Overview:

Turn Google Ads from a money-pit into a conversion engine. This case study shows how an e-commerce brand slashed cost-per-acquisition (CPA) by a third while boosting conversions by more than 60 percent – all on a modest $20K per month budget. 

Whether running a store or managing client accounts, the wins come from practical tweaks yet to be revealed—no secret sauce required.

Below is a quick roadmap of what will be covered:

• Why “more impressions” ≠ more customers – and how goal misalignment silently drains your budget.
• Campaign triage & restructuring – from messy PMAX sprawl to focused search, Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), and competitor campaigns.
• The power of clean conversion tracking – building GA4 plus offline events that actually feed the algorithm.
• Audience segmentation & full-funnel retargeting – matching intent with the right bid strategy.
• YouTube as a strategic sidekick – when (and when not) to pour spend into video discovery.
• Smart bidding hacks – switching from Max Clicks to Max Conversions and using portfolio Cost-Per-Clicks (CPC) caps.
• Ongoing measurement – weekly change logs, competitor sweeps, and spotting Merchant Center landmines.

It’s a playbook to cut wasted spend, capture new buyers, and make Google’s machine learning work for the brand —without doubling ad budget.

Search Campaign Restructure

That move alone pulled in customers at a wallet-friendly $2.37 CPA—proof that Google’s machine is happy to do the keyword hunting for you.

Lastly, came the retargeting clean-up. Re-engaging folks who wandered off (maybe to price-check a competitor) boosted conversions by 59 percent while still hitting a healthy CPA, and there’s plenty of headroom to scale.

I also broke the top performers into Single-Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs).

Big disclaimer: SKAGs are like pineapple on pizza—amazing for some tastes, meh for others. For this client, a few campaigns thrived on the one-keyword diet; others stuck with broader groups so Google’s machine learning could juggle multiple terms in responsive search ads.