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Google Ads for Vitamins and Supplement Brands – Hints and Tips To Grow Your Business

Introduction

In this guide, we share practical tips for running paid search campaigns for your vitamins and supplements brand.

We are an independent Google Ads agency with more than 20 years of combined experience, including over six years running our own agency. Our team is passionate about health, wellness, and e-commerce.

We’ve worked with well-known brands such as Nutri Advanced, Optibac Probiotics, and Bodykind to help them grow in competitive markets.

Table of Contents

One of the most common problems

We regularly see companies trying to advertise every single product they have on site. Whilst this isn’t exclusive to the vitamins and supplements market, it’s a great starting point for reviewing your PPC investment and understanding how you can grow revenue more efficiently.

Why Limiting Your Products Matters

Google Ads Product Performance Report

If you have hundreds of products, it’s unlikely that all of these products are profitable.

On the surface, it may look like your campaigns are working efficiently.

However if you dive into the data, you’ll probably see that you’re spending money on loss-making products, even before factoring in the cost of goods.

It’s tough to monitor every product, so we recommend a monthly review of profitability by product.

You’ll likely find that you are wasting a lot of your budgets on products not aligned with your business goals. 

How to Review Product Performance in Google Ads

Steps to follow:

  • Google Ads Product Performance Report

    • Go to Insights and Reports > Report Editor.

    • Choose Shopping Report from the Template Gallery.

    • Add Item ID, Cost, Conversion Value, and Conv. Value/Cost (ROAS).

  • Analyse in Excel (or similar)

    • Review products one by one. Identify top-performers vs. underperformers.

  • Decide next steps

    • Should you keep advertising loss-making products? Segment the good from the bad and focus on improving underperformers (see section below).

Compare Google Ads Spend With Website Sales Data

Do you know how your Google Ads spend aligns with your best sellers across the whole website?

You may find:

  • Budget wasted on products that rarely sell.

  • Strong sellers lacking PPC visibility.

Use the same Google Ads report as before, but cover at least three months to smooth out seasonality.

Then get a sales report from GA4 or your CRM. Match product IDs in Google Ads with product IDs from GA4/CRM to cross-reference performance.

Using GA4 to Match Product IDs

In GA4, go to Explore > Blank Report:

  1. Add the dimension Item ID.

  2. Add the metric Item Revenue.

  3. Place Item ID as rows and Item Revenue as values.

Download the data for the same period as your Google Ads report. Then cross-reference GA4 revenue with Google Ads spend and revenue per product.

A simple VLOOKUP in Excel lets you merge the two sets of data. This view shows whether your marketing budget supports the right products.

Product Performance – Key Takeaways

  • Advertising all products isn’t always the best strategy.

  • You could be wasting money on underperforming products.

  • Group products by ROAS and act on underperformers.

  • Align Google Ads spend with website sales data.

  • Even small shifts in spend can make a big difference.

Vitamins and Supplements - Optimising Product Titles for Google Shopping

The importance of well crafted product titles in Google can’t be underestimated. 

Google uses your product titles in Merchant Centre to match search queries. Strong titles boost visibility and clicks.

If you use Shopify or another e-commerce platform, product titles usually flow directly into Merchant Centre as written on your site. That makes individual optimisation essential.

Case Study: Vitabiotics – Ultra Turmeric

On Google Shopping, the product title for Vitabiotics appears simply as Ultra Turmeric. On the VitaBiotics website, the title matches exactly as in the shopping product

There is no “product optimisation” in Google Merchant Centre.

This misses opportunities. The site lists important details that could be added:

  • Pure Turmeric

  • Vitamin D and Black Pepper

  • 525 mg Extract

  • Lactose Free

  • Vegetarian

  • 60 Tablets

 

Better title example:
“Pure Turmeric With Vitamin D and Black Pepper Extract – 60 Tablets – 525mg Turmeric. Lactose Free & Vegetarian – Vitabiotics”

Case Study: Nutrition Geeks – Turmeric, Ginger and Black Pepper

On site product name: Turmeric, Ginger and Black Pepper.

In Google Shopping:


“Turmeric, Ginger and Black Pepper 120 Tablets | 2000mg Tablets | High Strength Curcumin Supplements | Nutrition Geeks – (1 pack)”

This optimised title captures more queries and long-tail searches. Nutrition Geeks likely used a supplemental feed or a feed optimisation tool.

This work allows Google to more closely match their product with users searching for specific ingredients and products.

Nutrition Geeks have optimised their product title for Google Shopping.

You can do this either directly in Google Merchant Centre using a Supplemental Feed, or in a tool such as Shoptimised, Data Feed Watch & many more.

