Our Most Impressive Google Ads Case Study (And What You Can Learn)

How do you grow revenue by 50% without increasing ad spend? 

In this episode, host Jeremy breaks down a real client case study that did exactly that. You’ll learn how profit-first tracking (profit bidding) changes decision-making, why offline conversions from your CRM are critical, and how a PMax brand vs. non-brand split can unlock higher ROAS. 

Jeremy also shares how server-side tracking, call tracking, and passing Shopify profit data back into Google Ads set the foundation for smarter bidding.

👉 Want to see the full strategy in action? Reach out to Jeremy on LinkedIn or via email to get the exact process we use with clients.

Get your free 30 minute strategy session with Jeremy here: https://www.younganddigital.marketing/

Scale your store with 1:1 coaching: https://www.younganddigital.marketing/1-2-1-coaching

Transcript

Hello guys, and welcome back to Google ads at least. Hope everyone is doing fine this fabulous Monday, and today I want to be talking about one of the projects I've been most proud of in the last month or so, and that is a client who came to us with a relatively straightforward challenge, to be honest, there wasn't like a crazy difficult business model or AD account or something like that, but I wanted to really share this with you, because it kind of shows why it's really important to track the right things and why it's important to be creative in Google Ads sometimes as well. Let's dive right in. So the client came to us. They are a retailer of pre owned office furniture. So think of, let's say an office closes down. They find a place that then closes down, they buy up all the furniture, they basically refurbish the whole thing, and then sell it off again. Very often it's office furniture that is branded like a very specific brand, is what they're very well known for. And they are then selling them, of course, a lot cheaper than you would if you were to purchase it new. So cool business model. They're doing really well. They were doing about 300k a month with and basically just running Google ads up until that point. Now, of course, they're running meta ads a little bit as well, but the challenge was relatively clear. First of all, overarching like actual tracking and judging success was an issue with this business. Okay? So the first thing that we are and we're still in the talks of doing it, is getting a business intelligence tool, something like add metrics, something like triple whale, or anything in point with just Google ads running, this wasn't actually that important, because, interestingly, attribution is pretty accurate when you only have one channel running, because there's no real overlap or interference. What do I mean by that? You don't get like, sort of inflated numbers as you would. Let's say you run meta, someone clicks a meta ad, then a week later, someone searches on Google, clicks a Google ads, then both channels claim the conversion, right? That doesn't exist. Exist if you just run meta, or if you just run Google, right? It gets complicated when you have multi channel mix. Okay, anyway, um, that is the first thing that we're working on with them right now, just to get a better understanding of their overall business numbers. But now comes, actually the interesting part, we switched straight away to profit metrics, because basically there was one challenge. Every order is different. Not only do they so, there's a few few complicated factors here. Not only, of course, every order is different in terms of, for instance, what someone buys, in terms of how many tables or how many chairs or something like that. But of course, depending on how much they could buy in for and how much it costs to refurbish the cost of goods different every time. What kind of ROAs target do you set? Then it is absolutely impossible to set the correct ROAs target then for this kind of business, because what are you what are you going to do, right? Like you're going to, you know, go for three ROAs, does that even mean anything? Well, no, it doesn't really mean anything, right? So we implemented profit metrics. So that was the first thing, because it solved several things at the same time. First of all, of course, the cost of goods thing that the fact that that's different almost with every order, right? And, of course, pass and profit bidding is just much better in this case, because it gives at least some sort of eagleizing factor that Google can actually consistently bid on some sort of return on ad spend. So we set up profit metrics, and that has already worked really, really well. But more importantly, what is actually super interesting with this client is that they get a lot of B to B orders, so this almost borders on the lead gen. Okay, so we've worked with this client now to implement close as their CRM. So first of all, we've implemented a CRM system so that we can use offline conversion tracking, so that if they get an inquiry, and it moves through the stages of the deal, and then the deal gets closed, well, we can fire that conversion back into Google ads, then as a as a conversion, as an offline conversion, using something like make. Zapier, so we've helped them implement that and implement that button on the product pages as well, so that people can make B to B inquiries. Okay, but what's even more interesting is that, of course, we would just send the full order volume, the total gross turnover as a conversion value back into Google ads. We don't really want that, so we worked with the tracking specialist to implement a specialty here, that before the conversion gets sent back into Google ads, what we're doing is essentially what profit metrics does, right? So profit metrics, of course, subtracts the cost of goods, the transaction costs, the shipping costs, all those costs before it sends the conversion back to Google ads, and that's amazing, but we want to be doing the same with B to B orders, which make a significant chunk of the volume of not only in total numbers and total orders, but in order volume as in they tend to be AOV, sometimes north, sometimes five figures, right? Very often five figures even. And basically, we're going to do the same thing as profit metrics, in that we send a web hook to Shopify so that we can retrieve the order and the cost of goods and all the other costs involved with the order, and then send the B to B profit data back into Google ads. So that way, we can optimize, probably properly towards profit. By