The short version
- A new Google Ads account that was spending without recording sales: tracking fixed first, then Search, Shopping and Performance Max built around product segmentation.
- 676% blended ROAS and 164 sales in the first 90 days, with ROAS up 140% month-over-month by month 2 alone.
- The account grew to a peak of 780% ROAS by month 3.
The client and the challenge
An Australian e-commerce brand selling ready-made and custom-made tarps plus related accessories, serving both trade (B2B) and retail (B2C) buyers. I took over a new Google Ads account that was already spending but had no usable conversion history.
Client goals
Turn a fresh Google Ads account into a profitable, scalable sales channel for ready-made and custom-made products alike.
The challenge
Ad spend was already climbing with no conversions being recorded, and order volume was far too thin to hand the account to automated bidding on day one.
Starting point
What the account looked like before the rebuild, June 2025.
Zero conversions. Spend was climbing but nothing was being measured correctly, and the account had no reliable conversion data to work from.
No real structure. No product segmentation and no bidding history to build on.
Too little data for automation. Order volume was far below what Smart Bidding needs to learn, ruling out automated strategies early on.
Uneven demand. Certain product lines spike seasonally, so budget needed manual, category-by-category control rather than one account-wide setting.
What was done, and why
Tracking came first because nothing else could be trusted without it. Structure and scaling followed once real data started to arrive.
Fixed tracking and attribution, set up accurate goals in GA4 and Google Ads, then built a full PPC framework around product segmentation and seasonality, plus a product feed overhaul for cleaner Shopping and PMax data.
Search + Shopping + PMax launchedOnce tracking was solid, conversions began. Top-selling products were split into dedicated Performance Max campaigns, and a manual-bid Shopping campaign launched alongside PMax to pick up cheap, high-intent search queries.
First conversions trackedGrowing conversion data allowed budget to shift toward the best-performing asset groups, plus a negative-keyword sweep to remove irrelevant traffic.
ROAS +140% vs month 1Performance Max drove volume on the strongest product lines while Search kept acquiring high-intent customers, taking ROAS to 780%.
780% ROASBefore → after
Three months, zero to profitable
Blended across the full 90 days, including the slower first month spent fixing tracking, the account still closed at 676% ROAS.
ROAS growth, month 1 → month 2
Indexed to month 1 = 100 (exact account figures are confidential)
What didn't work, or took longer
Ramp-up ate into month 1
Conversions couldn't start until tracking was rebuilt, so the first month traded some performance for a clean data foundation. I flag this up front on every new-account build.
Scaling stayed selective
Not every product line was ready to scale at the same time, so budget moved category by category rather than across the whole account at once.
Key takeaways for a new-account launch
- Fix tracking before anything else. Nothing else in the build matters if conversions aren't measured accurately.
- Manual bidding is the right call with no data yet. Smart Bidding needs volume it doesn't have on day one; manual control fills the gap until it does.
- Segment by product, then let ROAS drive the budget. Splitting top sellers into their own campaigns made reallocation simple once real data arrived.
Launching Google Ads for a new e-commerce account?
If you're starting from zero, or an account that's spending without converting, I'm happy to look at your setup and share what I'd fix first.
Free and with no obligation: with read-only access I review your account before the call and bring the main changes I would make first.