluation and segmentation.
- For accounts with giant product catalogs that can’t realistically be managed at an SKU degree, grouping the info by model or class makes it simpler to handle.
- Extra streamlined integration with marketing campaign property based mostly on product attributes, comparable to Model promotion extensions, product class construction snippets, and so on.
- Superior buying experiences on greatest sellers and worth competitiveness can be found within the Service provider Heart for manufacturers and product classes.
Disadvantages
- SKU efficiency can range considerably inside every attribute, so grouping knowledge not based mostly on precedence merchandise can result in wasted spend on poor performers and overreliance on greatest sellers.
- Extra give attention to scaling particular person attribute efficiency (i.e., particular manufacturers) somewhat than the general account.
- Product attribute segmentation is extra generally utilized on the asset group degree, typically making marketing campaign segmentation arbitrary.
4. Phase by location
Segmenting by nation is usually essential to deal with completely different currencies, languages, touchdown pages, and feeds. It’s additionally frequent to focus on completely different areas inside the identical nation to optimize store visits.
Benefits
- There are extra choices accessible to accommodate regional variations and tailor the person journey (e.g., a custom-made touchdown web page for every location). That is widespread with non-feed service Efficiency Max campaigns.
- Simple price range administration if completely different areas have completely different allocations.
- Ultimate strategic strategy for exploring new market alternatives.
Disadvantages
- A number of regional feeds are sometimes harder to handle and preserve high quality.
- Usually unable to phase additional based mostly on the shopper’s efficiency goal (greatest sellers, revenue, and so on.) as a result of conversion knowledge is already unfold throughout a number of campaigns, decreasing development alternatives inside current markets.
5. Phase by revenue
Enterprise CEOs and CFOs don’t typically talk about ROAS or CPA when requesting updates on their internet marketing efficiency. That’s as a result of it’s extra of a advertising and marketing KPI than a enterprise KPI.
With out profitability, what are we actually doing right here?
Integrating revenue knowledge into your campaigns is turning into extra frequent observe, enabling you to make use of third-party instruments comparable to Revenue Metrics or Google’s brand-new revenue optimizer characteristic (in beta as of writing).
Benefits
- Extra correct alignment of the shopper’s precise enterprise objectives than income development.
- Higher alternative to scale efficiency of account when optimizing towards true advertising and marketing goal.
- Creates better shopper belief and understanding of marketing campaign technique and construction if you end up talking their language.
- Regardless of development in strategy, adaptability remains to be very low. This is a chance to have a aggressive edge.
Disadvantages
- Some companies are cautious of sharing revenue knowledge, whereas others don’t have the sources to supply price of products bought (COGS) knowledge to make the most of revenue optimization instruments.
- The technique depends on correct and constant COGS knowledge added by the shopper, which is troublesome to take care of, particularly with giant catalogs.
- Reallocating extra price range towards merchandise with greater margins can typically cut back spend on greatest sellers (typically low margin). It might have an preliminary detrimental influence on income development.
- Switching from ROAS to POAS (revenue on advert spend) is a sophisticated technique and, with out correct planning and gradual rollout, can derail marketing campaign efficiency.
6. Phase by person
Efficiency Max has confronted criticism for focusing closely on returning customers to drive outcomes, making it difficult to measure incrementality in comparison with its predecessor, Good Buying.
Nevertheless, by concentrating on buying new clients, firms can higher assess the true worth of their advertisements and measure incrementality extra precisely, particularly if rising the shopper base is a key promoting goal.
Benefits
- If companies know their lifetime worth (LTV) per buyer, this technique permits them to effectively goal marketing campaign CPAs inside that remit.
- Devoted budgets, property and messaging focusing on new and returning clients.
- Unlocking product insights for each new and returning customers lets you combine this info throughout different channels. For instance, equipment is likely to be widespread amongst returning clients, so you possibly can arrange devoted e-mail flows focusing on earlier consumers with these insights.
Disadvantages
- Even with Google holding fire on cookie deprecation, it’s nonetheless troublesome for them to utterly distinguish new vs. returning customers. Do you belief the accuracy of GA4 viewers reporting?
- For those who use the brand new buyer acquisition purpose, the added worth you assign to a brand new person conversion isn’t the precise worth of their buy however what you contemplate the long-term LTV. So, when included with different campaigns that don’t have the identical marketing campaign purpose, conversion knowledge can appear overinflated and uneven.
- Loads of companies depend on the gross sales of returning customers to drive nearly all of their income streams, so an excessive amount of give attention to new person acquisition will be detrimental to efficiency.
7. Phase with product matrix
Promoting methods for many companies are multifaceted, aiming to enhance numerous metrics comparable to income, gross revenue, AOV, new and returning customers, ROAS, LTV and extra. To handle these priorities successfully, segmentation must be based mostly on a number of knowledge factors and ranges of granularity.
Construction your product evaluation and tiering like a complete grading system to prioritize every product in response to advertising and marketing and enterprise targets.
Under is a small-scale instance of how we apply this strategy in our enhanced Efficiency Max product.

Benefits
- A method almost certainly to realize a number of promoting priorities companies count on from their advertising and marketing.
- The granular product evaluation strategy helps cut back wasted spend and makes your price range work extra effectively throughout your complete catalog.
- Regardless of the superior nature of this strategy, automated merchandise can save hours in handbook evaluation and tiering implementation.
- Versatile in adjusting precedence knowledge factors based mostly on altering market circumstances (e.g., emphasizing gross revenue in a stagnant market or specializing in income throughout seasonal gross sales intervals).
Disadvantages
- This superior technique entails full shopper collaboration to maximise knowledge factors and enterprise priorities (not as simple to realize as you’d think about).
- Restricted suitability towards ecommerce retailers with giant catalogs and numerous product variation.
These are the commonest segmentation methods I’ve noticed in Efficiency Max and Buying campaigns, every with its personal success tales.
A key theme in these successes has been clear communication between the shopper and account supervisor about business objectives, guaranteeing that the marketing campaign technique aligns intently with these objectives.
In the end, the effectiveness of those methods will depend on the provision of conversion and product knowledge, which have to be accessible to totally leverage the chosen strategy.
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