the way, I'm still still at conversion track in here, right? We've not even crossed into into into the other domains. So super, super cool. That was the, one of the first things that we've done. We've done, we've also implemented two further conversion actions, actually three further conversion actions, first of all, calls for if someone actually phones up. So we don't have a call tracking software here. We just use Google's own phone call snippets, which you can very easily inject into the website, and it changes the phone number depending on, of course, from which ad this person came, so that we can actually attribute phone calls to our Google Ads campaigns, as well as this kind of soft touch point as a soft conversion. But it still helps. And, of course, they run search campaigns as well for wanting to buy Office Furniture, right? So we've implemented a phone call conversion for that as well, because that is where a lot of people make inquiries. Plus we're also implementing close, or a funnel in close for inquiries to a normal inquiry form. Okay, so we went from one conversion action that tracked turnover to a conversion action that first tracked profit. If someone directly checks out, then we capture the gclid. If someone this the second now, if someone leaves an inquiry and wants to have a B to B order, which is, of course, a longer process. We go then through close, and if someone is put onto deal closed, we retrieve the profit data from Shopify and send that back into Google ads. The third thing is a phone call conversion action, if someone rings into wanted to buy something. The fourth conversion action is if someone wants to sell something and phones in. The fifth is then another close funnel, where we determine for for the campaigns that are you know, wanted to, where people want to sell the products to us. So that's the first thing, and it's been a real game changer, right? So in the last 30 days, we pretty much spent the same number of the same amount of money, but we have forced the algorithm to, of course, go for more profitable things here, for more profitable sales. So that's been really good. And generally the server side tracking, of course, is paid off, right? Because we wanted to implement that as well, and we simply had more sales off the bat by just be having a better setup. So we spent the same amount, 20, sorry, the last 30 days versus previous. So we've spent 25,000 that is exactly the same amount, and we have generated 64 more sales through that, which is absolutely insane. So we went from 6057,
tracked sales to 121, tracked sales. So real success here. Super, super happy with that, and we already had conversions on the inquire. The phone call B to B inquiry, which is amazing. So that works, clearly. Sorry, I'm just looking at that because the phone call thing only went live last week, but yeah, really, really good, and with getting the algorithm to focus on better stuff here. Now the second thing that we've done is implemented, then audiences. So first of all, I just maybe one final sentence on the tracking is that you just really want to know, we want to look at the business, what is the challenge you want to solve, and then you always want to track intelligently what needs to be tracked and what is a valuable conversion to Google ads and then send it the data that it needs in order to understand what is going on. Okay? So, yeah, that that's that's basically that. The second thing then we've done is we implemented a couple of audiences. Okay, so we basically sent Google three audiences. First of all, add to carts or people who abandon the checkout, right? That's just a very good audience to keep nurturing people who've already made a decision to purchase, and Pmax is pretty good at going after these hot audiences in retargeting, right, the second we've done is we've uploaded all customers to to to Google ads to just give, of course, Google like an all customers list. And then we've also implemented all B to B customers as well, and told Google that this is a highly qualified or high value customer list. So that really straightforward little thing, but basically, we're just teaching Google what's a normal customer and what's a high value customer, B to B. That's the kind of ones we want more, of course, right? So of course, Google will try and focus and spend on those kinds of people more, which is really cool. Then the third thing we've done is we have implemented basically a fully automated way of improving the feed. So it's not a secret that as an agency, we work with product hero a lot. We've done quite a few sort of webinars with the guys and some sort of collaboration, some collaborations with the guys that they're really cool, but their their features are amazing as well. So this client didn't really have properly optimized feed, nor were they having a CSS they didn't really take advantage of anything in Merchant Center. So first of all, we cleaned up the entire merchant center right, popped in logos, put in returns policy, polished up on the shipping policy, added all of the signals that they want to improve the listings with more images, everything that Google wants to make us rank better. But then we also implemented the product hero CSS so that we get click costs reduced, which in Europe you can right? So you get the click cost reduction, which is really cool. But more importantly, with this feed, is what was annoying, is that the products change all the time, right? So you have to rewrite product titles pretty often, because they put new products online pretty much every week. So we needed rules. So we've implemented data feed watch first, which is a software through which you can basically very easily set up rules, so stuff like, hey, if, if in the title is the word table, then this is a table, right as Google product category, etc, etc. So that way you can fully automate the feed. And regardless of where the new product comes in or new product goes out, the rules are applied instantly, and the feed is optimized off the bat, right? So that's working really well. But we're using then, of course, product heroes, own product title optimization AI, because at the before that, they didn't even have something like pre owned furniture in the product titles, right? So we're using that which generates a sub feed for us, which we can implement in Merchant Center and overrides all of the product titles automatically and with a few clicks of the button, even new products are optimized instantly and