Case study
More spend was not the answer. Better commercial signals were.
Hobbies Direct had years of Google Ads history, thousands of products and strong existing demand. But the account had become difficult to read commercially. We rebuilt the programme around one question: which search demand was worth buying, and which was worth earning organically?
The challenge
Hobbies Direct's Google Ads account had accumulated overlapping campaigns, fragmented budgets and brand-heavy results over years of growth. Brand demand inflated performance, budgets were spread across overlapping campaigns, and product margin and customer value were not determining where spend went.
The account was busy. That did not mean it was clear where the next dollar should go.
The account had plenty of data. It did not have a clean commercial signal.
- Brand searches were making non-brand performance look stronger than it was
- Low-value campaigns kept spending without profitability analysis
- National targeting treated very different regions as though they performed the same
- Audience and demographic signals were not meaningfully influencing investment
- Paid and organic were evaluated separately, not against the same commercial demand
The result
Cutting waste created room to scale what worked.
Earlier in the engagement, total ad spend fell 20% while revenue grew 77%. The later figures below show the account scaling from that cleaner base.
- +96%
- Paid revenue Year on year, 2026
- +46%
- Organic revenue Year on year, GA4
- 2×
- Paid spend scaled At constant ROAS
The insight
A query is only valuable when the economics behind it are valuable.
The breakthrough was not another campaign type. It was changing the unit of decision-making. Instead of optimising around clicks, rankings or platform-reported conversions in isolation, we mapped search demand against product family, margin, customer value, brand or non-brand intent, geographic performance and channel contribution.
That gave paid and organic search a shared commercial reference point. The question stopped being which channel was performing best, and became which demand deserved more investment, and what the best way to capture it was.
The strategy
One commercial map. Different jobs for paid and organic.
- Map demand to margin first.We rebuilt the keyword universe around Hobbies Direct's product economics and customer value. Queries were grouped against product families and ranked by commercial value, so the highest-value demand could receive the strongest investment.
- Give paid search the demand it should buy.The Google Ads account was rebuilt around clearer intent: brand separated from non-brand, broad Shopping coverage controlled, Performance Max focused on stronger product and category opportunities, regional investment adjusted around actual performance, and waste removed from low-value audiences and campaigns. For the first time, non-brand performance could be read cleanly.
- Give organic search the demand it should earn.SEO briefs and onsite improvements were built from the same commercial demand map rather than a separate keyword process, so organic work could target high-value categories and queries where improving unpaid visibility had a real commercial reason to exist.
The decision
One query. One commercial value. Different ways to win it.
- Search demand
- Product or category
- Margin and commercial value
- Brand or non-brand intent
- Paid, organic or both
- Revenue outcome
The measurement decision
Build the measurement before scaling the channels.
Firewire built the attribution framework before any content was created, so we always had clean data on what each channel contributed. The SEO wasn't cannibalising paid. It was bringing in customers we weren't reaching before. We would recommend them without hesitation.
Hamish McRitchieCo-Founder & Director, Hobbies Direct What we did
Commercial search strategy. Mapped search demand against product margin, customer value and category economics to establish where investment deserved to go.
Paid search architecture. Restructured Standard Shopping, Performance Max and brand activity around intent, profitability and cleaner non-brand measurement, with regional targeting and audience exclusions following actual performance.
Organic search. Improved discoverability for commercially important categories and aligned SEO briefs to the same search-demand map.
Measurement and reporting. Established the attribution and reporting framework before scaling execution, then reviewed revenue and channel contribution through weekly reporting and a quarterly executive review.
The result
Two chapters of evidence: clean up the economics, then scale from a cleaner base.
First · clean up the economics
- −20%
- Ad spendTotal spend, published case study
- +77%
- RevenuePublished case study
- 4.1×
- Blended ROASAcross paid search
- +38%
- Organic trafficEngagement period
The key result was not simply spending less. It was removing low-value investment while revenue continued to grow.
Then · scale from a cleaner base
- +96%
- Paid revenueYear on year, 2026
- +46%
- Organic revenueYear on year, GA4
- 2×
- Paid spend scaledAt constant ROAS
With the economics readable, the account could be scaled where the return held.
The takeaway
Paid and organic stopped being competing channels and became two ways of acting on the same demand.
The biggest change was not the account structure. It was the decision system around it. Hobbies Direct could see more clearly which search demand was commercially valuable, where paid investment deserved to scale, where organic visibility could add incremental reach, and what each channel was contributing.
The result was not just more traffic or a better ROAS. It was a search programme that could make better investment decisions as it grew.
More work
eCommerce Fieldfolio Search architecture rebuilt around how wholesale buyers actually searched. Search strategy & intelligence · SEO & search performance · Content & search experience 
eCommerce Shindigs A bloated ecommerce content footprint consolidated around commercial demand. SEO & search performance · Content & search experience