How I Used Google Ads to Grow Online Sales

Introduction

When I joined AMS Group as a Digital Marketing Specialist, one of my first major challenges was to bring paid acquisition to a company that had never sold online before.

Purak, a magnetic anti-limescale solution, was traditionally sold through emails, phone calls, sending price quotations, and personal contact with customers. Together with the team, we decided to test a new direction: launching an e-commerce channel and supporting it with performance marketing.

This is the story of how I built and managed my first Google Ads ecosystem from zero, from account creation to profitable campaigns in the Italian market.

👉 The full story of how we launched the e-commerce website itself is covered in a dedicated article. Here I focus specifically on Google Ads and paid acquisition.

Context & My Role

Company: AMS Group – PURAK
Product: Magnetic anti-limescale devices
Market: Italy
Period: March – September 2025

I was responsible end-to-end for Google Ads:

• Creating and configuring the Google Ads account

• Defining campaign structure and strategy

• Performing keyword & competitor research

• Writing ads and extensions

• Setting up tracking with GTM

• Registering and managing Google Merchant Center

• Optimizing bids, budgets, feeds, and performance

• Reporting and continuous iteration

I collaborated only with a designer for some product images. Everything else — strategy, setup, execution, optimization — was in my hands.

This was my first real Google Ads project, and I had to build everything from the ground up.

Business Challenge

We were selling a premium product in a market where many users were used to cheaper or “quick fix” solutions for limescale.

What I observed from early data:

• Users clicked and explored product pages.

• They read descriptions, watched videos, checked images.

• But many left without purchasing.

The main barrier wasn’t campaign quality — it was price sensitivity and the need for human reassurance before buying.

Many customers still preferred:

• personal contact,

• asking questions,

• or negotiating a discount.

To mitigate this, we supported campaigns with seasonal promotions and special discounts, and enhanced direct communication by integrating a live chat (SmartsApp) and a WhatsApp link with FAQs, helping bridge the gap between interest and conversion.

Strategy: Full-Funnel Google Ads Ecosystem

I structured the system around two websites with different roles:

🔹 purak.eu — Institutional Website

Goal: Educate & build trust
Campaigns:

• Search

• Display

Here I targeted informational and problem-aware queries, explaining how PURAK works and why it’s different.

🔹 purak.store — E-commerce Website

Goal: Sell products directly
Campaigns:

• Shopping

• Performance Max

Here I focused on transactional intent and product visibility.

This allowed me to cover the entire funnel:
awareness → consideration → conversion.

Campaign Types I Managed

Over the project I built and optimized:

• Search campaigns – intent-driven keywords, match types, negatives.

• Display campaigns – awareness and remarketing.

• Shopping campaigns – product-level visibility in SERPs.

• Performance Max – full-funnel automation combining assets and feeds.

Each campaign type was designed to support a different stage of the acquisition funnel and overall business goals.

From Clicks to Business Value: Goal Evolution

At the beginning, we had no historical data and no conversion tracking.

Phase 1 — Data & Traffic

I started with:

• Maximize Clicks bidding

• Focus on traffic, visibility, and learning.

This helped:

• validate keywords,

• collect search term data,

• understand user behavior.

Phase 2 — Performance & Revenue

After implementing tracking, I switched to:

• Maximize Conversions

• Maximize Conversion Value / ROAS

This naturally increased CPA, but shifted the system toward real business outcomes, not just traffic.

This transition marked the moment when campaigns became truly performance-driven.

Tracking & Tech Stack

I personally implemented:

• Google Tag Manager

• Google Ads conversion actions

• Conversion Linker

• Integration between website, GTM, and Google Ads

This allowed me to:

• track purchases and key actions,

• feed algorithms with clean data,

• optimize for value, not assumptions.

Without solid tracking, optimization is guesswork. This setup was the backbone of the whole project.

Google Merchant Center & Shopping SEO

To run Shopping and Performance Max, I had to:

• Register and configure Google Merchant Center

• List all products correctly

• Upload and maintain the feed

• Ensure compliance and approvals

Beyond just listing products, I optimized:

• product titles with keywords and attributes,

• descriptions for clarity and intent,

• images for quality and CTR.

This wasn’t only for Ads: it also strengthened our overall product content strategy.

Optimization Work (Technical Focus)

On a continuous basis, I worked on:

• Keyword research & expansion

• Search terms mining and negatives

• Match type balancing

• Ad copy testing & extensions

• Audience signals & remarketing lists

• Bid strategies & learning phases

• Budget allocation & pacing

• Device, geo, and time-of-day adjustments

• Feed improvements for Shopping & PMax

• CPC, CPA, ROAS monitoring

I treated Google Ads as a system to engineer, not just a dashboard to watch.

Competitor & Market Analysis

Before and during execution, I analyzed:

• competitors selling similar solutions,

• their messaging and positioning,

• how they used pricing, trust, and claims in ads,

• which formats they prioritized.

This helped me:

• differentiate our value proposition,

• adapt ad copy,

• and choose smarter keyword strategies.

Results (March – September 2025)

With a budget of a few hundred euros per month, in the Italian market, I achieved:

• 9,267 clicks

• 764,893 impressions

• CTR: 1.21%

• Average CPC: €0.19

Most importantly:

✅ Revenue generated from sales exceeded ad spend, resulting in a positive ROI.

While I don’t disclose absolute revenue, the campaigns proved that:

• Purak could be sold online,

• Google Ads could be profitable even with a limited budget,

• and the channel proved to be a viable and profitable acquisition source.

Synergy with SEO

The work I did for Google Ads strongly supported SEO:

• keyword research → site keyword strategy,

• feed titles/descriptions → product page optimization,

• competitor analysis → content direction.

As a result, paid acquisition and organic growth reinforced each other, improving the overall visibility of the e-commerce website.

Key Learnings

This project taught me:

• How to distinguish informational vs transactional intent.

• How to manage cold vs warm traffic.

• Why automation (PMax) still needs strong inputs.

• How to shift mindset from traffic KPIs → business KPIs.

• How pricing and trust can be bigger barriers than ads themselves.

• How to build a performance system starting with zero data.

Personal Growth

This was where my paid media journey truly started.

I:

• created accounts from scratch,

• built feeds and tracking,

• launched campaigns,

• made mistakes, learned, iterated, optimized,

• and turned theory into real results.

Managing Google Ads for Purak gave me a practical foundation in performance marketing that I continue to build on today across other platforms and projects.

Final Thoughts

This case represents more than just numbers.

It shows my ability to:

• take ownership,

• learn fast,

• connect strategy with execution,

• and drive measurable impact in a real business context.

If you’re interested in how I approach paid acquisition, analytics, and growth — this is where it all began.