In our recent blog, Building Brands with Purpose: LTBS’s System-First Approach to Growth Marketing, we broke down the remarkable growth journeys of our clients: Ausgo, Artspire Home, and Mars Performance, who each scaled rapidly with the guidance of their strategic growth partner, LTBS.

How did they do it? It’s a mix of strategies that only the LTBS team knew, but we’re still here to spill some tea about it. And one thing we do know? It’s Google Ads.

When it comes to running high-performing Google Ads campaigns, the best results don’t come from lucky guesses or generic templates, it’s about having the right strategy. Among all digital marketing tactics, strategy is critical because Google Ads has the highest risk for poor ROI.

They come from deep industry insight, relentless testing, and a clear strategy, built specifically for the audience you want to reach. However, getting the strategy wrong can cost your company money or getting it right can help your company grow. 

At LTBS, we don’t just launch ads for you to be visible, we engineer systems for scalable performance. In this behind-the-scenes look, we break down how we built a Google Ads engine for Ausgo and how our approach led to a 509% increase in conversions, a 22.5x ROAS, and one of the brand’s biggest revenue spikes to date.

Let’s unpack what made this campaign a success and how you can apply the same structure to your own industry.

From Clicks to Conversions: The Google Ads Blueprint That Tripled Leads

Step 1: Understand the Buyer Before Touching the Ads

For every strategy, we always go back to this step as this is a step for every strategy: understanding your intent. Before a single ad went live, we spent time analyzing on the following:

1. Who Ausgo’s ideal customer is (4WD owners, off-roaders, car drivers)
2. What their most searched-for needs are (floor mats,boot liners, cross bars, dash mats)
3. How they shop (mobile-first, value-driven, responsive to promos)
4. Their decision triggers (durability, delivery speed, Australian-made relevance)

This research allows us to develop ad copy, visuals, and landing pages that spoke their language and more importantly, matched intent with experience.

Step 2: Build a Funnel, Not Just an Ad Group

We restructured Ausgo’s Google Ads account into a full-funnel campaign ecosystem, designed to capture, convert, and re-engage users at every stage.

Key structural decisions:

1. ‍Top-of-funnel: Broad match + keyword-modified campaigns for awareness (e.g., “4WD accessories Australia”)‍
2. Mid-funnel: Product-focused keywords grouped by category (e.g., “ute boot liner”, “5D floor mats for Hilux”)‍
3. Bottom-of-funnel: Branded campaigns + retargeting with dynamic product ads and promo-specific hooks

But take note, targeting the most productive keywords is important, and it’s better to remove irrelevant terms. Also, your marketing funnel serves as the guide in creating excellent call-to-actions (CTAs), as it helps you understand the path people take in their customer journey. 

Through this tiered structure, we can scale spend where ROI is proven and control wastage where intent is weaker.

Step 3: Precision Targeting That Isn’t Guesswork

There are many questions you want to address like what are exact match phrases or modified keywords. With the exact match, you’re targeting search terms that match precisely the keywords you’re aiming for. That’s why, instead of relying only on Google’s smart targeting, we layered in:

1. Geo-targeting focused on regional buyers (NSW, WA, VIC, PER, NT…) where 4WD ownership is highest
2. Custom audience lists based on past site visitors and product page dwell time.
3. Lookalike expansion from converted users and high LTV purchasers

We also tested dayparting running ads during high-converting hours and device-specific bidding, especially as mobile contributed to over 70% of traffic.

Step 4: Relentless Testing = Smart Scaling

Just keep testing, just keep testing, just keep testing—until you find the right key at the moment. Business is always about taking risks and relentless testing, because the digital landscape is constantly changing and updating, and your business should, too. No campaign is "set and forget." What we did to make them efficient was:

1. Weekly A/B testing on headlines, CTAs, and ad extensions
2. Continuous feed optimization for dynamic search ads (DSAs)
3. Reallocating budget from high-CPC, low-ROAS campaigns into top-performing SKUs
4. Aligning ad messaging with seasonal promotions and inventory push cycles

This approach allowed us to maintain conversion momentum and scale efficiently, even as competition intensified in their respective space.

The Outcome: Proof That Strategy Beats Spend

The results from Ausgo’s Google Ads campaign weren’t a product of high budgets, they were the result of smart planning, sharp execution, and data-informed decisions. Rather than rely on blanket spending to force visibility, we designed a system that prioritized efficiency at every stage of the funnel.

By restructuring the account based on intent tiers, refining keyword targeting, and aligning creative with the customer journey, we turned a previously underperforming channel into a high-converting revenue engine. 

Applying this system, we achieved:

This wasn’t about throwing money at ads. It was about making every dollar count. And these results underscore a fundamental truth in digital advertising: strategic planning and execution can significantly outperform mere budget increases. 

Understanding the intricacies of Google Ads, including the ad auction process and the importance of relevant keywords, is crucial for campaign success. In a competitive industry like automotive accessories, this kind of sustained efficiency differentiates brands that scale from those that stagnate.

If you’re ready to take your brand into a well-planned marketing system that helps you grow smarter, not harder—let LTBS be your strategic growth partner.

Get in touch with the LTBS team today, and let’s engineer a paid ads system that turns clicks into conversions.