ThreeAudits,aTrademark,andaFirst

Three calls, one pattern

Last week brought three new business calls: one in fashion, one in jewellery, and one in home furnishings. Different categories, different price points, different teams. But the audit findings were almost identical.

Every single account had been set up to chase revenue. Not margin. Not contribution. Revenue. The campaigns were structured around ROAS targets that looked healthy on paper but told you nothing about whether the business was actually making money from its ad spend.

Zero brand exclusions

All three accounts had zero brand exclusions in Performance Max. Not one. That means branded search traffic, the cheapest and most intent-rich clicks available, was being pushed through PMax at massively inflated CPCs. One account had a brand CPC of £0.01 on standard Search. PMax was charging £0.65 for the same click. That is not a rounding error. That is a 6,400% markup on traffic you were already winning.

The campaigns looked efficient because they were cannibalising brand demand and taking credit for conversions that would have happened anyway. Meanwhile, the actual cost of acquiring that branded traffic was orders of magnitude higher than it needed to be.

The good news

On the other side of the ledger, we had a number of catch-ups with existing clients last week, and the year-on-year growth figures were substantial. Not marginal. Substantial. The kind of numbers that make the quarterly reviews genuinely enjoyable rather than an exercise in finding silver linings.

It reinforces something we keep coming back to: when you restructure an account around profit and give it proper attention week after week, the compounding effect is significant. These are not accounts we rebuilt last month. These are accounts we have been refining for quarters.

A first for us

We handed notice to one of our clients last week. That is the first time we have done this since JudeLuxe started. We do not take it lightly and it was not a decision made quickly, but sometimes the fit is not right, and continuing does neither party any favours.

We would rather be honest about that than hold on to revenue for the sake of it. Every client we work with should feel like they are getting our best thinking. If we cannot deliver that, it is better to say so.

One more thing

We received a message from the Intellectual Property Office last week confirming that our trademark application has been accepted. We are not ready to share the details just yet, but more to follow on this over the next couple of weeks. A quiet milestone, but a meaningful one.

Chris