When ecommerce businesses want to grow their Google Ads revenue, the first instinct is often to increase the advertising budget.
And sometimes, that is absolutely the right move.
But before you put another dollar into Google Ads, ask yourself a different question:
How much additional revenue is already sitting inside my existing account?
In many established Google Ads accounts, there are significant opportunities hiding in plain sight. The problem is that advertisers often look at the account as one big bucket rather than breaking performance down into the products, search terms, campaigns, and traffic segments that are actually driving results.
For ecommerce advertisers, one of the best places to uncover these opportunities is Google Shopping.
The goal isn’t simply to spend more. It’s to identify what’s already working, eliminate what’s holding the account back, and redirect your resources toward the areas with the greatest potential.
Start With Search Terms and Product Performance
One of the first places I look when auditing a Google Ads account is the relationship between search terms and product performance.
Google Shopping can expose your products to hundreds or even thousands of different searches. But those searches don’t all have the same value.
Some searches produce sales at an excellent return on ad spend. Others generate clicks without producing conversions. And some may generate revenue but at a cost that’s simply too high to be profitable.
Those differences represent opportunities.
For example, imagine you sell running shoes.
You might discover that searches for a specific brand and model consistently produce profitable sales, while broad searches such as “best running shoes” generate a lot of clicks but very few purchases.
The opportunity isn’t necessarily to spend more money across the board.
The opportunity could be to get more of the traffic that’s already working while reducing the traffic that’s not.
That’s one of the fundamental principles behind making each click count.
Identify Your Best-Performing Products
Another major opportunity inside Shopping campaigns is product segmentation.
If you have hundreds or thousands of products in your catalog and you’re treating all of them essentially the same, you’re giving Google a lot of control over how your advertising dollars are allocated.
But your products aren’t equal.
You probably have products that are consistent winners. They have strong conversion rates, generate significant revenue, have healthy margins, and may even lead to repeat purchases.
You probably also have products that sell occasionally.
And then there are products that consume advertising dollars without producing a satisfactory return.
That’s not necessarily a reflection of the quality of the products. Some products simply aren’t good advertising products.
That’s why I recommend identifying your top performers.
Look at the products generating the most conversions and conversion value. Examine their ROAS or cost of sales. And whenever possible, factor in your actual product margins.
Then ask a very important question:
Are we giving our best products enough opportunity to win?
That’s often a much more valuable question than simply asking whether your overall Shopping campaign is profitable.
Don’t Automatically Increase the Bid on Poor Performers
One of the most common mistakes I see advertisers make is assuming that a product that isn’t selling simply needs a higher bid.
But consider this scenario:
You’ve spent $500 advertising a product and haven’t generated a sale.
Increasing the bid doesn’t automatically make the product more attractive to shoppers.
You could simply be paying Google more money to prove that customers still don’t want the product.
Instead, diagnose the problem.
First, determine whether the product is getting impressions.
If it isn’t, you may have a visibility, bidding, competitiveness, or feed issue.
If it is getting impressions and clicks but isn’t converting, the problem could be somewhere else.
Look at:
- The product’s price
- Your competitors’ pricing
- Product reviews and ratings
- The product page
- The quality of the offer
- Shipping costs and policies
- Product images
- Search intent
- Your overall value proposition
And sometimes the conclusion is simply that the product shouldn’t receive as much advertising investment.
That’s not necessarily a failure.
If a product consistently consumes budget without producing profitable sales, reducing its advertising spend can free up money for products that have demonstrated their ability to generate profitable revenue.
Every dollar you stop wasting can potentially become a dollar you reinvest into an opportunity.
Find What’s Limiting Your Winners
Once you’ve identified your best-performing products, the next question is:
What’s preventing us from selling even more of them?
Suppose you have a group of products that consistently generate profitable sales.
Now examine their traffic and exposure.
Are the campaigns limited by budget?
Are you missing valuable impressions?
Are your bids preventing you from competing effectively?
Are there high-value search terms where competitors are capturing clicks that could be coming to your website?
Could your product feed be improved?
Could better product titles, descriptions, images, pricing, promotions, or other elements improve performance?
The hidden revenue opportunity may not require a completely new campaign or a new product.
It may simply require removing a constraint from something that’s already working.
Don’t Let Account Averages Hide the Story
Another major mistake is relying too heavily on account-level averages.
Imagine an ecommerce account has an overall ROAS of 500%.
That sounds pretty good.
But what if the account contains one group of products generating a 900% ROAS and another group generating only a 100% ROAS?
The 500% average is hiding what’s really happening.
That’s why account optimization requires drilling down.
Look at:
- Campaign performance
- Product performance
- Search terms
- Conversion volume
- Conversion value
- Cost
- Return on ad spend
- Profitability
The more granular you become, the easier it is to identify where the opportunities actually exist.
And don’t forget the most important metric of all: profitability.
Revenue isn’t the same as profit.
