.jpg)
Most PPC stories start with "we needed to grow." This one starts with "we needed to understand."
New management arrived with clear priorities: establish stability, understand what's working, and build a foundation before aggressive scaling. It wasn't a constraint imposed by budget or operations. It was a strategic choice to learn before leaping.
That choice changed everything.
This is the story of a UK-based online metal DTC brand, and how one year of "prove it first" strategy led to an 83% efficiency improvement—and a critical insight about how constraints actually drive better decisions.
The results look paradoxical on the surface: annual revenue dropped from £4.57M to £4.25M (-7%), annual PPC spend was cut from £501K to £255K (-49%), and efficiency soared 83% (ROAS from 9.11x to 16.65x). But they reveal a deeper truth about PPC management that most agencies never discover: when you prioritize understanding the business over chasing growth, you find opportunities hiding in plain sight.
When You Prioritize Understanding the Business Over Chasing Growth, You Find Opportunities Hiding in Plain Sight
By the end, we'd discovered that core products were 5-6x more efficient than alternatives. But we only found that because we slowed down and looked carefully. This is the story of what we learned.
When we took on this account in early 2024, the technical foundation was failing.
46 campaigns spread across Google Shopping and Search. Many of them overlapping. Conversion tracking was broken in places, accurate in others, creating a fog of uncertainty around what actually worked. The product feed was unoptimized, missing critical data that Google needed to match search intent to products. There was no platform diversification - all eggs in the Google basket.
This wasn't a strategy problem. It was a structural one.
The first three months were about getting the basics right.
We consolidated 46 campaigns into 6 tightly focused ones. We rebuilt conversion tracking from scratch, ensuring every transaction was properly attributed. We cleaned and optimized the product feed, adding the data signals that make Shopping campaigns work. And we diversified to Bing, opening a second channel while Google was being fixed.
The results came fast.
Within three months: +18% revenue growth. High-margin SKU revenue up 23%. The ROI was healthy and the trajectory was clear. Fix the foundation, and growth follows.
This is what Year 1 felt like - tactical wins. We identified broken things, fixed them, and reaped the rewards. The account had room to grow, and we were growing it.
By the end of 2024, the account was running smoothly on a consolidated structure with better tracking and optimized feed data. The efficiency was solid at 9.11x blended ROAS. The foundation was built.
Most PPC stories end here. Account was broken, now it's fixed, everyone's happy. But this story had another chapter.
In early 2025, the business welcomed new management. The new leadership team had clear priorities: understand the business deeply, establish stability, and build on proven strengths before aggressive scaling.
This shift in strategy changed everything.
Instead of asking "How do we scale spending to grow revenue?" - a question that would have been answered by just turning up budgets across all campaigns - we were asked "Which channels and products deliver the most value per pound spent, and where is our true competitive advantage?"
New management, new perspective, new constraint: prove efficiency before pursuing growth.
We started January with a strategic decision to run conservatively. Instead of ramping spend immediately, we began with £500 per day (no weekends) and ramped gradually as we tested. Q1 and Q2 saw daily budgets ranging from £500 to around £800 as we tested opportunities beyond the core product line - brass, copper, steel. These non-core metals were available. They had customers. Were they worth the budget allocation?
The data answered that question clearly.
The core product line delivered 11.8x to 12.9x ROAS. Everything else was 2x to 4x, sometimes lower. The difference wasn't subtle. It was stark. The core products were the company's engine. Everything else was a side car.
Most PPC managers would have hedged. Diversified. Played it safe. "A balanced portfolio is less risky," they'd say.
But the data didn't care about risk management theory. The data said: core products win. By a lot.
Starting in Q2 and through the end of the year, we shifted budget allocation dramatically. 80-85% of spending went to core product campaigns. By June, monthly budgets reached £24K. By July, we increased further. By October, we'd ramped to £28.2K monthly—our peak efficiency point—while maintaining that 80-85% core product focus. The secondary metals got minimal budget - enough to test and monitor, not enough to distract from what worked.
This wasn't a guess. This was following the data to its logical conclusion, and it aligned perfectly with new management's mandate: prove efficiency, establish stability, build from strength.
Here's where the story gets interesting.
Year 1 (2024): £501,871 annual spend, £4.57M revenue, 9.11x blended ROAS.
Year 2 (2025): £255,457 annual spend (-49%), £4.25M revenue (-7%), 16.65x blended ROAS (+83%).
At first glance, that looks wrong. How does cutting spend by half only reduce revenue by 7%?
The answer reveals what actually happened in 2025.
