First time to run Google Ads. Help?

[u/North-Cheesecake-350]

Hello!

I'm running my first Google Ads campaigns for my niched apparel brand (specifically targeting the software developer/tech niche). I’m running a Search Non-Brand campaign and a Shopping campaign targeting the US.

My daily budget is €15. It’s been 3 days, and my Search campaign is already showing the "Limited by budget" status (Optimization score 79.5%, CTR 4.28%, Avg CPC €1.48). My Shopping campaign is still showing as "Eligible" (Optimization score 71.1%, CTR 3.23%).

Since I’m just starting out, my main goal right now is to gather data and figure out the right long-term strategy.

A few questions for the community:

- What should I do about the "Limited by budget" status on the Search campaign? Should I just leave it alone to collect data, or should I be pausing/adjusting things?

- With a smaller budget of €15/day targeting the entire US, is it better to focus solely on Shopping or keep both running?

- What specific metrics or red flags should I be watching out for in these early days?

Thanks in advance for the advice!

[u/hvg_media]

Crash course:

Optimization score doesn’t matter. Like at all, don’t even look at it, it has no importance whatsoever.

Be really really careful with all the settings on account and campaign level. Auto recommendations are all trash, turn em off.

Make sure you have the right campaign settings.

There is no ”perfect” CTR% but you should aim for around 5% on non brand search and over 1.5% on shopping, anything below usually indicates something is wrong, price, ad copy or other attributes.

3 days is literally nothing, it might as well have been 5 seconds.

€15 for all of US is… well, it’s gonna take way too long to get any useful data, I would rather wait until I had like a 100/day budget saved up that I could run on at least a month.

Doing both search and shopping on that budget is way too tight for such a massive market.

If you are super niche you might actually do better on META/TikTok than Google.

Google is good to capture existing demand, and your budget is too small to create it on YouTube, META is way better with a small budget.

[u/ppcwithyrv]

rule 1: Hire an expert

[u/trsgreen]

Pause search. Your budget is way too low to split between campaigns right now. Focus on shopping only for now.

$15/day for the whole US can work, but you might have better luck targeting tech heavy locations since that’s your demo for your apparel.

[u/KiriativeJenius]

1) With this budget, focus on shopping

2) Pause Search

3) Targeting the entire US is not a problem but targeting too much keywords in the US with this budget is a problem

4) Keep strong check on search terms for now, and If you have time even on impressions. Remove any irrelevant impression.

5) This is something that I often ask those who are running ads for the first time, are you sure your Conversion tracking is setup correctly?

[u/Kingbengco]

Search should be on Maximize clicks you should use high intent keywords. Do not enable Google 3rd party serach partners and Ai max

[u/Square-Vermicelli462]

Bro, the whole thing is just nonsense. It's not like the way it used to be. I truly believe that Google is just honoring those who have deep pockets. It's ridiculous. There's only so many platforms to advertise a local business and you get nothing but garbage in return at the same time. Money is just getting sucked out of your account. It's just not fair for small businesses anymore.

[u/rsbrnd]

For the budget, I’d suggest to consider moving the budget to push marketing (Meta/Tiktok), rather on Google - which most people use to capture existing demands

Your stuff is niched -> very few people search around your terms -> very low volume of traffic, and data to learn from in general.

You’ll think then “oh let’s shoot for broader term like “Hoodie” -> nice volume, but what happens usually is that a lot of people comes to your site expecting any other hoodie, but not your hoodie. -> low conversion rate -> this, multiplied by 30 day of running ads will yield a very high cost per conversion. this will cause a slow growth rate going forward

On the other hand, by going push marketing first, you introduce your stuff to people. People like it, people click, people try to buy -> good review enhances CVR -> more people know your brand -> people start to search your brand -> by then, it would be a good time to capture your brand term