Help: Scaling Google Ads for eCom clothing brand
Hi,
I run a women’s sleepwear and loungewear clothing brand and am running my own Google ads. I’ve been running them for quite some time, and they’re doing OK, but I feel like something isn’t optimized right as every time I try scaling, my campaigns flop. Heres my current setup:
1 PMax Shopping campaign for Pajamas – $60/day
1 PMAX Shopping campaign for Rest of products – $50/day
Current stats (last 7 days):
PJs: Conv: 4, Conv value: $508.2, Cost: $431.19, Conv value/cost: 1.18
ROP: Conv: 6, Conv value: $667.4, Cost: $359.68, Conv value/cost: 1.86
Both campaigns are set to maximize conversion value with no roas goal. Any time I try scaling those daily budgets, things crash to no conversion, even after letting it run for 1-2 weeks. I want to reach a 2.5 conv value/cost. Google is constantly telling me I am limited by budget.
I’ve excluded products that have most sizes in a single product sold out. Some of our best selling products via Meta ads are on here also and don’t perform well. I’m not quite sure what other optimization steps I can take before scaling.
Any advice is appreciated and I can provide more info as needed.
Added: We do $50k+ a month, with a 45% returning customer rate, and majority of new sales come from Meta (IG/FB). I really believe I can double this monthly revenue if I get Google Ads running well.
Thanks!
The short answer is:
Your current approach of trying to scale by increasing the budget on your existing Performance Max (PMAX) campaigns is failing because Google’s automated bidding system needs a clearer profit signal to spend more efficiently.
The best step before scaling is to implement a target return on ad spend (Target ROAS) of around 1.8 for your Pajamas campaign and 2.5 for your Rest of products campaign, as this provides the system with the minimum acceptable return.
Scaling while still in the learning phase and with poor conversion tracking is risky.
You absolutely need to improve your conversion value accuracy and volume by implementing Enhanced Conversions and setting up server-side tracking, ideally using Google Tag Manager and a service like Stape, which will ensure Google receives a more complete and accurate picture of your sales and conversion value, allowing the PMAX algorithm to make smarter bidding decisions as you scale.
The long answer is:
Your issue is incredibly common when trying to scale automated campaigns like PMAX, and it primarily revolves around insufficient or inaccurate data being fed back to Google’s machine learning, making the algorithm unable to efficiently find the new, higher-volume customers you want.
First, let’s address the immediate scaling attempt. Your current conversion value/cost for PJs is 1.18 and for ROP is 1.86.
When you increase the budget on a Maximize Conversion Value campaign without a Target ROAS, you are essentially telling Google to spend the entire budget even if the return drops significantly, which is exactly what’s happening – it finds those higher-volume, lower-quality auctions and your efficiency crashes.
To scale successfully, you need to implement a Target ROAS.
For PJs, set the Target ROAS at or slightly below your current 1.18, maybe 1.1, and let it run for a week.
Then, slowly increase the Target ROAS to 1.5, then 1.8, and so on, keeping an eye on volume.
For ROP, since its performance is much better, you can start with a Target ROAS of 1.8 and gradually move it toward your goal of 2.5.This gives the system a clear instruction on the minimum efficiency it must maintain as it finds new customers.
The more critical step, which is key to unlocking your scaling potential, is improving your conversion data, which is likely being suppressed by ad-blockers and browser restrictions.
Given that you already have significant Meta sales, you need to ensure that Google Ads is getting all the conversion credit it deserves.
You should prioritize implementing Enhanced Conversions through Google Tag Manager, which sends hashed customer data for better matching of conversions.
However, the superior and long-term solution is moving to server-side tracking.
By using Google Tag Manager with a server-side container hosted on a platform like Stape or Google Cloud Platform, you send the standard client-side events like view_itemadd_to_cartbegin_checkoutpurchase to your own server first.
From there, you forward these events to Google Ads’ measurement tag.
This server-side implementation bypasses most ad-blockers and browser restrictions, drastically improving the accuracy and volume of your reported conversions and their values.
Using the Google Ads API, along with Google Tag Manager and a service like Stape, is an excellent and cost-effective solution for a brand doing over $50k a month.
The Google Ads API is the engine that allows you to manage and interact with your account programmatically.
While setting up a full server-side GTM implementation can be done on Google Cloud Platform, using a managed service like Stape is often simpler and significantly cheaper for the volumes you’re dealing with, avoiding the complexity of managing a GCP instance yourself.
This setup ensures that your Standard Events, especially the vital purchase event and its associated conversion value, are sent directly to Google’s servers without client-side interference.
The result is a richer, more reliable data set, which is exactly what PMAX needs to stabilize its performance and scale efficiently with a Target ROAS.
This enhanced data accuracy will give the algorithm the confidence to bid higher for users who are truly likely to convert at a profitable rate, helping you finally achieve that 2.5 conversion value/cost goal and double your monthly revenue.
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