An 8-figure restaurant furniture manufacturer and distributor approached me with a straightforward request: make PPC campaigns more effective.
But two problems made this harder than it sounds.
Problem 1: Broken historical data. The existing conversion tracking was set up wrong, capturing useless conversions. Every optimization decision had been built on unreliable numbers. You can't improve what you can't measure accurately.
Problem 2: Low transaction volume. The product categories averaged only about 10 sales per month. Smart bidding algorithms need data to learn. Would this volume be enough for the algorithm to optimize effectively?
The challenge wasn't just fixing campaigns. It was rebuilding the measurement foundation while working around data scarcity.
The first priority was establishing trustworthy data. I replaced the Analytics-based transaction tracking with direct Google Ads conversion tracking. This improved data accuracy and gave the bidding algorithms reliable revenue signals to optimize against.
Clean data first. Optimization second.
With only ~10 monthly sales, the algorithm had limited learning material. The solution: supplement purchase data with a high-intent micro-conversion.
I added "Quotes Sent" as a conversion action. These weren't casual inquiries—customers had to complete detailed forms indicating serious buying intent. This expanded dataset gave the smart bidding campaigns richer signals to learn from without diluting quality.
The transition followed a deliberate progression:
Standard Shopping → Performance Max
I started with standard shopping campaigns using query-level bidding to understand which searches drove value. Once the conversion data was reliable and patterns emerged, I transitioned to Performance Max with maximize conversion value bidding.
The budget matched previous standard campaign levels. The structure changed; the investment didn't.
Six months of systematic rebuilding delivered:
But the most telling result came from an unexpected constraint.
Inventory limitations forced a 50% budget reduction mid-project. Despite cutting spend in half, sales continued growing. The restructured campaigns were efficient enough that even reduced budgets outperformed the original bloated ones.
That's the difference between spending money and investing it wisely.
This case demonstrates a principle that applies across most underperforming accounts: bad data creates the illusion of optimization.
The previous campaigns weren't poorly managed—they were optimizing against wrong signals. Every bid adjustment, every budget allocation was responding to noise, not signal. Fixing the measurement problem didn't just improve campaigns; it revealed that meaningful optimization hadn't been possible before.
The low-volume challenge required creative thinking. Adding quote submissions as a conversion action isn't about gaming the system—it's about giving algorithms more legitimate signals of buyer intent. Quality micro-conversions can bridge the gap when transaction volume alone isn't enough.
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