The 10 to 20 Percent Google Ads Scaling Playbook

I need to confess something. I killed the perfect store. Roars for insane revenue every single day, perfect profit margin, everything running smoothly. And I almost killed it. I almost burned it just by scaling the wrong way, by scaling at the wrong time, by scaling too hard when the timing was off, and by making a lot of emotional stupid decisions in general. Luckily, that was years ago, way back then. And since that, I've learned a lot. A lot of things have changed. I've built my own agency. We manage over 200 ecom brands right now across 12 niches, and we've generated over 200 million in revenue for them with my team.

So, safe to say a lot of things have changed. But to this day, I learned the most from that single account I almost killed because yeah, like they say, you learn the most from

your mistakes, right? But unfortunately, these mistakes are also super painful and quite expensive as well. So, I want you to avoid them and instead of going through it yourself, making a lot of expensive mistakes that cost you a lot of money, I want you to just watch this video and learn how to scale the right

way. So, what I'm showing you in this video is how to scale in Google Ads without killing your ROAS, killing your margin, and killing your store. First and most important thing you need to understand about scaling is that it will eventually naturally decrease your ROAS at one point. Surprise, right? But a lot of people don't understand that. I get a lot of questions of like, oh Chris, I just scaled but my ROAS dropped. How is that even possible? I it worked so well and then I scale a little bit and it drops. So that's normal. That's the science behind it and that's the math behind it.

And I will explain right and I will also show you further down the line in this video on how to avoid that because obviously we want to like keep the same rows right the same profit margin but you need to understand that this is natural to a certain degree. Let's assume you start with a relatively low budget, right? Or even if you're at higher budgets already, it's the same principle, just at the bigger level, at the higher level already. But let's say

you have a budget of 50, 100 a day, especially then relatively small budget still. You have a couple of products that are picking up quite nicely. You have a good ros, it works, you're happy with that. It's like great, right? And now you're trying to expand, trying to increase your budget. And we have this exact issue that we just outlined. Oh, it's not working. that well you have a bit more fluctuations inconsistency ros drops and you are like how is that possible it worked so well at €50 a day now I ski to 100 and it doesn't work that well anymore so you need to understand you just doubled your budget right and even if you just increase by 10 20% whatever scaling means you're expanding you're going broader right if you take something that works and you try to put more budget on it something has to expand right something new has to be tested either like new audiences, new search terms.

Uh if you have like a again a bigger feed and you had small budget so far and only a couple of products got tested, the bigger budget will allow more products to get tested, right? So like they need to go through a new testing phase. So basically scaling automatically means expansion down the line, right? Going further up the funnel, etc. Like it it's endless. It's expansion, right? But this expansion also means okay, new things need to get tested. you need to uh adjust to that expansion, whatever it means, right? Testing more creatives, finding better creatives, finding different angles so you can actually maintain that skill, developing more winners in the feed, so on, right?

Like we will show you a couple of these things in this video, but you have to understand the main principle that of course when you scale and when you expand in all these different areas and different ways, you have to expect it to drop naturally a little bit, especially in the first couple of days, right? And

that's another mistake a lot of people do. Like they they get super emotional after the first day of like, oh we scaled and like first day wasn't like that great. What do we do now? Go back already, right? You didn't even give it some time to maybe adjust to this expansion and try to like, you know, test new products, find these new search terms and see if you can even maybe maintain that new budget level quite easily without like uh coming up with a lot of new strategies, new angles, new creatives, whatever. Right? That's the first thing. But you need to understand that this is natural, of course.

Otherwise, we would all set the budget to 50,000 100,000 a day. If it works at 100 a day, right, and be like, "Oh, nice. Let's scale. No problem. It works at at this level. Why shouldn't it work with a huge budget, right?" So, you have to understand like further you try to scale. And again, the higher the level is already, the more difficult it will get. And that's when you start to hit the plateau. By the way, we also did a video the last time on how to break through plateau specifically. I'll put it somewhere here. You can check it out. Very interesting as well.

