Our roadmap for scaling Google Ads from a limited budget

A question I get asked a lot:

“How do you scale with a limited budget?”

This is both the easiest and hardest part of running Google Ads.

It’s easy because small budgets force simplicity.

You don’t have 20 campaigns to manage. There aren’t many moving parts

So optimization becomes faster and more straightforward.

It’s hard because you don’t have much room for error.

When spend is tight, every dollar counts.

You can’t afford to waste it—or put it in the wrong place.

And this is where I’ve seen many small and mid-sized brands go wrong.

They try to run everything at once.

Search, Display, Shopping, Performance Max.

But with a small budget, your campaigns won’t get enough conversions.

That means Google doesn’t collect the data it needs to optimize.

It’s also why we don’t recommend starting with Performance Max.

Sure, it’s convenient—one campaign, all channels, fully automated.

But that’s the problem. Your budget gets sliced too many ways.

Our advice?

Start with Shopping Ads.

They’re easier to manage. Simpler to optimize.

And more importantly:

They give you multiple ways to stand out and win the clicks from brands with bigger budgets:

• Product titles

• Product images

• Promotions & Offers

• Store & Product ratings

• Shipping & Return policies

Each one is a chance to win a sale without touching your budget.

If you’ve got a few hundred bucks a month, this is your best shot at making Google Ads work.

Once Shopping is profitable, layer in Search Ads.

Search pairs well with Shopping.

It helps you cover more ground and own more real estate on Google.

After that, test YouTube Ads and Demand Gen.

These help you reach cold audiences and grow brand awareness.

More awareness means more branded searches.

And when branded searches go up, your Shopping and Search campaigns get far more efficient.

That’s the roadmap if you’re starting small or trying to scale on a lean budget.

Remember, at this stage, efficiency is everything.

Find the few areas that give you the biggest return and squeeze every drop of profit from them.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn.

P.S.

This email is more about the overall strategy.

But if you’d like to learn the practical steps for running Google Ads with a lean budget…

Check out this video

Inside, you’ll learn:

• How to win clicks even when your ad shows up next to bigger competitors

• Which keywords drive the best returns on a lean budget

• Where big brands get lazy (and how you can outrank them with a little extra effort)

• How to make your ads look like the better deal without lowering the price

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.

• Get our E-commerce Growth Toolkit: Get access to our free resources and tools including the Product Feed & GMC Optimization Checklist, YouTube Shorts Ads Playbook, and 12 Plug-and-Play Dashboards. Click here.

P.S. Got a friend interested in Google ads? Share the love and send them our way.

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