[AMA] “How do you run BRAND campaigns in Shopping when you run PMax campaigns?”

Last week, I shared how I run Standard Shopping Campaigns that target branded searches (email shared below for your convenience). 

Manuel Regidor (name shared with permission) replied with a follow-up question that many of you also asked:

“Hi Nils,

Thanks so much for sharing this detailed breakdown on brand campaigns in Shopping! This is incredibly helpful.

I’m curious – how would you apply this same strategy within a Performance Max feed only campaign? Since there are no priority campaigns. I’d love to hear your approach.

Looking forward to your insights!

Manuel”

Happy to help, Manuel. Here you go:

To run a Standard Shopping campaign that only targets branded searches, next to Performance Max campaigns, do these:

1. Next to your existing PMax campaigns, create a high-priority AND a medium-priority standard shopping campaign for brand searches.
2. Add the products you want to show for your branded searches to both these campaigns (exact same set of products in both campaigns).
3. Ensure all branded searches will be funneled to the medium-priority brand campaign by adding your brand searches to a negative keyword list that is attached to: 
   • the high-priority brand campaign
   • all your PMax campaigns, and
   • all other non-brand shopping campaigns. 
4. Set extremely low manual CPC bids in the high-priority brand campaign. This will ensure Google will rarely spend any money on the non-branded searches that will land in this campaign.
5. Set high manual CPC bids or allow for high CPC bids in your bidding strategy for the medium-priority brand campaign. This will ensure maximum visibility for all the branded searches that will land in this campaign. 

Advantages of this setup:

• Your PMax campaigns are forced to optimize for conversions from non-branded searches instead of going after the low-hanging fruit of branded searches. (Note that the significantly higher-than-average ROAS of branded searches in PMax hides the underperformance of the non-brand searches in that same PMax campaign; we and smart bidding only look at the aggregate result, allowing PMax to underperform on non-brand).
• You have tight control over both the CPC bids, your impression share, and the exact products you want to show for your branded searches via the medium-priority standard shopping campaign. 

NB: Make sure the high-priority campaign never runs out of budget before the medium-priority campaign does. Otherwise, non-branded searches might end up being matched by the medium-priority campaign. I use a shared budget for this. Also, make sure ad schedules, audience targeting, device targeting, and location targeting are the same for both campaigns.

– Nils

PS: Here’s last week’s email — https://nilsrooijmans.com/daily/ama-how-do-you-run-brand-campaigns-in-shopping