Structuring PPC Campaigns for Scale (Without Chaos)

A messy Google Ads account is expensive. If you can’t find what you need quickly, you’re wasting time - and money. Building the right structure from day one saves you headaches and costs as you scale up.

Clear Naming and Smart Grouping

Use a consistent naming convention - preferably one that tells you everything at a glance. Try goal + funnel stage + product. Instead of "Campaign 1" or "New Campaign," use names like "Sales_Bottom_RunningShoes" or "Leads_Top_SoftwareDemo." Six months from now, you'll thank yourself when you can instantly understand what each campaign does.

Group keywords by theme and intent, not just randomly. Don’t use the same campaign for branded searches, where people directly search your company name, as you do for non-branded searches - someone searching "Nike running shoes" has different intent than someone searching "best running shoes". They want different things - so show them different ads with different budgets.

Avoid Overlap and Use Negatives

Don't create campaigns that compete against each other. If you have a "running shoes" campaign and a "Nike running shoes" campaign, they'll bid against each other and drive up your costs. Use negative keywords to prevent this cannibalization. Add "Nike" as a negative keyword to your general running shoes campaign - that way, it doesn't show for Nike-specific searches.

Use shared budgets wisely for smaller campaigns that target similar audiences. Instead of giving five small campaigns $20 each per day, put them in a shared budget of $100. Google will automatically allocate more money to the campaigns that are performing better on any given day.