Google Ads for product conversion rather then brand awareness

Ask Me Anything Q&A Googleshoppingamarepo
1

I run a small publishing shop with multiple niche books, usually priced around €15–16. My experience so far is that Google Ads have been completely unprofitable. I’m trying to understand whether this is simply because low-ticket products can’t justify the ad spend, or whether my campaign approach is misaligned with how Google Ads is designed to work.

I’ve tested both Performance Max and standard Search campaigns. Search campaigns were even less profitable, and in both cases Google seemed to optimize more toward brand awareness than toward direct conversions. For a small publisher, brand awareness doesn’t make much sense, because each book has its own distinct audience.

Additionally, even in Search campaigns, it feels unusual or even discouraged to run ads for only a single book with very specific keywords. The entire Google Ads infrastructure seems optimized for broad catalog-based strategies rather than extremely niche, product-specific advertising.

Given these challenges, what would be the most effective way to structure campaigns for a niche publisher with low-priced products and highly specific target audiences? And realistically, is Google Ads even a viable channel in this scenario, or is a profitable ROAS unlikely due to the nature of the products and targeting?

3

Hello Kanuu, thank you for asking your question.

Selling books, is a big market. You are competing against many other merchants selling books.

First you need to ask yourself, do consumers know my books?

If yes, consider setting up an advanced standard shopping campaign, so that you can target specific search terms, instead of targeting everything. Here is an explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiRIDzRrHno

Yes most campaigns that are automatic, such as Performance Max will be focused on brand awareness and conversions, because without brand awareness, or product awareness, nobody would know your product.

But if you absolutely, don’t want any discovery, then use the advanced standard shopping campaign strategy above.

You can setup search campaigns for specific keywords, there is no issue with this, so I do not know what you are referring to when you say discouraged. Maybe that Google is making it more hard, yes, they are, but it’s not impossible.

Yes Google Ads is viable, but you have to be realistic. With the issue regarding niche books. Niche already signals that they are not well known, or for a specific audience. So that means your targeting is much smaller. So in this case, make sure you target this very small niche only. Not spread a wide net using performance max.

But you do need to do a bit of product awareness campaigns so that new people can know what you are selling. To do this, consider targeting specific search terms relevant to your books. And see how it performance. Please remember that you will not expect sales from low intent keywords. So you need to think of them as a stepping stone for your consumers to know what you sell, then later, even months later buy the product.