By optimising their product titles in Google Merchant Centre, Nutrition Geeks are maximising their chances of matches to relevant customers, and also longer tail searches where consumers are looking for specific items they have included in the product title.

It is a must to actively optimise your titles to try and maximise your performance in Google. 

Shopping Titles – Key Takeaways

  • Google matches your product titles to user queries.

  • Site titles rarely perform best.

  • Optimise titles with keywords and product details.

  • Use natural language; avoid keyword stuffing.

  • Aim for ~150 characters, putting key terms first.

  • Include attributes like “lactose free,” “vegan,” or “gluten free.”

  • Research keywords with Google Keyword Planner.

Text Ads For Vitamins and Supplements

Text ads are often overlooked as Google Shopping and Performance Max dominate. Yet text ads can still present opportunities if used strategically.

Why Text Ads Are Overlooked

Opportunities and Risk

With the advent of Performance Max, it’s easier than ever for advertisers to display their products on Google.

The chart below shows the number of advertisers display their products in Google Shopping from January 2023 to May-2025.

As you can see, over time there has been a rapid increase in the number of advertisers displaying products, from around 58 to an average of 64 in 2025.

Text Ads – The below is the same chart but looking at the number of advertisers who use text ads over the same period.

On average, for this particular advertiser in the vitamins and supplements market, there are only 10 advertisers running text ads, an increase from 8 in 2023. That’s compared to 64 advertisers using Google shopping.

This presents an opportunity in the fact that not as many advertisers are taking text ads seriously, which leaves the door open for other advertisers.

However, over the past 3 or 4 years, we’ve noticed a behaviour change, specifically within vitamins and supplements on how customers are interacting with text ads.

  • The change we have seen, is that text ads in general for vitamins and supplements (excluding brand specific text ads) do not convert as well as shopping ads do
  • Consumers appear to be using text ads as research rather than purchase keywords

 

We can see this in auction insight reports with the increase of advertisers such as affiliates displaying “Top 5 magnesium supplements”, and some brands running their own informational pages to try and convert customers.

Search Example: “Best Magnesium Glycinate”

Previously, this search would return major retailer ads. Today, results include:

  • Hey Nutrition: a comparison-style blog recommending their own product.

  • Supplement Informer: an affiliate site linking to Amazon.

This shows how consumer behaviour around text ads has shifted.

Below you can see the current search results for “best magnesium glycinate”

Hey Nutrition – A “traditional retailer” selling their own supplements, they have taken a very clever route by creating a comparison style blog post creating a “buyers guide”. Screenshot and more details further on

Hey Nutrition – “Best magnesium glycinate” landing page

This is clever because the page isn’t really branded as Hey Nutrition, it is shown as a comparison page. At the bottom of the article, they do actually compare mag gly from different brands, but would you believe it, the number one product recommended to buy is from Hey Nutrition!

Results at the end of the article:

The other advertiser on the search results page “Supplement Informer” works purely as a website redirecting customers to Amazon to receive a small cut of the purchases as affiliate links.

But their website is also styled as a comparison and informational site.

If you run text ads already

If you are already running text ads, jump in and assess the performance versus your shopping or performance max campaigns.

Google takes quite a large liberty on what it classes as “relevant” when it comes to displaying your text ads to users.

You might be very surprised to look at some of the search terms your adverts match to.

Utilise the “search term” report to view the details and exclude any irrelevant terms.

If you text ads are underperforming – i.e. delivering a poor return on investment, review your full setup, including keywords, ad copy, matched search terms and your landing pages where you send users to.

Review your targets and make firm decision to cull areas in the short term and reinvest your budget into better performing areas.

Text Ads – Key Takeaways

  • Few supplement brands use text ads widely → opportunity.

  • Google may match ads to irrelevant terms → monitor closely.

  • Text ads are often research-stage touchpoints.

  • Consider educational or comparison content.

  • Track results and adjust quickly.

Conclusion & Summary

Google Ads offers a powerful way for vitamins and supplement brands to grow. But you need to:

  • Focus spend on your best-performing products.

  • Optimise product titles for Shopping campaigns.

  • Use text ads strategically, often with educational or comparison content.

Even small optimisations can make a big impact on your PPC performance and overall revenue.

 

Get In Touch

That’s all for now in this short summary. Feel free to get in touch if you are looking for advice, our team provide free PPC sessions to discuss any account concerns or if you are looking for a new direction on strategy.

The key is in the detail with Google Ads, trying to maximise your ad exposure while keeping Google from spending your marketing budget frivolously.

Check back for regular updates and more tips and advice for growing your vitamins and supplements business with Google Ads.

Mark Pitchford

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