Following a complete rebrand, our agency inherited a paid search program facing compounding challenges: a shifting B2B economic environment, a critical Google Merchant Center disconnection left unresolved by a previous vendor, and fragmented conversion tracking that obscured true campaign performance. Rather than maintain the status quo, we deployed a data-driven recovery strategy built around audience precision, technical remediation, and conversion-focused optimization.
The primary objective was to grow qualified leads year-over-year while protecting budget efficiency during a period of brand transition and market uncertainty. Secondary goals included restoring full Google Shopping capabilities, establishing a reliable conversion tracking infrastructure, and ensuring strong branded search visibility so that both legacy customers and new prospects could find the client under the new brand identity.
We mined existing customer data and campaign engagement patterns to build lookalike audiences targeting decision-makers across four high-performing vertical industries. Rather than guessing at the ideal customer profile, we used LinkedIn Lead Gen campaigns as a live research vehicle — identifying which industries and job titles converted at the highest rates, then feeding those findings directly into our Google campaign structure and budget allocation. Every dollar was directed by real behavioral data, not assumptions.
Always-on branded search campaigns served as a guardrail during the rebrand, ensuring both legacy customers searching by the former brand name and new prospects discovering the brand for the first time were captured effectively. When a Google Merchant Center outage forced us off Shopping campaigns temporarily, we pivoted budget toward ready-to-ship products — a lower-friction category with immediate purchase intent — preserving revenue momentum while we gathered intelligence to support a broader Shopping expansion on relaunch.
We diagnosed and advocated for the reconnection of Google Merchant Center, which had gone dark following a website refresh — an issue the previous agency had allowed to persist unresolved. Restoring it immediately unlocked Shopping campaign capabilities. Simultaneously, we rebuilt conversion tracking in Google Tag Manager, separating actions that had been lumped together so we could optimize toward the highest-value user behaviors. Once Merchant Center was restored, we shifted to a purchase-focused optimization strategy, and the performance improvement was immediate.
This engagement demonstrates that precision targeting outperforms volume-based tactics — especially in B2B environments where economic headwinds and audience complexity demand strategic discipline. By resolving long-standing technical debt, building audience strategy on real data, and optimizing conversion tracking from the ground up, we turned a turbulent rebrand period into a performance inflection point. The result was 43% more leads delivered on 15.6% less spend, with ROAS and conversion efficiency metrics that continued to improve as Shopping campaigns matured.