When we think of Paid Search, we often think of new growth – because it’s really, really good at driving new growth. But it also might be your brand’s secret weapon for customer retention, too. Read more to see how Google Ads was the rising tide that lifted all boats for our client.
Overview
In early 2024, a leading distributor of hardware products faced an urgent challenge: how to compete with industry giants like Amazon, Grainger, and Home Depot while simultaneously improving brand recognition, sales, and market penetration. The company, a result of a recent merger of several established brands, brought in a new leadership team that aimed to position the brand for growth across key territories. With fierce competition in the market, they sought a data-driven, high-ROI solution to kickstart their efforts.
RefractROI stepped in to help, launching a targeted Google Ads campaign that began in one isolated state before expanding to others. The goal was clear: boost revenue while ensuring efficient media spend.
Challenges
Despite the strength of their brand, the distributor struggled to gain traction against their much larger competitors, who likely were spending 2 to 3 times as much as our client in media alone. The merger brought about a new identity, but the fragmented markets required a fresh approach to drive customer acquisition and increase visibility.
Key challenges included:
- Competing with the massive market presence of Amazon, Grainger, and Home Depot.
- Maximizing market penetration in struggling territories.
- Driving measurable sales growth while maintaining cost efficiency.
With high stakes on the line, the company needed a solution that could deliver immediate results without sacrificing long-term sustainability.
Solution
To address these challenges, RefractROI developed and executed a comprehensive Google Ads strategy, focusing on granular data analysis and real-time campaign optimization.
We began by:
- Launching a localized campaign: Initially targeting a solo state, we focused on optimizing search ads to capture high-intent users looking for commercial hardware products. Once we saw positive traction, we expanded into other territories.
- Ongoing optimization: Each week, we refined the campaigns by analyzing user behavior, purchase trends, and inventory availability. By continuously adding and removing keywords, adjusting ad copy, and fine-tuning our bidding strategies, we ensured that our ads were reaching the right audience at the most opportune times.
- Strategic adjustments: We implemented a custom bidding strategy that accounted for time of day, day of the week, and user engagement patterns, which allowed us to further improve targeting and reduce wasted spend.
- Evidence-based ad groups: Rather than arbitrarily breaking the campaign out into several different ad group categories, the RefractROI team started with just two broad categorical search campaigns: product-brand level, to attract buyers who had an affinity for one of the many brands carried by the client; and category level, to attract buyers who searched using broader, less specific terms. Buyer behavior and other data revealed additional opportunities for new ad groups, with bidding strategies and delivery unique to them.
“By paying careful attention to our customers’ behavior, the RefractROI team was able to continually adjust our Google Ads campaigns to perform more efficiently each week,” says the company’s senior director of marketing. “As a result of their attention to detail and thoughtful execution, we began seeing significant revenue and significant traction very, very quickly.”
After running category- and product-level campaigns for 12 weeks, we added in a branded terms campaign, using the client’s growing brand equity and customer loyalty to accelerate performance.
Results
The Google Ads campaign yielded impressive results early on, but the sustained optimization drove exponential returns:
- Initial Performance: Within the first two weeks of the campaign, we achieved a Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) of 3, which quickly improved to weekly ROAS of 5 to 8.
- Sustained Growth: After 20 weeks of continuous optimization, the campaign delivered remarkable results:
- Total media spend: $46.2K
- Total revenue generated: $1.1M
- Final program-wide ROAS: 24
- Predictable marketing-driven revenue: By working with the client to ensure that Google Analytics 4 was accurately capturing revenue driven by the Google Ads campaigns, we were able to establish a closed-loop reporting system that shows exactly where and how each dollar spent on ads and management translated into repeatable, attributable revenue.
“Through the course of the campaign, we followed the evidence, made smart optimizations and adjustments, and got clear insight on our next steps, leading to a profitable lead generation campaign that returned outsized results for our client,” says RefractROI Digital Strategist Newton Holt. “Over the course of a few weeks, we watched impression share steadily climb, along with absolute top of page rates. Who gets seen first often gets the sale in high-intent searches.” RefractROI’s Director of Paid Search, Abby Carey, adds that “by keeping our eye on what times and days saw the most engagement, adjusting bid strategy, and adding and removing products and high-intent search terms at the right time, we were able to improve ROAS, week after week after week, while also giving our client valuable insights into how their customers behave.”
A Tide that Lifts All Ships
The results weren’t just isolated to the paid search channel. The PPC campaign also helped generate more multi-touch customer journeys, which translated into improvements in both new and returning visitors in organic and direct traffic, too. The brand also saw very good increases in reactivated customers, too.
“Paid search is a great tactic for capturing high-intent new customers, but it’s also ridiculously effective at reactivating dormant customers, who by definition have great brand recall and brand awareness, because they’ve already done business with you. You just might not be top of mind for them at the moment,” says Holt. “A fresh impression reminds them that you’re there, and if they’ve had a great experience with you in the past, then choosing you again becomes a very easy decision.”
Paid search is also a good first tactic to start with for companies that want to simultaneously drive sales and get insight that makes other marketing efforts – particularly organic SEO – more effective. Paid search performance can give you a good idea of demand as well as a good idea of how well your brand gets traction in the marketplace.
By spurring more multi-touch, longer-cycle purchases, the Google Ads campaign brought fresh life to other channels, while also creating consistent MoM increases in new users and first-time purchasers. And in doing so, it turned into a strong ally in both capturing new customers and retaining existing ones.
RefractROI’s Google Ads campaign delivered not only a rapid, measurable boost in revenue but also created a scalable foundation for future marketing efforts. By focusing on precise targeting, real-time optimizations, and data-driven decision-making, we helped the client outperform even their own aggressive goals.
Says RefractROI President Dan Smink, “In a crowded marketplace where behemoths like Amazon and Grainger dominate, our client showed that with the right approach, it is possible to achieve exponential growth, even in challenging territories.”
