1
Over 50 campaigns
Separate campaigns with a lot of overlap between product categories, so they competed with each other and budget was split too thinly to learn.
Case study · Baby lifestyle ecommerce
aden+anais: over double the revenue from Google Ads, year on year
How a sprawling, loosely targeted Google Ads account for a premium baby brand was rebuilt around its products, its buyers and clean conversion data, then rolled out to three more European markets.
- Period
- 2015 to 2023
- Markets
- UK, Italy, France, Germany
- Channels
- Google Ads (Search, Shopping, PMax, YouTube, Demand Gen), SEO
01 / The brand
The muslin swaddle that left hospital with a future king
aden+anais was founded in New York in 2006 by Australian Raegan Moya-Jones, who could not find the cotton muslin wraps she had grown up with in Australia. Built almost entirely on word of mouth between parents, the brand became one of the most gifted baby products on the market, with swaddles, sleeping bags, blankets and nursery textiles sold around the world.
In 2013 Prince George was carried from hospital wrapped in an aden+anais swaddle. The website crashed twice and UK site visits rose by 1,960 percent. Celebrity parents including Beyoncé and Pink had already been photographed with the product, and the business went on to exceed $100 million in annual revenue.
02 / The brief
Grow UK purchases and revenue
The Head of Ecommerce tasked me with boosting UK purchases and revenue, mainly through Google Ads across search, display and shopping. Taking over the account showed why growth had stalled.
2
Loose ad copy
Abstract messaging that left out key product information and gave shoppers no clear reason or call to action to buy.
3
Sparse negatives
A thin negative keyword list meant ads showed for searches as broad as "baby clothes", when the range is swaddles, muslins and baby accessories.
4
The wrong shoppers
Broad visibility pulled in bargain hunters. The core buyer has a higher disposable income than a typical high street value shopper, and the audience widens further to friends and family buying gifts and presents for new parents.
03 / What I did
Rebuilt around the products and the buyer
Structure first, then control over where the ads appeared, then clean data for the bidding to learn from. Awareness and on-site conversion work followed once the core account was pulling its weight.
01
Account restructure
Consolidated the 50 plus campaigns into a clean structure by product type, with swaddles, blankets, playtime and the rest in their own distinct groups, each with its own keyword set.
02
Shopping versus Performance Max
A/B tested a traditional Shopping campaign, rebuilt with a much cleaner structure, against a Performance Max shopping campaign, so the budget followed evidence rather than defaults.
03
Match types and negatives
Moved from broad to phrase and exact match to keep a high degree of control over visibility, and added an extensive negative keyword list at account and campaign level to cut wasted spend.
04
Audience and gifting
Targeting was set around parents with a higher disposable income than a typical high street value shopper, then widened to reach the friends and family buying gifts and presents for new and expectant parents, with ad copy and seasonal messaging written for each.
05
Conversion tracking
Kept the GA4 conversions in place and added native Google Ads conversion tracking alongside them, giving the bidding algorithms cleaner signals to learn from.
06
YouTube and Demand Gen
Ran YouTube promotion for the brand showcase videos to build awareness and brand equity, supported by Demand Gen campaigns which, although aimed at awareness, converted a good share of their visits into paying customers.
07
Top level SEO
Page title optimisation and heading and body copy edits across the site, based on extensive keyword and user intent research. Not part of the original brief, this work was won on the back of the recommendations I made.
08
Hotjar and the checkout
Worked with the in-house team to set up Hotjar and tracked session engagement over a year to find where customers were dropping out. Hypotheses formed from those behaviour patterns led to checkout changes, proven by a lift in conversion rate.
04 / The result
Over double the revenue, year on year
05 / What followed
Trusted with three more markets and a second brand
The UK work went well enough that I was asked to take on the Italy, France and Germany Google Ads accounts as well, applying the same structure, match type discipline and tracking to each market.
I also launched Google Ads in the UK for HALO Sleep, part of the same group. Until then HALO had only run ads through the in-house team in New York for its primary US market, so being handed the UK launch was a clear vote of confidence in how the aden+anais account had been handled and scaled.
The engagement came to a natural close in 2023, when the Head of Ecommerce who had commissioned the work moved into a new role and the business chose to bring its paid search in-house. The accounts were passed across with a smooth handover transition.
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Germany
HALO Sleep UK
Next step
Running an ecommerce brand with a similar problem?
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