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Google Ads for multi-brand retailers

Same product. Same price. So why buy it here?

When you sell other companies' brands, the shopper can buy the exact same item from the brand, a marketplace or the dealer down the road. I build the account around what you can control: margin by brand, a feed that matches your store, ads that follow each dealer agreement, and a product page that gives people a reason to buy from you.

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Video · 1:03 · Sound on

Who I am and how I work

Read the transcript

I'm Conner Crowe. I help ecommerce and service businesses get more customers from Google, and from AI assistants like ChatGPT. I run the website, the ads and the tracking as one system. Everything between the click and the customer. I started in graphic design, then web design, then in-house marketing, then inside agencies, where I saw the model break. The senior sells the work, and a junior learns on your account. So I went independent. The person on the call does the work. Tracking gets fixed first. You get a written summary every Monday, month to month, and you own everything I build. Ten years, more than $15 million in managed ad spend. A furniture store I built went from $5K in its first month to $56K, five months later. When I'm not working, I'm outdoors. Out there, you never guess when you can measure. I run accounts the same way. Start with a free ads audit. I write it myself, and it's back within 24 hours.

01   The problem

Your margin changes
with every brand.

A brand that sells only its own products sets its own price and keeps its own margin. A dealer doesn't. The advertised price is often fixed, the margin changes from brand to brand, and the same product shows up in the same Shopping results from several stores at once.

Most dealer accounts are still built like a single-brand store: one campaign, one target, revenue as the goal. That setup rewards whatever sells fastest, which is rarely what makes you the most money, and it can't see the difference.

  • Same product, often at the same advertised price, on the brand's site and at every other dealer
  • Per brand margin, set by each dealer agreement rather than by you
  • 1 ROAS target most accounts apply to every brand anyway
  • 99.4%+ of "All conversions" was not a purchase, in all 3 stores I benchmarked (N = 3)

The 99.4% figure is from my ecommerce tracking accuracy benchmark, which measured 3 stores (N = 3).

02   The diagnostic

Six leaks I check
first.

In priority order. The later fixes depend on the earlier ones being right.

  • One campaign for the whole catalog

    A single Performance Max or Shopping campaign spends where it already sells, which is usually your biggest brand's best sellers. The rest of the catalog barely serves, and you can't see which brand the money went to.

  • A revenue target on uneven margins

    Every dealer agreement sets a different margin. A ROAS target that is profitable on your best-margin brand loses money on the thinnest one, and the account can't tell them apart because it only sees revenue.

  • A feed that disagrees with the store

    Products you can sell show as out of stock in Merchant Center, items are missing GTINs, and titles are copied straight from the brand. Google either disapproves the product or shows it for the wrong searches.

  • Ads that break the dealer agreement

    Many brands restrict how authorized dealers advertise: no bidding on the brand name, no advertised price under MAP, specific wording for promotions. Accounts that never read those terms put the dealer relationship at risk for a few clicks.

  • A product page identical to everyone else's

    The shopper can find the same description and the same photos on the brand's site and at five other stores. If your page adds nothing, the click you paid for goes to whoever ships fastest or gave them a reason to stay.

  • Conversions that aren't purchases

    Add-to-carts and duplicate purchase tags counted as conversions make every brand look profitable. Smart Bidding then optimizes toward carts, and the margin math above is built on the wrong number.

What the custom audit looks like

Three example pages on the same template I use for every custom audit, filled in for a made-up store so no client’s account is on show. Every page says so. Most real audits run 5 to 7 pages.

Example audit summary page for a made-up store: $48,212 spent in 90 days, a 5.1 return reported by Google Ads against 2.7 in Shopify, a chart of monthly spend against reported purchases and real orders, and the three things to do first. Flagged as an example. (opens a larger view)
Example summary. Three numbers, the trend behind them and the fixes to make first.
Example audit findings page for a made-up store: five findings in order of severity, starting with every purchase being counted twice. Flagged as an example. (opens a larger view)
Example findings, in order of severity. The first one is why the reported return is nearly double the real one.
Example audit Quality Score page for a made-up store: cost-weighted average 6.2, 41.7% of keyword spend rated below average for landing page, with a component table. Flagged as an example. (opens a larger view)
Example diagnostic page. Quality Score broken down by what Google is actually complaining about.

03   The playbook

What I do for
multi-brand retailers.

Six moves in the first 90 days, tracking first, because every margin decision after it depends on counting sales correctly.

  1. 01

    Count purchases once, and only purchases

    I start with the tracking: one purchase conversion, deduplicated, matched against the orders in the store. Cart events stay as signals, never as conversions. The method is The Tracking Stack.

  2. 02

    Map margin and rules by brand

    Before restructuring anything, I build one sheet: each brand you carry, its margin to you, its advertising rules from the dealer agreement and its share of revenue. That sheet sets the campaign structure and the targets.

  3. 03

    Split the account by brand and margin

    Brands go into campaign groups by margin tier, using custom labels in the feed, so each group gets a target it can make money at. A brand with thin margin gets a stricter target. The long tail gets its own budget instead of whatever is left over.

  4. 04

    Make the feed match the store

    Availability that matches what you can sell, GTINs on every item, titles rebuilt around how people search: brand, model, variant, size. Disapprovals cleared and the unpublished part of the catalog brought back in.

