The brief
A fast-growing US children’s and women’s clothing brand on Shopify Plus, managed by the US agency where I worked as SEO and SEM specialist in 2023.
My job: scale Google Ads (Search, Shopping and Performance Max) without losing efficiency, keep a large product feed healthy, and support organic growth.
Between 1 March and 16 July 2023, the Google Ads manager-account view filtered to these dates recorded $890K in cost and $3.89M in conversion value.
The brand sells a large, frequently changing catalogue of children’s and women’s clothing.
In April 2023 alone the account spent $163,361.28. It was the largest account I handled at the agency.
Most volume ran through Performance Max/Shopping campaigns split by price band, supported by brand and competitor Search, Discovery remarketing, YouTube and Customer Match.
What made it hard
- Scaling spend into six figures a month while protecting return on ad spend, including through peak trading.
- Keeping thousands of products approved and current in Merchant Center. In the 22 May – 20 Jun 2023 window, 4,190 items were expiring and 239 were disapproved.
- Separating the brand’s own demand from new-customer acquisition in reporting.
- Paid and organic competition in a crowded kidswear category.
How I approached it
- Price-band Performance Max. Shopping/PMax campaigns grouped by product price band, so budget and targets could follow margin.
- Search coverage. Brand Search kept separate to protect demand, plus competitor Search, Discovery remarketing and video.
- Feed health. Regular Merchant Center diagnostics to clear disapprovals and grow the number of active items.
- Tracking. Conversion tracking maintained through the GA4 migration.
- SEO support. Site audit, ranked-keyword and page-traffic exports for category and product pages, and a backlink strategy for collection pages.
What I did
How I solved it: Scale spend only after the feed and tracking can carry it.
- I segmented Performance Max by product price band, kept brand Search separate, and treated Merchant Center health as a first-class job: expiring and disapproved items blocked scale.
- Conversion tracking and the GA4 migration stayed clean, so ROAS stayed readable while spend moved into six figures a month.
- Day-to-day bidding, budget and campaign management across brand Search, price-band PMax, Shopping, Discovery and video.
- Merchant Center feed fixes and diagnostics.
- Conversion tracking and the GA4 migration.
- SEO audit, keyword/page analysis and off-page planning.
- Weekly and monthly client reporting.
The numbers
| Metric | Value | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads cost → conversion value | $890K → $3.89M (≈4.37x) | Google Ads overview, 1 Mar – 16 Jul 2023 (manager-account view) |
| Clicks / conversions | 696K / 29.5K | Same |
| Monthly ad spend | $163,361.28 | Google Ads, April 2023 |
| Active Merchant Center items | 7,959 → 11,615 | Merchant Center; 22 May – 20 Jun vs 11 Jun – 10 Jul 2023 |
| Shopify total sales (all channels) | $4,846,005.63 from 43,639 orders | Shopify; 7 May – 4 Aug 2023 (90 days) |
| Store conversion rate / AOV | 2.56% / $111.61 | Same |
| Estimated organic traffic | 18.8K / month; 14.8K keywords; DR 37 | Ahrefs, 3 Jun 2023 |
