A client came to us with a ready product and an established brand — a premium artificial Christmas tree manufacturer with its own production and a base of about 15–20 thousand followers. The product stood out with quality far above mass-market alternatives from China or Temu and, accordingly, a higher price: twice the market average.
The client reached out 3–4 weeks before the start of the active season with a specific request: to “warm up” an ad account that hadn't been used for about three years and prepare for peak seasonal demand. The task was to reach a steady flow of sales by December and keep ROAS at 500% or higher.
We chose Google Ads as the main channel — Shopping and Search campaigns. In the last two weeks of the season, we also added Meta Ads with a small budget of about $250 to strengthen retargeting.
Before launch, we did the technical preparation: fixed errors in Merchant Center — in particular, removed prohibited emojis from product descriptions that were blocking ads from showing — and set up analytics tags and separate accounts for two geographic markets: Germany and Ukraine.
The key decision that determined the result was segmenting products by margin. Instead of promoting the whole range evenly, we focused on expensive items with higher margins. Cheaper products got a smaller budget and separate campaigns with stricter cost-per-purchase control.
In parallel, we set up negative keywords in Shopping and Search campaigns to cut off irrelevant traffic and launched separate Performance Max campaigns to work with existing demand and retarget the audience that had already interacted with the brand.
Results
The first week of the October launch was unprofitable — campaigns were just ramping up and ROAS stayed at 300–350%. From the second or third week, a steady flow of sales began and the figure started to grow.
At the peak of the season, the budget was scaled from $1,000 a month to $1,000 a day. Over the whole season, about 90,000 PLN was spent — roughly 1.5 million UAH.
- ROAS: 557% against a KPI of 500%+
- Cost per purchase in the low price segment: ~120 UAH ($2.75)
- Cost per purchase in the premium segment: within the target return
Conclusions
Margin matters more than the number of sales The campaign's success was determined not by how many products were sold, but by which products were sold more actively. An in-depth margin analysis at the start made it possible to allocate the budget correctly and focus on the items where the business actually makes money.
A seasonal launch needs time to ramp up A first week in the red isn't a failure — it's a necessary stage. Campaigns need to gather data before the algorithm can optimize effectively. Those who expect results from day one may stop campaigns exactly when they start working.
Technical errors block results before launch Prohibited characters in Merchant Center product descriptions may seem trivial, but it's exactly these things that cause campaigns to either not launch or run with significant restrictions. A technical audit before launch is essential.
Reporting by product group Overall ROAS doesn't always show the full picture. It's important to see the return for each segment separately to know where to reallocate the budget in real time.