added to the feed, which is really, really cool and has saved us a lot of time, but also is just much more efficient. So I think the takeaway here was full feed and merchant center optimization, but given that, they had this unique challenge of, hey, we don't have a set list of products. The way you optimize the feed. Once it's done, what you have to do is, we had to create some levels of automation in order to get the products in. Uh. Uh, and and, and have them all optimized straight away so that we could reduce the manual work, but also it's just more efficient and works well. And give me a second quickly, I'm actually just checking out now how their visibility has improved on this. And we have generated 73.8% more clicks in the last 28 days. Was the previous period, just by doing this. And is honestly amazing. It's it's worked so well. It's basically just doing the fundamentals, right? So which, which is cool. And then lastly, we optimized all of the campaigns. So at the beginning, they just had 1p max with his better margin project products. He had a search campaign, and he had, yeah, basically just a few other campaigns that were sort of just targeting keywords for, you know, wanting to purchase certain items. Okay, so we went through those all search campaigns in Austria, in Germany, Liechtenstein, France, Italy, and in specifically, like a local campaign as well. And we just optimized them because there were no negative keywords. It was all on broad match, like, you know, the usual sort of stuff, and aligned all of the settings there at the moment, so set to max conversions because, to be honest, we've not implemented that conversion action just yet, where we've done the telephone number this week, but the close funnel, that's the one that's still coming. And with the other stuff, we actually overhauled his brand campaign. Unfortunately, we had to keep brand. The reason is we're quite low in volume, and he's only just started with meta, and has a lot of competitors bidding on him. So that is running on manual CPC and just doing its thing right. It's done really well. We've already been able to reduce costs by 20% doing that month or month as well, which is really good, but we're also bidding on competitors. That's a search campaign. We also set up. We also set it. Set up a DSA campaign, which has done ridiculously well so far, which I'm very happy with. But I think the biggest sort of takeaway was to get a proper brand a non brand, split on P, Max and shopping, and just tidy up those campaigns to a level that they, you know, should do, what they should do, also what has been really, really cool and interesting, and which has worked really well, is to run a another shopping campaign, parallel on max clicks and not with a power target, and that has actually generated a power of seven. So for every pound we're putting in, we're getting six pound back at the moment, which is absolutely insane. Yeah, so pretty much that is where we are right now. So in total turnover the last 30 days so we started on the 14th of July with this, with this client, and is now at the time this week in the 17th of August. In the last 30 days, we have increased our orders by let me have a quick look here, only by a couple, right? Interestingly, so it's only been 3% more orders, however, total sales, so sale value has increased by 50% so we've gone up from, uh, let me have a quick Gander here, if I go into Shopify, last 30 days versus previous period, we have gone up from 500 and no, sorry, this is, this is the actual turnover now. So last 30 days was 518,000 euros and plus 50% what is that? 260,000 so we've gone from 260,000 to 518,000 euros. And that's unbelievable. It's really cool. Really happy with us. Of course. What has helped here were two things that meta ADS has started as well. So that, of course, does does something to that as well. But more importantly, what has been really
valuable and helpful is a very strong average order value increase, which has come from promoting more B to B orders, right, which the their team has done really well and just. Just really try and really hone in down the algorithm to exactly what it's supposed to do, bring in profitable orders, not orders for any price, if that makes sense, ongoing. What are we doing with this client? Well, we expand into Austria. So that's one thing that is going to help this client in terms of volume, we're going to likely expand to Switzerland at some point as well, when we sorted out shipping and VAT and all that, all that crap the and I think one of the biggest wins is we also implemented an app called A B convert off the bat, because we found their product pages to be a little weak, and it's only been running for a few weeks now, but with the suggestions, our CRO suggestions, we've actually been able to increase conversion rate quite dramatically already on the product pages, and so far, this has been running since the 19th of July. So this is something that we, off the bat, recommended to them to improve, and it is just loading right now. Actually, I was wrong, by the way. It's not from it wasn't 260,000 it was 50% plus, right? So it would have been like 360,000 or something like that, and then another 180k on top. So we made him 180k more basically. And yeah, so sorry about that. I just want to correct myself, and our test has a p value of naught point naught one, so it's statistically very significant, and has brought a 38% increase in conversion rate from naught point six, seven to naught point nine, three. So this has been very successful, and a test that we actually add into all of our product pages, and of course, making more money with the exact same stuff. So yeah, guys, basics, right? Basics is was all about. And if you want to learn more about this, then our books are open again from September onwards for the one to one coachings. So if you an E commerce business owner who wants to master Google ads and get to grips with it, please do reach out. It's Jeremy at young digital dot marketing. Or you can find me on LinkedIn there with Jeremy and Google ads. But of course, our doors are open for the q4 season as well. You want to probably get on their ASAP. September and October is promising to be very busy, and we would love to have you on board if you need help with this channel, especially if you want to do creative and cruise shit like we do. Yeah, that was it. Thank you very much for listening. This has been Jeremy Yang, and I wish you a happy and productive week ahead.