Pay-Per-Click Advertising and Google Shopping Ads Case Study
Vetiver Aromatics is a leading DTC e-commerce brand selling perfume-making kits, supplies, and more using the Shopify platform.
From March to April 2020, website sessions from our pay-per-click search campaigns increased by 172%, and revenue increased by 244%.
Restructuring Paid Ad Campaigns
By restructuring campaigns, Vetiver Aromatics is able to make data-driven decisions and better understand what products are in high demand among customers.
Angie Andriot | 
NerdBrand has been great for my online retail business. Since I started working with them back in February, my sales have tripled. They are always quick to respond to my questions, give excellent advice when I need it, and keep me in the loop about the work they are doing. I was pretty skittish about working with an advertising agency, as I have had bad dealings in the past, but they make it joyful, easy, and profitable. I am grateful to have found them.
Over the course of managing Vetiver’s Google Ads, we have seen outstanding results.
We’re meeting a consistent 5-6x return on ad spend (ROAS) each month, meaning the campaigns are generating $5-6 in revenue for every $1 in ad spend.
December 2020 was the highest revenue-generating month in Vetiver’s history selling online. Our digital ad campaigns were responsible for 44% of the store’s annual revenue, up from 29.5% in 2019.
Conversion rates peaked at 12.13% following eight continuous months of improvement
+92%
Increase in YoY Traffic
+95%
Increase in YoY Revenue
With NerdBrand in the driver’s seat, Vetiver Aromatics is on pace for exceptional revenue growth.
We plan to continue this trend as we move to help Vetiver refresh their brand identity, as well as expand their e-commerce marketing strategy with social media marketing, email marketing, and SEO.
Problems We Addressed
In early 2020, Vetiver Aromatics approached us for assistance in increasing sales on their e-commerce store, particularly by way of digital advertising. We were tasked with managing the client’s advertising budget, along with these tasks:
- Audit and set up of advertising campaigns on Google Ads
- Development of advertising message and creative
- Ongoing management and optimization of digital advertising campaigns
- Monthly reporting for return on ad spend (ROAS) and other campaign performance metrics
Solutions We Provided
We first set out to audit the client’s historic use of Google Ads, including campaign structures, placements, budgets, bidding, conversion tracking, and more. Our team was quick to spot a number of issues and errors.
The most significant error was a previous ads manager had set up a Purchase Goal in Google Analytics to trigger on every single page visit, meaning when someone visited any page on the website, it was tracked equivalent to a purchase.
This was causing significant discrepancies between conversions and sales data, and led search ads to spend inefficiently due to improper conversion optimization. We altered Google Tag Manager to correctly attribute conversions and cleared up the discrepancies over the course of a couple of months.
A couple of other important issues we resolved.
We identified over a dozen products with minor errors preventing them from getting approved for Google Shopping Ads. We revised photos, SKUs, descriptions, and more to bring the products into compliance.
We noticed budgets on individual campaigns were set substantially higher than necessary. For example, some campaigns were budgeted to spend upwards of 4x as much as they had historically spent. Other campaigns were set up and had a budget allocated to them, but were getting zero impressions. We revised the campaigns, removed those that were not serving, and reallocated budget differences to campaigns with higher yields.
With errors cleaned up and a good foundation established, we then moved on to restructuring past campaigns and starting new campaigns, including responsive, retargeting, and re-marketing ads.
As with all of our clients, we’ve worked collaboratively and transparently with Vetiver, meeting periodically to review monthly performance, as well as discuss strategies and new opportunities.
