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Sugarwish: A sweet turnaround in Google Ads

Image showing a red and white striped bag with a selection of five different candies sitting in front of it in small containers

Who is Sugarwish?

Sugarwish is a US-based, innovative gifting company that disrupted the traditional gifting model. Instead of the gifter choosing the gift, Sugarwish allows the recipient to create their own custom gift box. A Sugarwish starts as an e-card which allows the recipient to choose from a wide variety of treats. Once their selections are made, the Sugarwish gift is delivered directly to the recipient’s door. 

Sugarwish has also made INC5000’s list of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the US twice (number 606 in 2021 and number 262 in 2022). 

Refuel was brought on to help Sugarwish manage its rapid growth. Our work focused on providing the expertise and strategic guidance they needed to manage and scale their Google Ads campaigns effectively, allowing them to focus on the business of delivering their unique and personalised gifts.  

What was their problem?

In 2022, Sugarwish approached us with a major issue: their marketing efforts couldn't keep pace with the rapid growth they experienced during the pandemic. Despite their business thriving, their self-managed Google Ads account was relying on a broad match strategy which was becoming increasingly inefficient as they tried to scale their spend.

The situation was made even more urgent by the seasonal nature of their business. They were struggling to scale up successfully.

Sugarwish needed a partner to help them not only manage their ads but also to optimise them for profitability and sustainable growth.

Their needs

  • Structure and optimise their search strategy
  • Develop a strategic, targeted, long-term strategy
  • Manage their ad accounts so they could focus on running the business
  • Run profitable campaigns to scale up quickly
"Refuel remained an integral partner in the behind-the-scenes optimisations, managing the complexity of our search campaigns so we could focus on delivering joy to our customers. And just as importantly, they were a delight to work with!" - Lindsay, Senior Marketing Manager

What we did

We recognised that Sugarwish’s rapid growth had outpaced its current Google Ads setup. Our main objective was to transform their inefficient, self-managed campaigns into a strategic and targeted system built for profitable scaling. This involved a complete overhaul of their account structure and a shift in their pay-per-click (PPC) strategy.

Google Ads and PPC

We took a collaborative approach, working closely with Sugarwish to reorganise their entire account structure. We moved away from their inefficient broad match only campaigns and implemented a more strategic, targeted approach across match types.

This restructuring laid the groundwork for a sustainable and scalable PPC system. We not only ran the campaigns but continually optimised and improved them. This involved behind-the-scenes tests and tweaks to improve spending efficiency and enhance a stronger return on ad spend (ROAS) throughout the year, especially during major seasonal events.

The goal of this scalable PPC system was to increase the efficiency of the Sugarwish ad account, which provided the foundation for the scaling of the account spend without the reduction in ROAS often seen in these accounts.

By managing the complexities of their search campaigns, we freed up the Sugarwish team to focus on their core business, giving them the confidence to go into high stakes seasonal periods with a powerful, optimised system in place.

 

The challenges

The main challenge was to redesign an inefficient, self-managed account that relied solely on a broad match strategy. This required a complete reorganisation and cleanup of the existing campaign before we could even begin to optimise for profitability.

Another challenge was the seasonal nature of their business. While this was a major opportunity, it also created immense pressure. The bulk of Suagrwish’s revenue was in holiday periods so there was no room for error. We needed to ensure our campaigns were effective and could quickly scale up to handle demand spikes without a drop in performance.

The geographical distance between Refuel in Australia and Sugarwish in the US could have been a major communication hurdle. We had to find a way to make the time difference a strength, not a weakness… which we did.

Our team was able to work on optimisations and account management while the Sugarwish team were offline. They could review our work and give feedback during their business hours so we could make changes while they slept. This meant their account was being worked on nearly 24/7, enabling us to be incredibly responsive and efficient.

The results

The partnership with Sugarwish transformed their ad efficiency, leading to profitable growth. Despite aggressive ROAS targets, we effectively scaled and improved campaign performance. 

The most significant achievement was the turnaround in ad spend performance. We restructured their Google Ads account and moved away from only using broad match, allowing us to target valuable traffic and reduce wasted spending. We were able to also achieve a stronger ROAS than they had been achieving previously.

The Sugarwish team went into back-to-back holiday seasons with confidence. We helped them achieve a level of predictability and stability that their self-managed efforts lacked. 

Our work wasn’t a one-time fix either. We continued to work in the background on optimisations and managing the complexity of their search campaigns to ensure that performance was always improving.

Conclusion

Since 2022, we have helped Sugarwish transform their Google Ads from an inefficient bottleneck to a scalable growth engine.

We restructured their Google Ads account and used a strategic approach to solve their immediate issues and set the stage for long-term success.

We managed the complexities of their search campaign, meaning the Sugarwish team could focus on its core mission of delivering joy to customers.

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