TPE #104: 10 pMax segmentations for more control & scalability

Read time: 6 minutes

GM, Miles here with The PPC Edge!

How you segment your Performance Max campaigns has a big impact on results.

Today, I will give you 10 advanced pMax campaign segmentations for more control and scalability. These also work for Standard Shopping campaigns.

I don’t always use all of them, but I listed them out to give you inspiration for your next test.

Let’s dive right in!

Preface: why campaign segmentations are crucial for success with pMax & Shopping.

Contrary to Search campaigns, consolidation is not the holy grail for pMax & Shopping.

You can often drive better results by creating advanced segmentations.

But, here’s a huge disclaimer: don’t think about segmenting your campaigns if you don't have sufficient conversion volumes (<50 conversions per month).

Here are a few reasons why you might want to go beyond basic campaign structures:

• You want to give your best-performing products the attention they deserve.
• You want to cap spending on underperforming products.
• You want to push zero-impression products.
• You want to allocate your budgets towards products currently on sale.
• You want to bid more aggressively on new products to get traction, fast.
• You want to bid less aggressively on products that are (almost) out of stock.
• … And more.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s look at 10 advanced pMax & Shopping campaign segmentations you can implement today to improve your results (straight from our new Shopping Mastery course — exclusively available in The PPC Hub).

1: Segment by Category (easy).

This basic campaign segmentation gives you control over how hard you push certain product categories.

Segmenting by category is a very simple, yet effective segmentation tactic that can be very powerful in the early stages of your account.

But keep in mind that you do not want to over-segment!

Keep your conversion volumes in check. Therefore, it’s recommended to only segment mid- to high-volume categories and create a “rest” segmentation for lower-volume categories.

2: Bestsellers vs. Regular (easy).

With this basic yet effective segmentation, you isolate and scale your best-performing products.

I’ve had cases in the past where we pushed only 1 specific product, because it was the ultimate bestseller.

3: Products on Sale vs. Regular (easy).

If needed, I like to create a new campaign to push products that are on sale.

This ensures we maximize visibility and spend on products that have a higher conversion rate (likely).

I exclude them from the main campaign(s) as long as they are in the sale campaign to prevent duplicate targeting.

Pro-tip: Besides pushing products that are currently on sale (by looking at whether or not the product has a <sale_price> in place), you can also consider isolating products that have an active promotion in Google Merchant Center Next.

4: Segment by Price Competitiveness (moderate).

The prices of your products play a huge role in getting clicks and conversions. With a Price Competitiveness segmentation, you isolate products that are cheaper than your competitors’ products (giving you a massive advantage).

Use (third-party) price scraping tools to analyze your price vs. the market and label your products ‘cheaper’, ‘more expensive’, or ‘equal price’.

Set up your campaign structure accordingly and adjust your bids to push more aggressively for products with competitive prices.

5: New Products vs. Old Products (easy).

When you add new products to an existing campaign, they tend to not get a lot of impressions. That’s why I like to launch new products in a new campaign first.

That way, I force the algorithm to experiment and spend a dedicated budget on them.

I can always put them in the main campaign(s) later on.

Pro-tip: In fast-changing, trend-sensitive industries like apparel, new collections often outperform older collections. This is why you might want to prioritize your new collections over older ones.

But… You also want to sell out of your older collections. This is where this segmentation tactic becomes really useful.

6: Segment by Seasonality (easy).

Let’s say you’re a retailer that sells thousands of products, including swimwear and winter jackets.

In the Summer, I like to push swimwear in a separate campaign to maximize sales in the relevant season. The same applies to jackets in the Winter.

With this basic segmentation, you will increase sales during high-demand seasons and ensure you’re spending your budget as efficiently as possible.

7: Segment by Inventory Levels (easy).

With this basic segmentation, you avoid promoting low-stock or out-of-stock items, and instead focus on products with sufficient stock and/or variants.

8: Segment by Value (easy).

This basic segmentation allows you to allocate budget to products with higher profit margins or value to the business.

You categorize products based on their value (e.g. high, medium, low), and create campaigns for each value segment. Bid more aggressively on products with high value.

🚨 But beware… Of all of the segmentation tactics out there, this segmentation tactic might be our least favorite.

The main reason is that we haven’t seen this tactic outperform other tactics in any of the accounts we audited and/or managed.

Besides that, products that are clicked on aren’t always the products people eventually purchase and value ≠ profit…

Instead we are fans of Performance-Based Bucketing (see below).

9: Segment by Performance (moderate).

We call this segmentation ‘Performance-Based Bucketing’, which allows you to:

• Increase spend on best products.
• Decrease spend on worst products.
• Get more control and better scalability.

Here’s how it works:

Based on historical data, your targets, and CVR/clicks thresholds your products will get a specific performance label (created by ProductHero):

• Heroes (your best-performing products).
• Sidekicks (products that perform near target).
• Villains (your worst-performing products).
• Zombies (products with low impressions).

You then create a supplemental feed with performance labels for each product. Connect it to your product feed in GMC Next.

Then, for every label, you set up a campaign:

After that, your products will automatically rotate between campaigns once they receive a new label based on recent performance.

For example: one of your best products suddenly drops in ROAS and CVR and performs below target. The label will change from ‘Heroes’ to ‘Villains’, which automatically puts the product in your ‘Villains’ campaign.

Works really well!

If you wanna dive deeper: Here’s a complete guide on how it works.

10: Query-level Sculpting (hard).

🚨 💎 Warning: Shiny Object Alert 💎 🚨

This tactic is fun but complex and not recommended for most accounts… With that said, let’s look at how it works (shoutout to Martin Röttgerding who invented this back in 2014).

Query-level Sculpting generally only makes sense for Standard Shopping.

You try to manipulate Google into spending more budget on specific (high-performing) search queries.

I will dive into the technicalities of this in a future issue of The PPC Edge, but here’s the TLDR:

• Regain control over search term matching.
• Adjust bids based on query performance.
• Improve efficiency by prioritizing high-converting queries.

Here’s how it works:

• Set up 3 campaigns for different query types (e.g. generic, brand, product).
• Adjust bids accordingly (low for generic, medium for brand, high for product).
• Use campaign priorities to tell Google which campaign to prioritize (high for generic, medium for brand, low for product).
• Use negative keywords to force Google to (not) match certain queries to certain campaigns (exclude brand + product on generic, exclude product on brand and leave product as is).

This advanced segmentation was best practice for a long time, before Smart Bidding was a thing. Today, it’s a massive shiny object and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a really compelling reason to spend more on specific queries.

The setup takes a lot of work and can easily break — so beware.

… With that said, it’s a fun tactic to experiment with so I wanted to share it anyway :).

Over to you: experiment with advanced segmentations.

There are many more advanced segmentations you can apply to your Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns. Choosing the right setup depends on your unique situation and business goals.

There is no one-size-fits-all segmentation. Experiment and find what works for you — do more of it and, ideally, better.

Keep reviewing your setup and never stop testing.

If you’re serious about improving your Shopping and Performance Max results, you will love our new Shopping Mastery course (exclusively available in The PPC Hub).

It includes everything you need to dominate your competitors on the Shopping network:

• Shopping Ranking Factors explained.
• Advanced feed management.
• Advanced GMC Next setup.
• Advanced campaign structures and tactics.

This 20-hour masterpiece is filled with gems and I’m sure it’s gonna help you crush your competition.

Unlock instant access when you join The PPC Hub.

And that’s all for today — thank you for reading.

See you next week, have a fantastic day! :)

Cheers,

Miles (& Bob)