Case Study
A DTC Swedish candy brand running everything through a single Performance Max campaign — and quietly paying to win back the customers it already had.
DTC Swedish candy brand
DTC confectionery
$5,000
Google Ads
14 days
The Numbers
The Challenge
The account ran a single Performance Max campaign that combined branded and non-branded traffic. Because Performance Max chases the conversions it can win most cheaply, the budget kept flowing to people already searching for the brand by name.
On the surface the account looked healthy — the return was fine and the conversions were coming in. Underneath, it had almost stopped reaching anyone new, and revenue growth had flattened out.
! Brand and non-brand in one campaign — no way to control the split
! Budget defaulting to existing customers — conversions that would happen anyway
! Very few first-time buyers — the account had stopped finding new demand
! Healthy-looking metrics — hiding a plateau in real growth
The Strategy
Nothing new was added to the budget. The same spend was simply pointed at the part of the market that was never being reached.
The single Performance Max campaign was split into dedicated Brand Search and Non-Brand Search campaigns, so budget going to people who already know the brand could be controlled separately from budget going to people discovering it.
A separate Performance Max campaign was built for non-branded traffic with new customer acquisition as the bidding goal, pushing spend towards audiences with no prior purchase history.
With brand, non-brand search and non-branded PMax running separately, each one could finally be measured and optimised on its own — and budget could go where growth actually came from.
Owner, Fantom Agency
Revenue in fourteen days
Of conversions from new customers
The Results
Within fourteen days conversions were up 87% and revenue up 103%. More importantly, 86% of those conversions came from new customers — the account had finally moved past its own existing buyers.
✓ Conversions +87% — in fourteen days, on the same budget
✓ Revenue +103% — more than double, over the same window
✓ 86% new customers — growth rather than repeat purchases
✓ Structure, not spend — nothing was added to the monthly budget
More Work
A single Performance Max campaign was mixing branded and non-branded traffic.
Thirteen accounts at thirteen different stages, each needing its own strategy.
A brand new Microsoft Ads account, held to a 10× ROAS floor from day one.
A basic account running mostly Search, with conversion tracking nobody could trust.
Budget kept flowing to customers the brand already had, month after month.
A brand new Meta account: no pixel data, no followers, no social proof.
Start Here
None of these accounts were rebuilt from scratch. Each one was inherited, pulled apart, and fixed where the structure was losing money — before a single budget was increased.