  5. 05

    Give the shopper a reason to buy here

    Your product page has to add something the brand's page doesn't: real stock, shipping speed, a comparison against the model next to it, setup help, a showroom or pickup if you have one. Those facts go into the page and into the ads.

  6. 06

    Follow up with the comparison shoppers

    Shoppers on the same product check several dealers before they buy. Retargeting and browse-abandonment email bring them back with the reasons from step 05, not a discount that eats a margin you already mapped.

04   Engagement levels

Three ways in.
Most start with tracking.

Every account I take on starts with the free audit. The prices below are the published ones, and I quote a fixed price from what the audit finds.

One-time projects

Fixed price, quoted from the free audit. Fixing tracking is typically $2,500. The measurement fix: one deduplicated purchase conversion reconciled against your orders, so every decision after it is made on real sales.

$2,500 to $20,000 / project

Fixed price, quoted after the audit

  • →Purchase tracking audited against store orders
  • →Duplicate and cart conversions removed from bidding
  • →Server-side tracking where it earns its place
  • →A written read on what the ad platforms were claiming
  • →A Shopify storefront, usually $5,000 to $20,000
Start with a free ads audit

Monthly

$2,500 a month for the Shopping, Performance Max and feed program, run on margin by brand. Imagery refreshes are an add-on, so your product pages stop looking like every other dealer's.

$2,500 to $8,500 / month

Ongoing · month-to-month

  • →Brand and margin map, kept current
  • →Campaigns split by brand and margin tier
  • →Feed engineering: availability, GTINs, titles, custom labels
  • →Dealer-agreement check on every new campaign
  • →Imagery and creative add-on, $1,500/mo: quarterly lifestyle imagery for your top products
Run the program

Fractional Marketing Lead

The whole commercial program. Google, Meta, email and the storefront run as one system, planned around which brands you want to grow.

$8,500 / month

Ongoing · month-to-month

  • →Every monthly add-on, capped at $8,500/mo
  • →Meta and retargeting for comparison shoppers
  • →Email flows built around brand and product interest
  • →Product page and storefront improvements
  • →Direct access. Same person on the call as on the keyboard.
Build the program

What the work looks like

The exact templates I send clients, filled in for a made-up sample store, in the order an engagement runs. Pick a step, or let it play.

Example audit page, marked as sample data, titled The path forward. Phase one, fix the measurement: remove the duplicate purchase action, take add to cart out of bidding, send discounted order value. Phase two, bid control and query control: add a brand exclusion to Performance Max, split it by margin, stop promoting 27 products with clicks and no sales. (opens a larger view)

Week 1

The plan, in writing

  • Phases ordered by dependency, not by calendar. Nothing in phase two gets judged until the measurement in phase one is real.
  • Written down, so you can push back before a single setting changes.

Example page on the real audit template. The store and every number are made up.

05   Fit

Who this is for.
Who it isn't.

Who this is for

  • →You carry several brands and sell them online, with or without a showroom
  • →Your margin is different on each brand and your ad account doesn't know it
  • →You can share your margin by brand and the advertising terms in your dealer agreements
  • →You want the account run by someone who reads the order book, not only the dashboard

Who this isn't for

  • ×You sell only your own brand (the ecommerce page fits better)
  • ×You mainly sell on marketplaces and the website is an afterthought
  • ×You want to win on price below the advertised minimum
  • ×You need a cheap set-and-forget feed tool

Selling your own brand? The ecommerce page covers that.

Ready to talk

Stop funding your biggest brand.
Start funding your margin.

Add me to the account as a read-only user and I'll tell you within 24 hours where the spend is going by brand and what the tracking is really counting. Same person on the call as on the keyboard.

Get the free Google Ads audit Book a strategy call

Or email hi@connercrowe.com.

FAQ

Before you ask.

How should a multi-brand retailer structure Google Shopping or Performance Max?
By margin, then by brand. Each brand you carry has its own margin, so I group brands into tiers with custom labels in the feed and give each tier a target it can make money at. One catalog-wide campaign on a single ROAS target funds your biggest brand and quietly loses money on the thin ones.

Can an authorized dealer bid on the brand names they carry?
It depends on the dealer agreement. Many brands restrict trademark bidding, advertised prices below MAP or certain promotion wording, and the terms differ from brand to brand. I read your agreements before building anything, and the account follows the strictest rule that applies to each brand.

How do I compete when the brand and other dealers sell the same product at the same price?
On everything except price. Real stock, shipping speed, setup help, a comparison against the next model, a showroom or pickup. Those facts go onto the product page and into the ads, and the account spends where your margin can afford to win.

Why do my products show as out of stock in Google when I can sell them?
Usually because the store lets the product be ordered at zero stock, on backorder or made to order, and the feed sends the stock count instead of an availability Google accepts. The fix is in the feed rules, not the product.

What does it cost?
Three ways in. Every audit is free. One-time projects run $2,500 to $20,000, at a fixed price quoted from the audit before work starts. Monthly runs $2,500 to $8,500 a month, month-to-month: $2,500 for one ad channel and $1,500 for each add-on. At $8,500 it is the Fractional Marketing Lead seat. Ad spend is never marked up.