Kind of goes hand inhand with a lot of the things we will discuss in this video. So, super interesting. So, besides the need to

develop and understanding what scaling means in the first place, more importantly, you need to understand and learn to judge, hey, am I even able to scale right now? Am I ready to scale right? You need to you need to be able to judge that for yourself. There are a couple of things to consider. For example, if you just scaled recently, did you give it enough time to adjust to the new level? Even if it works well right now, right? Sometimes don't want to scale too aggressively. And that's like a mistake I see with my clients very often. The scale it works well. Like can we can we scale again?

Can we push again? And then usually what happens like sometimes it it can work well, right? And there's definitely a place for scaling very aggressively, but usually the way it looks like is like the scale the scale and then we have to go back like massively, right? Because we we made decisions way too quick based on emotions, right? Like you could not possibly make a datadriven decision based on a day, half a day, even like two days sometimes not enough, right? So that that's what we mean like you need to understand are you ready? And it really depends on the data and what's going on overall.

Right? Another classic example and we see that a lot in our ad accounts as well, right? For example,

middle of the month, end of the month before your customers get the salary again, we sometimes see a little downturn in performance, a little dip, right? If you see any kind of patterns in your ad account where I know, hey, I need to expect this and that at that given time, right? Would be stupid to scale. And if you know, hey, end of the month, we see a little dip, maybe I will hold back a little bit from scaling, right? because I know this is this is the pattern I see based on months of data, right? And we have it every single month and it's always the same and I know these patterns in the ad account, right?

So pattern recognition also also a thing can also be on on a shorter time frame like if you know hey weekends for example are really strong for me and Thursday Friday was already strong that would be a perfect example for for scaling cuz like hey you're ready that's cool. So you need to understand the readiness check. There are other factors

like stock, right? If you're low on stock already, why you scale in the first place? That's one example, right? And I have seen that as well. It sounds so self-explanatory, but like we had clients before Ross was great and they were like, "Hey, Ross is great. Let's scale." And then like one week later, they were like, "Ah, we actually ran out of stock." So I'm like, "Stupid. Why did we not scale back even maximize profit margin? or even like boss the ads in in valid as well in in certain situations, right? If you're already low on stock and you don't expect to get new stock anytime soon.

These are like some some some basic things a lot of people don't think about, right? So many other factors. Your margin in the first place, like if you have great drawers but profit margin is rather low right now, doesn't make sense to scale that much, right? So many variables always depends on what's going on right now. Another example that I genuinely love and it's super super relevant right now as well. For example, we have a client right now

where we are also crushing it. We are scaling. We have good draws. We have insane profit margin and we were looking into scaling further, right? But then I was checking the feed and where all this momentum is coming from and the winning products etc. And we noticed, okay, we have some winning products that are like super super trendy and highly seasonal right now, right? But the the time window is like super super short. So we're like, okay, that's something we need to consider as well, right? We cannot like push and skill endlessly if we know, hey, this has a very short short lifetime window, unfortunately, right?

And we know it will be over pretty soon. So maybe we should prioritize maximizing profit margin and not like scaling pushing endlessly and then we will have a situation where we need to scale back constantly and even make some losses potentially because this this product will drop that quickly. Right? So something to consider as well sometimes like even if performance is great even if you have consistent performance even if you have perfect profit margin for an extended period of time even then sometimes you need to consider like okay what's the overall situation what's the bigger picture maybe I don't even want to push that much maybe I want to funnel some some budget into other things right prepare for for the new season develop new winners right have a testing campaign creating uh creating developing new winners, testing those because I know this product for example will be over pretty soon right instead of pushing this to the max when I know hey it doesn't doesn't have potential a lot of things to consider and these are just a couple of examples so to give you some ideas some inspiration but you need to understand for your business are you ready to scale right now all right now

you understand what scaling actually means and you also understand if you are ready or not so it's time for me to give you our playbook and how we actually raise budgets and do the whole budget management overall. So, one of the most

important principles we always stick to is we always move in smaller, more predictable, more linear steps, which means we usually have um budget adjustments of 10 20% max in both directions, right? like when we have to downscale, when we have the scale, we usually try to do it in a more linear fashion. Of course, there are exceptions, right? One exception I can give you right now is for example, if we have a new campaign, we try to test something new with a smaller budgets and it works well, right? That's where we try to push a bit more aggressively because we need to get some data in first, right?

