How Cutting Wasted Search Spend Turned a 1.29 ROAS Account Into a 4.76 ROAS Growth Engine

• A Search campaign was burning 62% of the total budget (A$1,429.64) with zero tracked conversions
• The Shopping campaign was essentially non-functional — 0.04 ROAS, roughly A$7,692 cost per conversion
• Only Performance Max was actually working, carrying almost the entire account's conversion volume and revenue
• Budget was fragmented across 8 overlapping campaigns, several of them legacy tests never cleaned up
• No properly configured Shopping feed campaign existed to capture high-intent product-level search traffic

• Increase purchases (conversion volume) from Google Ads
• Improve ROAS and eliminate wasted Search spend
• Properly launch a working Shopping feed campaign alongside Performance Max
• Tie every dollar of spend to a tracked, profitable conversion

An account audit found that Performance Max was the only channel converting profitably at baseline (4.76 ROAS) — proof the audience and product-market fit existed, and that the problem was account structure, not demand.

Workstreams

• Campaign audit & cleanup — paused zero-performing legacy campaigns (old SME Search, SME Shopping, test campaigns) to stop budget leakage
• Search spend elimination — paused the Search campaign burning 62% of budget with no conversions
• Shopping feed launch — properly configured and launched the "Feeder | Catch All" Shopping campaign on Target ROAS bidding
• Performance Max scaling — increased budget to the only proven-performing channel
• Bidding strategy alignment — shifted all live campaigns to Target ROAS

Phase 1 — Audit & Baseline (Jul–Aug 2025)

Full account audit identified the Search campaign burning budget with zero conversions and a non-functional Shopping setup. Baseline: 7.1 conversions, 1.29 ROAS.

Phase 2 — Cleanup & Relaunch (Sep 2025)

Paused Search and legacy Shopping campaigns; properly launched the Feeder Shopping campaign on Target ROAS bidding.

Phase 3 — Scale (Oct 2025)

Scaled Performance Max and Shopping budgets, closing the period at 98.97 conversions, 4.76 ROAS, and A$31,844.78 in conversion value.

By the results period, the Shopping campaign was converting at 4.20 ROAS and Performance Max at 5.26 ROAS — the Search line item shows A$0.00 spend, by design: elimination was as much a part of the fix as addition.

Comparing the two-month baseline (Jul–Aug 2025) against the two-month results period (Sep–Oct 2025):

• Conversions grew nearly 14x (7.1 → 98.97, +1,294%) — driven by structural fixes, not just a bigger budget
• ROAS nearly quadrupled (1.29 → 4.76, +269%)
• Cost per conversion dropped 79% (A$323.84 → A$67.53)
• Eliminating the zero-converting Search campaign freed up 62% of the original budget to redeploy into channels that actually convert