From Blind Spending to 2.49× ROAS

Background

A marine tech company selling hardware alongside a SaaS subscription had been running ads, but results were disappointing. The real problem wasn't the budget or the product. It was that no one truly knew what was working. There was no proper conversion tracking in place, no GA4 setup, no GTM implementation, just ad spend going out with no reliable data coming back.

When I took over, I was essentially starting from zero on the data side.

The Challenge

Without accurate tracking, every decision was a guess. Previously, they had been running campaigns with no visibility into what drove purchases, which audiences converted, or where the funnel was leaking. The €50K annual budget was being spent blind.

What I Did

My first priority was building the measurement foundation before touching a single campaign. I audited the full tracking setup, implemented GA4 and Google Tag Manager from scratch, and configured conversion tracking across both ad platforms and the Shopify storefront.

Once I could actually see the data, the real work began:

• Rebuilt paid campaigns on Google and Meta with proper audience targeting informed by actual purchase data
• Overhauled content and on-page SEO, aligning messaging with how boat owners search for monitoring solutions
• Ran paid social campaigns on Facebook and Instagram tailored to recreational boaters, while simultaneously growing the organic Instagram presence

The Results (over 12 months)

The Takeaway

You can't optimize what you can't measure. Before changing the strategy, I changed the infrastructure and that foundation made every campaign decision that followed smarter, faster, and more profitable.