Our client, a distinguished player in the home decor industry, is celebrated for its exceptional range of premium home decor products. Despite their market recognition and high-quality offerings, they struggled to achieve the desired profitability through Google Ads. While sales were satisfactory, the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) and return on ad spend (ROAS) were not meeting targets.
The primary objective was to attract new customers, boost website sales, and achieve a ROAS of over 10 with a monthly budget of 12 lakh INR. This ambitious target required not just increasing revenue but also enhancing overall profitability.
An audit of the Google Ads account revealed several critical issues:
- Tracking Issues: Inaccurate tracking hindered the evaluation of campaign performance. Events like 'add to cart' were being optimized instead of purchases, resulting in misleading ROAS figures.
- Poor Audience Targeting: Ads were not reaching the intended audience due to ineffective targeting. The interest groups were outdated and not aligned with keyword data.
- Non-Incremental Targeting: Over 50% of the budget was spent on branded terms, limiting the expansion to new customer segments.
- Poor Campaign Structure: The existing setup had overlapping and misaligned campaigns. Similar products were promoted across multiple campaigns, and products with different CAC targets shared the same tROAS bidding strategy.
- Wasted Ad Spend: The current active campaigns included.
I initiated a comprehensive optimization process to address these issues:
Quick-Optimization Checklist
- Conversion Tracking: Fixed tracking issues and set purchase events as the primary goal.
- Location Targeting: Changed targeting from 'presence or interest' to 'presence in location'.
- Ad Placements: Removed search partners and display network placements.
- Keyword Management: Created a branded keyword exclusion list for non-branded campaigns.
- Device Targeting: Increased bids for mobile devices.
- Automated Bidding: Transitioned to automated bidding strategies where sufficient conversions allowed.
- Shopping Campaigns: Implemented at least one catch-all shopping campaign.
- Experiment Management: Stopped indefinitely running experiments.
- Performance Max Campaigns: Created 2 campaigns with 2 asset groups each, targeting similar product categories like wall art and decorative accessories.
- Non-Best-Selling Categories: Added 1 Performance Max campaign with a tROAS target.
- Shopping Campaigns: Developed 1 non-branded shopping campaign with 5 ad groups targeting specific categories, and 1 branded shopping campaign.
- Search Campaigns: Maintained separate branded and non-branded search campaigns, excluding brand names in the latter.
- Metrics Focus: Monitored cost per conversion, conversions, ROAS, and overall cost.
- Product Pruning: Consistently removed underperforming products based on spend, ROAS, and CAC targets.
- Location-Specific Campaigns: Implemented campaigns targeting areas needing better impression share.
- Asset Rework: Updated Performance Max assets to highlight launches, offers, warranties, and product use-cases.
- Ad Copy and Extensions: Revised search ad copy to include details on warranties, features, prices, and offers. Added ad extensions like sitelinks, structured snippets, price, callout, and image extensions.
- Patience and Consistency: Allowed sufficient learning time for the campaigns without over-optimization.
This meticulous restructuring and consistent optimization led to a significant turnaround. The account’s ROAS surged from 2.4 in October 2023 to nearly 10 by the end of November. As a result, the monthly budget was increased to 20 lakh INR, positioning the brand for sustained growth and profitability.