Three factors working simultaneously:
First, the market headwind. Q4 is typically strong for construction materials, but 2025 brought a construction slowdown across the UK. Orders that would have come anyway didn't. That's the external pressure on top-line revenue.
Second, AOV compression. The average order value compressed by 3% across the year. More orders were smaller. That suppressed revenue regardless of PPC performance.
Third - and this is critical - we had a strategic constraint in H1. New management wanted to prove efficiency and establish stability before scaling spend. That meant we were deliberately conservative with budget increases in the early months. We started at £500/day and ramped gradually to £800/day through Q2, only reaching £24K-27K monthly budgets in Q3 as the data validated our approach. We left some revenue on the table intentionally, in service of a larger strategic goal: understanding the business first, scaling confidently later.
So what did we prove?
Despite all those heawinds, despite cutting spend in half, we only lost 7% of revenue. That's not account mismanagement. That's account management succeding despite the market.
And the efficiency gains? Those are proof that we found what works and doubled down on it. When you cut away the noise (the non-performing metals, the inefficient campaigns, the wasted budget), efficiency explodes.
In October - when we had full confidence in the data and management had approved increased budget - we delivered peak efficiency: £28.2K monthly spend at 10x platform ROAS, or 15.41x blended ROAS. That's what happens when you focus.
The gap between Year 1 and Year 2 reveals something deeper about how to manage PPC accounts.
Year 1 was about removing structural noise. Broken tracking. Unoptimized feeds. Unfocused campaign structure. Once you remove that noise, you can hear what the data is actually saying.
Year 2 was about finding the signal within the clean data. And the signal said: focus on what works.
The budget allocation shift from "balanced across all product lines" to "focused on core products" is the most important decision made in 2025. It proved that data-driven focus trumps traditional wisdom about portfolio balance.
When you focus spend on what actually works, efficiency doesn't just improve. It compounds.
This case study doesn't end with "we optimized the account." There's a next chapter waiting to be written.
First: AOV recovery. The 3% compression in average order value happened across the year. Understanding why, and addressing it, could recover revenue without increasing spend. That's an unlocked opportunity worth £85K-130K annually if we recover even 2% of that decline.
Second: Bing scaling. We diversified to Bing in early 2024. The channel works. It's been steady. But we haven't yet aggressively scaled it. Bing Ads currently represents only 18.7% of the PPC budget despite showing ROAS metrics up to 2000% on specific campaigns. Once core product demand stabilizes on Google, Bing becomes the next growth channel - with the same proven efficiency. A gradual increase from £47.6K to £70-80K annually is justified by the data.
And underlying all of this: we've mapped the current account's efficiency ceiling at £28K monthly spend with 15x+ Blended ROAS. As the business grows and management feels comfortable scaling, we have a proven foundation to build on. The strategic learning of 2025 becomes the blueprint for profitable growth in 2026.
If you manage PPC for a DTC e-commerce business, this journey offers a clear template:
Start with structure. Broken tracking, poor feed data, unfocused campaigns - these aren't optimization problems. They're foundation problems. Fix them first. The gains here are the easiest wins you'll ever see.
Then follow the data ruthlessly. Once you have clean data, stop guessing. Stop balancing for balance's sake. Find what works. Find what works best. Build budget allocation around that finding. Data that contradicts your assumptions is data worth listening to.
Don't confuse total revenue with PPC success. Your job isn't to maximize revenue in a vacuum. Your job is to deliver the best return on every pound of marketing spent. Sometimes those goals align. Sometimes they don't. When they diverge, follow the money - not the top line, but the efficiency. If you're getting 15x Blended ROAS, that's success, even if revenue is down due to market headwinds.
Constraints drive strategy. New management's decision to focus on efficiency first - before aggressive scaling - forced the data analysis that revealed the strategic opportunity. If your client has constraints (business uncertainty, capital constraints, desire for stability) don't fight them. Use them as a signal to dig deeper into your data. Often, constraints reveal opportunities hiding in plain sight.
This DTC brand's two-year journey shows what's possible when you separate signal from noise.
Year 1 removed the noise. Year 2 found the signal. The result is an account that's far more efficient than it was, delivering better value for every pound spent, even as the market pulled against it.
Revenue fell 7% (£4.57M → £4.25M). Efficiency rose 83% (9.11x → 16.65x). Both numbers are true. One gets headlines. One gets you promoted.
But in PPC management, the second number is the one that matters. Because efficiency is what scales. Efficiency is what survives market downturns. Efficiency is what your team can build on.
In PPC, efficiency is what scales, survives downturns, and gives your team something to build on.
This brand proved it. The question for your account is: what signal are you waiting to find?
.png)
.png)
.png)
