How to quickly fix an account that’s “not in great shape”

The other day, I came across a discussion where a brand owner shared this concern:

“My ad account is not in a great shape and I worry focusing on BFCM would deviate me from fixing the real issue… but maybe I’m looking at it from the wrong POV?!”

This is an interesting one because "not in great shape" can mean a lot of different things.

If your account is completely broken… as in burning money with zero returns…

My advice will be very different from a situation where you're stuck at low spend and can't scale.

But for the sake of simplicity here…

Let’s focus on the second case, since that’s what I see most brands are dealing with.

Here's what I'd tell them:

BFCM will happen whether you prepare for it or not.

You're not choosing between "fix the account" and "do BFCM."

You're choosing between "do BFCM with a weak account" and "do BFCM with a solid account."

And if you skip it to "fix things properly"...

You'll miss out on a period when even an imperfect account can benefit from.

Now, let's say you don't want to completely rebuild your account around BFCM.

There are simple optimizations you can make to capture some of the surge in demand.

• Add BFCM keywords to your branded Search campaigns (i.e, “[Your Brand] sale”)

• Build BFCM-theme landing pages

• Update headlines and descriptions

• Set up Shopping Ads promotions in Google Merchant Center

• Add ad extensions to highlight the sales

• Create sale-specific PMax asset groups (with headlines like "Black Friday Sale Live")

These won't unlock the full potential of BFCM.

But they'll help you grab a piece of that pie without changing the core of what you're doing.

That said, I don’t think you should stop there.

Most people underestimate what can be done in 4-5 weeks.

That’s not a lot of time… but it’s enough to clean things up, fix the leaks, and give your account a stronger foundation heading into BFCM.

Will you transform a struggling account into a profit machine?

Probably not.

But you can absolutely make it solid enough to capitalize on the BFCM wave.

And when you go into that period with a cleaner setup and stronger fundamentals, your campaigns will perform on a completely different level.

Take this brand for example.

We took over their account in early November last year.

Within a month, they generated $651K in revenue from just $38.3K in ad spend

A 17.01x ROAS, up 63% from the month before.

Now, I wouldn’t say this account was “not in great shape” before we came in.

But they were facing a few tricky issues:

• Little prospecting efforts (most of their sales come from people who searched for the brand)

• Struggling to scale ad spend without sacrificing profitability

• Low-quality traffic from PMax campaigns

The point is:

Even if your account isn’t “optimized” or ready for BFCM…

With a few strategic moves, you can achieve serious results this Q4… and create momentum that carries into the next year.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn.

How we can help:

Get a free Google ads audit: For brands spending more than $20k/mo. or making over 1 million annually, we’ll identify the key bottlenecks in your account, and turn it into a free 90-day scaling plan. Click here.

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