Struggle finding scale in a declining market
+30%
Conv value vs year before
-6%
ROAS vs year before
-10%
Overall business revenue
Situation
Totally Promotional is a major player in the promotional products market in the United States. The company was founded 30 years ago and kept growing from a local player in rural Ohio to the major player it is now, while remaining family and community oriented. As the overall Promotional Product market was declining the overall performance of Totally Promotional plateaued as well. When they came to us, the Costs per click were skyrocketing, and most of their spend was locked up in Performance Max campaigns that gave little control over where the budget went.
Our goal for the sprint was simple. Take back control over CPCs, channels, and search terms while driving more revenue at a similar ROAS.
Problem
Totally Promotional faced rising CPCs, often exceeding $50, in an extremely competitive promotional products market. With 77K SKUs across 57 categories, Google’s automated bidding often overpaid for clicks and misallocated spend to off-season products. The challenge was to regain control from automation, segment campaigns by performance and seasonality, and scale profitably by layering and excluding terms while keeping CPCs efficient and leveraging Pmax strategically for colder traffic.
Solution
With over 77 thousand SKUs across 57 product categories, scaling required precision. Shopping campaigns don’t run on keywords, so the only way to control search intent is through exclusions and layering. By creating multiple campaign layers and excluding low converting terms, we could push Google to bid more aggressively on the highest converting queries while limiting wasted spend on the less relevant ones.
In the promotional market, CPCs can easily exceed 50 dollars. When using smart bidding, Google often pays too much for a single click in order to secure a conversion. By adding CPC limitations within the bidding strategies, we managed to keep CPCs profitable and scale the campaigns at the same time.
Seasonality plays a big role in such a broad assortment. Some categories are in peak demand while others are off season. By segmenting categories based on performance and seasonality once enough data was available, we pushed more budget to the categories that mattered most and avoided burning budget on off season products.
We reduced the reliance on full automation and brought control back to Shopping and Search. This made the strategy sharper, more targeted, and allowed us to use Google’s smart AI models in a way that worked for us rather than the other way around.
Performance Max remained part of the mix but played a different role. Instead of being the star of the show, it became a support actor. By reducing spend on Pmax, the colder traffic was targeted more efficiently through Shopping and Search while Pmax focused on warm audiences.
Layered Shopping x Seasonality Segmentation
We built a multi-layer Shopping structure based on performance tiers and seasonal demand. Using exclusions, CPC limits, and performance-based segmentation, the system automatically redirected spend toward profitable, in-season categories. Creating a scalable framework that balanced automation with manual control.
Result
Totally Promotional now has a structure that gives them control over their spend, their CPCs, and their growth strategy. Even in a shrinking market, the new account setup allowed them to scale key product categories, maintain a healthy ROAS, and set the foundation for sustainable growth.
In the first month after the sprint Conversion value increased by 30 percent compared to the previous year, while the ROAS only slightly lowered by 6 percent. The real shift happened in how the budget was allocated: Performance Max went from 78 percent of total spend in 2024 to 20 percent in 2025, Search grew from 8 percent to 31 percent, Shopping grew from 12 percent to 48 percent.
Josh Taylor
Marketing @ Totally Promotional
"Flowboost has taken our Google Ads account to the next level. Thanks to their smart automations, like performance-based bucketing and custom scripts our campaigns are now running more efficiently and effectively. What we especially appreciate is their proactive approach and transparent way of working: all analyses, optimizations, and notes are easy to find in our shared dashboard, so we always know exactly where things stand. Working with Flowboost feels like having an extension of our own team, skilled, engaged, and focused on results. Highly recommended for any business that takes online advertising seriously!"
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