If I tell you I can generate another $100,000 in ecommerce revenue, but it costs $110,000 in advertising to produce that revenue, I’ve done you no favors.
The objective isn’t to maximize revenue at any cost.
It’s to generate profitable growth.
A Simple Process for Finding Hidden Revenue
If you want to uncover additional revenue opportunities inside an existing Google Ads account, here’s the process I’d recommend.
- Find Your Winners
Identify the products, search terms, and campaigns that consistently generate profitable conversions.
Don’t just look at revenue. Consider conversion rate, advertising cost, ROAS, and product margins.
- Find Your Losers
Identify products and traffic that consume significant portions of your budget without producing an acceptable return.
These areas deserve investigation—and potentially less budget.
- Separate Performance
Don’t allow your strongest products to compete for budget and attention with everything else in your catalog.
Give your proven winners the opportunity to receive the investment they deserve.
- Identify Constraints
Look for what’s limiting your profitable products.
It could be budget, bids, feed quality, product visibility, search coverage, or something else.
- Reinvest Intelligently
Take budget that’s being wasted or opportunities that are being missed and redirect those resources toward the areas of the account that have already demonstrated their ability to generate profitable revenue.
The Bottom Line
When an ecommerce company wants to grow Google Ads, the answer isn’t always to increase the budget.
Sometimes the biggest opportunity is already inside the account.
The key is knowing where to look.
Identify your winners. Find your losers. Understand the search terms and products driving performance. Remove constraints from profitable campaigns. And reinvest your advertising dollars where they have the greatest potential to produce profitable growth.
Because an established Google Ads account usually contains three things:
Winners, losers, and opportunities hiding in the averages.
Your job is to find them.
You don’t always need more traffic.
You don’t always need a bigger budget.
Sometimes you simply need to make better use of the traffic and products you’re already paying for.
That’s how you uncover hidden revenue opportunities—and ultimately, how you Make Each Click Count.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How can I find hidden revenue opportunities in my Google Ads account?
Start by analyzing your account at a granular level rather than relying on overall campaign averages. Look at product performance, search terms, conversion rates, conversion value, advertising costs, and ROAS. Identify products and searches that consistently generate profitable sales, then determine whether budget, bids, product feed quality, or other constraints are limiting their growth.
- What should I look for when optimizing Google Shopping campaigns?
Focus on which products and search terms are generating profitable sales. Identify your top-performing products, examine their conversion and revenue performance, and determine whether they’re receiving enough traffic and budget. At the same time, look for products that consistently spend money without producing an acceptable return.
- Should I increase my Google Ads bid if a product isn’t getting sales?
Not necessarily. A higher bid can generate more traffic, but it won’t fix a product that shoppers don’t want to buy. If a product receives clicks without converting, evaluate factors such as price, competition, product reviews, landing-page experience, shipping costs, product images, and search intent before simply increasing the bid.
- How do I identify my best-performing products in Google Shopping?
Analyze product-level performance based on metrics such as conversions, conversion value, cost, conversion rate, and ROAS. If possible, also consider your profit margins. Your best advertising products aren’t necessarily the products with the highest revenue—they’re the products that generate revenue efficiently and profitably.
- Why shouldn’t I rely on my Google Ads account’s average ROAS?
An account-level ROAS can hide significant differences between products and campaigns. For example, an account with a 500% ROAS could contain products generating a 900% ROAS alongside products generating only 100%. Breaking performance down by product, search term, and campaign reveals where your advertising dollars are actually producing—or losing—money.
- How can I scale profitable Google Shopping campaigns?
First, determine what’s limiting your existing winners. Look at budget constraints, bids, impression opportunities, search coverage, and product feed quality. Then consider increasing investment in products and traffic that have already demonstrated profitable performance rather than spreading additional budget evenly across the entire catalog.
- Is increasing my Google Ads budget the best way to increase ecommerce revenue?
Not always. Before increasing your budget, look for wasted spend and underutilized opportunities within your existing account. Reducing spend on poorly performing products and reallocating it toward profitable products and searches can increase revenue and profitability without requiring a proportional increase in your overall advertising budget. The goal isn’t simply to get more clicks—it’s to Make Each Click Count.
Need Help with Google Ads? If you’re ready to take your online store’s performance to the next level with Google Shopping Ads but need a helping hand, consider reaching out. I’m Andy Splichal, author of Make Each Click Count and host of the Make Each Click Count podcast. Whether it’s about creating high-performing Shopping Ads or mastering your overall Google Ads strategy, I’m here to help. Let’s make those clicks count!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Splichal is the founder and managing partner of True Online Presence, author of the Make Each Click Count book series, host of the Make Each Click Count podcast, founder of Make Each Click Count University and certified online marketing strategist with twenty plus years of experience helping companies increase their online presence and profitable revenues.
He was named to Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Most Fascinating 100 List in both 2020 and 2021. To find more information on Andy Splichal, visit trueonlinepresence.com or read The Full Story on his website or his blog, blog.trueonlinepresence.com.