Client name withheld under NDA.
The client sells pendant lights, floor lamps, rugs and made-to-measure curtains through its website and two shops. Its Google Ads account had one campaign type: Performance Max. Spend was S$7,500 a month and Google reported a return of 3.2x, which looked healthy. The owner was still uneasy. She could not see which searches or products brought the sales, and she suspected many were customers who would have bought anyway.
A review of the account supported her doubts. Performance Max was showing ads for the shop's own name, and 41% of spend went on brand searches. The product feed carried supplier codes as titles, with only 18% of products named in a way shoppers would search. There was no search campaign to catch buyers typing 'rattan pendant light' or 'blackout curtains'. We recorded the numbers before touching the account.
We exported search terms, asset groups and the product feed, and checked how conversions were counted. Orders were tracked correctly, but Performance Max had no customer list, so it could not tell new buyers from returning ones. We uploaded the past customer list, set a new-customer value, and wrote down the baseline for orders, revenue, spend and brand share before any change.
Performance Max reports one blended number. Until we could separate brand from non-brand and new customers from returning ones, a 3.2x return could not tell us whether the account was working or just collecting sales that were already coming.
We rewrote product titles to follow a simple pattern: type, style, material, size and colour. 'LMP-4471-BK' became 'Black Metal Arc Floor Lamp, 180cm'. We added product types and Google categories, fixed missing sizes on rugs and corrected a set of disapproved curtain listings. We also removed discontinued items and out-of-stock lines so no budget went to products that could not be sold.
The feed is what Google reads to decide which searches a product can appear for. Clear titles let the same budget reach more relevant shoppers and made the product reports much easier to read.
We built non-brand search campaigns by category: pendant lights, floor lamps, rugs and curtains. We added a separate brand search campaign with its own small budget and excluded the brand name from Performance Max. Negative keywords removed searches for trade suppliers, wholesale lists and DIY parts. In month 2 the reported return dipped because brand sales no longer counted toward Performance Max.
Brand searches are cheap and usually convert, so they should not make the rest of the account look better than it is. Splitting them out showed the true cost of winning a new customer.
We sorted products into three margin tiers with the owner. Lighting carried the best margin, rugs sat in the middle and made-to-measure curtains were thinnest. Each tier got its own Performance Max asset group and a target return that matched its margin. We also set a higher value on first-time buyers, so bidding reached for new customers and not only for people already on the mailing list.
One return target for the whole shop overspends on thin items and underspends on strong ones. Tiers moved the budget toward products that pay for the advertising and still kept curtains in the mix.
We built remarketing lists for product viewers, cart abandoners and past buyers, with the last group shown matching items such as rugs for lamp buyers. Search terms were reviewed weekly, winning terms were added as exact match, weak ones were blocked and bids were nudged up or down by category. A one-page report compared brand, non-brand and Performance Max side by side every month.
Most home decor shoppers compare for days before buying. Remarketing brought them back at a low cost, and the weekly review kept the new search campaigns from drifting into wasteful terms or rising bids.
After 5 months, monthly Google Ads revenue rose from S$24,000 to S$50,000 on S$10,000 of spend, up from S$7,500. Orders grew from 320 to 500 a month and return on ad spend moved from 3.2x to 5.0x. Spend on brand searches fell from 41% to 12% of the total, and new customers made up 61% of revenue instead of 38%. Search-friendly product titles reached 91% of the catalogue.
Audit complete, customer list uploaded, feed titles rewritten, discontinued items removed.
Brand and non-brand separated, category search campaigns live, negative keyword lists in place.
Margin tiers set, new-customer bidding on, remarketing running, weekly search term review.
On its own it reported 3.2x and could not show where sales came from. Adding search campaigns and a brand split gave us the view to cut brand spend from 41% to 12% and find real new customers.
Only 18% of products had titles shoppers would search for. After the rewrite 91% did, and the same budget reached far more relevant searches. A clean feed is the cheapest improvement in a retail account.
Lighting, rugs and curtains earn different margins. Separate targets by tier moved spend toward products that paid for it, and new customers rose from 38% to 61% of revenue as bidding rewarded first purchases.
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