How I Managed An Equestrian Brand’s Google Ads To Deliver 14x ROAS

This client is the epitome of functional and stylish British equestrian fashion. Designed by riders for all riders, they combine impeccable tailoring with an unrivalled attention to detail born from an understanding of what it takes for a piece of clothing to withstand the demands of the everyday equestrian lifestyle. 

This client came to me in November 2023 with a desire for a Google Ads Audit to get a handle on a Google Ads account which was not delivering ROAS. Whilst conducting the audit I noticed that two key features were missing from the account - features that I would have considered essential for eCommerce Google Ads. Firstly, they were missing Google Shopping from their ads - an absolute must for businesses looking to increase their online sales. Secondly, they were not tracking accurate eCommerce data through conversions or Google Analytics. 

I delivered the Google Ads Audit to them, including my recommendations for turning the account around. Together, we identified the following objectives: 

1. Ensure the Google Ads Account was using best advertising practices to allow for full utilisation of the available budget.

2. Setup eCommerce tracking to effectively and accurately attribute sales from all marketing channels.

3. Optimise the advertising to bring in more high-quality and new customers.

The client then wanted me to action the audit, and thus we entered into ongoing Google Ads Management.

Google Ads eCommerce Strategy: 

In order to tackle all three objectives, a four-step strategy was developed to transform the Google Ads Account over the course of 12 months. 

Step 1 - Auditing - Months 1 & 2

To recommend actions for further development of the account, an account audit affords the opportunity to analyse historical data, identify campaigns and ad groups that have performed well, assess why campaigns and ad groups haven’t performed well, and methodically review the fundamental setup of the account. All culminating in an action list for immediate attention and a considerations list for future development. 

The resulting report provided the following highlights: 

• Budget was not being fully spent due to incorrect bidding strategy

• Google Shopping not fully utilised or optimised

• Conversion data was incorrectly reporting checkout initiations as purchases

• Search positioning was relatively low

• Full online sales journey was not mapped out 

• Ad scheduling and location targeting was limiting performance in key locations

• Ad groups were un-targeted and lacked relevancy

• Adverts were missing full asset inclusion to maximise SERP real estate

Various actions were recommended and implemented to bring the account up to speed with modern best practices. The most impactful recommendation would turn out to be setting up GA4 eCommerce tracking to correctly measure online sales performance and attribute it back into the Google Ads dashboard correctly. 

Though other impactful actions included performing a large cull of keywords from the account to niche back down and in turn increase the quality of the incoming traffic, readjusting the bidding strategy to push for a higher Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), improving the quality of the adverts with all new headlines and descriptions. 

Step 2 - Strategising - Month 3 

With the account utilising best practice it was time to assess the overall strategy for the account and understand if it was effectively delivering the right results. How could the account be developed further to increase performance? 

Historically, the account had used Search Campaigns to bring in website traffic. This required time and attention on the account that the in-house marketing team could not provide. The search term report would quickly populate with thousands of searches that needed to be reviewed regularly to ensure all traffic visiting the site was highly relevant and had purchase intent. 

A new strategy was developed which utilised a Performance Max Campaign specifically targeting the UK audience. From a single campaign setup, we could show Search, Display, Gmail, YouTube, and Discovery adverts to a specially targeted audience using a combination of demographic and search theme data. 

Accessing the latest algorithmic technology, the campaign would target users rather than search terms, allowing for multiple touchpoints on various websites and media across different platforms and devices, all with a view to nurturing a sale. 

Step 3 - Advert Management - Months 4 - 6

After moving away from Search to Performance Max, advert assets and performance data had to be closely monitored to ensure results were moving in the right direction. Due to the nature of the algorithm, good performance data promotes increased performance - think of it like a snowball rolling down a hill - the account began to gather momentum. 

Weekly and monthly reporting helped to keep all parties on the same page and helped to identify further optimisation tasks. 

Step 4 - Campaign Scaling - Months 7 - 12

With success coming and an anticipated busy end to the year coming, we started to make moves to scale the budget up. This had to be done carefully to not upset the ROAS metrics we’d worked hard to achieve. 

Google Ads Results:

In the height of summer we were recording ROAS figures between 55x to 65x. And our pre-summer slump was still recording over 7x ROAS. Here are the rest of our stats:

CTR - 3.6% 

CVR - 3.8% 

Avg. CPC - £0.27

Cost/Conv. - £6.93

ROAS - 14x