Case study · Water filter retailer, North America
Three ad accounts for a water filter retailer: one built from zero, one at a record, one rescued
A North American retailer sells water filtration systems through three online stores. One store had no working campaign, one had room to grow, and one was spending with no sales tracking at all.
Work: Google Ads, conversion tracking, WooCommerce development · Period: June to September 2026
8.2×
return in the newest campaign’s best week
7.9×
return in the flagship store’s record month
3 days
from fix to first tracked sale on the third account
6
paying subscribers in two weeks, before any marketing
What was wrong
- The first store had spent under $500 a month for months with zero tracked sales.
- Conversion tracking on one account had silently stopped. Another account had never had sales tracking installed.
- One campaign was spending all of its budget on banner placements at $0.35 a click, not on Google search.
What we did
Built a search campaign from nothing
Launched in June. By August it brought 43 tracked sales a month at 4.6 times the ad spend.
Removed keywords that never sold
About $950 a month of spend on zero-sale keywords came out, including coupon hunters and wrong-language searches. Every removal was measured before and after.
Scaled the flagship store in steps
We raised the budget only after proving the campaign was losing impressions to its budget cap.
Rescued the third account
We installed sales tracking, moved the budget from banners to search and added the account’s first negative keyword list.
Built a subscription system
A custom WooCommerce subscription plugin, so repeat buyers of replacement filters can subscribe.
The results
| August | 4.6× |
|---|---|
| 1–16 September | 5.3× |
| Best week, 21–27 Sept | 8.2× |
Lower is better.
| August | $60 |
|---|---|
| 1–16 September | $53 |
| Best week, 21–27 Sept | $39 |
- The campaign built from zero reached about $12,000 a month in tracked sales, and its best week returned 8.2 times the spend at $39 a sale.
- The flagship store had its record month: about $47,000 in sales from about $6,000 of ads, a 7.9 times return.
- The third account recorded its first tracked sales within 3 days of the fixes.
- The subscription system signed 6 paying subscribers within two weeks of launch, before any marketing push.
Figures are in Canadian dollars, from the client’s Google Ads accounts. Revenue is ad-attributed sales, not accounting revenue. At the flagship store the return per dollar was higher before we scaled it, at about half the spend; the claim here is record revenue, not a better ratio. We do not publish client names without their permission.
Want us to look at your account or store?
Most accounts we take over have the same few problems: tracking that does not count real enquiries, budget going to the wrong searches, and a page that loses people on phones. Tell us what you sell and we will say plainly what we would fix first.
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