That's where we usually like even double the budgets. We are more aggressively we try to push, right? We try to get to a certain level first before we uh keep it more consistent. But yeah, down the line once we are on a slightly higher level, we are not working with a completely new campaign, a completely new store anymore. We try to keep it more linear, right? Again, smaller, more predictable steps, usually 10 20%. Why? Because these bigger chumps, these huge fluctuations and constant adjustments basically reset the learning phase, right? And it adds to the inconsistency you will see in your ad account, right? If you constantly go up and down and up and down and back and forth and you know constantly adjusting things typically based on emotions as well to certain degree right you will have more inconsistency in the account.

You will not develop a clear pattern and you go back and forth and it's usually again emotional decision making. And then the second most important principle we always stick to always like 100% is when we increase or change the budgets we always give it at

least three to four days to adjust and see how it develops because like I mentioned in the beginning of the video scaling always means expansions or you always have to go broader testing new audiences new products right like you are putting more budget on it so it needs to find where to place that budget best right So expansion basically you need to give that expansion some time to see how it adjusts if you're ready how it develops with the existing setup right because typically when you scale when you're expanding when it learns to adjust to this new budget it the first one to days are typically a little bit slower right that's when clients always reach out and they are like hey we notice when we scale it always like dips for one to days yes exactly that's how it's supposed to work right but that's also exactly why you want to give it at least three to four days to see like hey okay okay am I even ready for that yet if not like what's the issue right you want to identify okay why am I hitting a plateau here what can I do about it like there's so many variables right that's why okay you give it three four days because typically the first one two days are a little bit slower but then it might adjust quite well to the new level and you don't have to like go back and forth and overreact based on the first couple of days you you had there right

then it will be perfectly fine Other scenario which I also outlined before is when it goes really well after the first days and clients get super frantic and excited and they are like let's scale again right and then they want to push it again and then suddenly after two three days you have double the budget essentially right and then suddenly it's not going that well because of this huge sudden expansion and you're pushing Google back into a learning phase and then it looks really at the way higher level and the losses are way higher And suddenly that's very unexpected and then we have to go back super quickly, right?

Because suddenly it's very very scary for a lot of people. And then we have this like push push push. Oh, we need to go back completely. And this is up the account a lot as well, right? Because the these insane sudden changes that can definitely push you in a in a learning phase and destroy any any level of consistency you had, right? This is exactly what I said like in the beginning of the video. These are the kind of mistakes I made, right? when it was like too quickly, too emotional, not based on data, not patient enough, and that can really hurt and kill your account.

The next key principle you need

to understand if you want to scale on Google Ads is that you also need to scale the feed and not just the budget. What do we mean with that is it goes hand inhand with the readiness check, right? For example, most people just look at the roars and like, oh, it's great and profit margin is great. Let's scale. But then we look at the actual products that sell and we see, hey, we have this like insanely strong winner, but this winner is pulling 90% of the revenue and we are kind of already maxed out, right? The rest is kind of Not picking up that well, not even getting enough budget, right?

So maybe we have to do something about the campaign split. Basically, we're super dependent on that one winner, right? And that can be like on any channel. That can be one winner, one creative. Like you need to look out for these dependencies, right? It's not just like oh my ROAS is great I will continue to scale like no like yeah ROAS is great now but you are reliant on this one winner and it's already kind of maxed out right so one easy simple fix if you want to

continue to scale without having your ros drop is like you need to scale the feed with the budget right means like developing more winners going broader or like bigger in terms of volume creating more winners and making sure the winners are also relevant, right? Like we had the example before with like, hey, this product was out of season. We have this example now where it's like just thin and we just have one winner or like one creative. So the level you want to use and Google loves volume, right? You want to like create bigger feeds having a bigger sort, a big bigger catalog of winning products.

