The Challenge

The account had grown quickly, but nobody had ever gone back and properly rebuilt the foundation. Campaign naming was inconsistent, match types were overlapping, and products were grouped based on convenience rather than buying intent. Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and auto campaigns were all running, but none of them had a clearly defined job.

Search term waste had been compounding quietly for months. Broad traffic was eating through the daily budget before high intent buyers even showed up. Branded demand was barely defended. The best exact match terms were fighting for budget against campaigns that had no business competing with them.

The client had tried the obvious fixes, bigger budgets, periodic bid cuts, but the numbers barely moved. The problem wasn't spend level. It was structural.

Our Approach

We started with a full account audit: campaign structure, search term reports, placement data, and how budget was actually being consumed hour by hour. We also reviewed the product pages for the highest traffic SKUs, because when conversion rates are low, the paid data loses its reliability and every decision becomes a guess.

The strategy was to create clean separation between demand layers. Branded traffic gets its own budget and its own campaigns. Category intent gets scaled carefully. Discovery traffic gets a controlled budget and aggressive negative keyword management. Nothing overlaps. Everything has a job.

What We Did

  • ✓Rebuilt the full campaign structure around purchase intent, not product groupings
  • ✓Created separate campaigns for branded, category, competitor, and discovery traffic
  • ✓Eliminated overlap between auto and manual campaigns so data stayed clean
  • ✓Harvested converting search terms into exact match campaigns every week without fail
  • ✓Aggressively expanded negative keyword lists to stop repeat wasted clicks
  • ✓Prioritised budget for the highest margin products rather than spreading it evenly across the catalog

The Results

Once the structure was clean, the data became trustworthy again. Exact campaigns performed consistently, discovery traffic stopped cannibalising high intent demand, and budget lasted through the strongest conversion windows instead of burning out early.

In four months, revenue tripled and ACOS dropped 38% from where it started. The more meaningful change, though, was in how the client related to the account. Weekly reviews became actual strategy conversations instead of sessions spent explaining why the numbers were confusing.

Key Takeaway

When an account has grown without proper structure, throwing more budget at it just amplifies the inefficiency. A clean rebuild around intent often unlocks more growth than any amount of bid adjustments ever could.