A completely different situation. If we have great drawers, we want to scale. We look at the products and we see multiple products pulling in sales, multiple products trending up, right? That's a strong indicator for me that I say, hey, yes, we are ready to scale and maybe we can push even more aggressively, right? Because we have multiple winners, all of them are trending up, all of them are pulling in sales. That's a great great foundation, right? And then when you scale, your ROAS will also not drop that way, right? So that's a completely different situation. And it looks looks the same at first, like both stores have great numbers, right?

But the store with only one winner will potentially struggle more and potentially see more inconsistencies as well. Pretty straightforward if you look at it like that. But a lot of people don't they don't they fail to to see that, you know. All right. The next few principles that

need to be in place in order for you to continue to scale without having your rows drop, right? That's the main goal. That's why we do this video. Is the structure you need to have in place when scaling means very simple. We need to have a system in place in order to keep skating, keep expanding without having too many wasters accumulate with also making sure we have enough budget for testing new things, expanding on new things and still funneling most of the budget to to existing winners, of course. So, you need a structure, you need a campaign structure, you need a system. One of the main things you want to make sure, especially if you start to put more budget on it, is that you have certain kill rules in place on when to remove wasters, when to exclude wasters.

You don't want them to accumulate too

much budget, right? Uh typical mistake is just like yeah continuing to scale without having the necessary control mechanism in place and then you sometimes have products or campaigns creatives accumulate a lot of budget and it's not even not even close to profitable right while other products are still pulling in uh a lot of money with at great drawers but it kind of balances itself out right if you have the winners there but at the same time you make a lot of losses on the other side. Then in terms of structure, I like

to implement a campaign structure in the account that allows me to stick to something like a 70 2010 rule, right? And you can change numbers slightly based on your current goals. But for example, what it means like we want to make sure okay 70% of the budget always goes to what's working right now, the existing winners. We're doubling down on that. We're scaling that. That's the lowhanging fruit. That makes sense, right? But again, you will hit the limit at some point. And like we said, we need to like continue to test. We need to expand in order to scale, right? Scaling is expansion. So we need to develop new winners.

So we have 20% then for testing new products, testing new creative, whatever it is, right? 20% for expansions. And it depends on the size of your account, right? You need a certain size in order to do some of those things. But 10% we usually like to have for more aggressive tests, right? where we can really try a new angle, a new campaign type, whatever it is, right? This is your your play budget basically where you can take bigger risks. And again, the percentages can fluctuate slightly depending on the situation, depending on what's going on. But down the line, if you want to continue to scale, you need a system in place, right?

You cannot just randomly throw everything at one campaign, no structure, just giving Google their full freedom and be like, "Okay, Google, do whatever you want, right?" It can work like that. Of course, it can work to a certain degree and it might work to a certain degree. You might watch that

right now and be like, "Hey, that's working quite well for me so far." But you don't even know what's the actual potential of your account if you do it properly, right? It might work even 10 times better if you do it well. It's August now already. Like time is flying by like crazy. Q4 is basically around the corner. So, you want to start to implement those things now, right? Don't sleep on that. Time is flying by like crazy. If you notice some gaps in your structure for your store while watching that video, then it's time to act. Now, honestly, time is running out. Like a lot of people underestimate how how fast time goes by.

We have the seasonal switch coming up now, right? From summer towards autumn, winter. So, a lot of things are changing. You need to stay on the ball with everything and yeah, crank up the base basically, right? So if you are ready to do it properly and you want to see how we are implementing it with our systems, feel free to subscribe, comment below, reach out to me on WhatsApp, Instagram, whatever. Happy to help you further and chat with you. And other than that, see you in the next video. RDS.