Why you shouldn’t always listen to the data

It always surprises me how little money some “big” brands make on Google.

I know plenty of 8-figure brands that can’t scale past $20k/mo in spend.

And I've seen accounts stuck at the same number for months… even though they’re scaling fast on other channels.

Usually, the problem isn't their budgets.

It’s what they’re optimizing for.

When I review these accounts, there’s always a wall that “blocks” them from scaling further:

They do what seems logical, which is doubling down on what’s working best.

Case in point:

I spoke to a brand that was running Performance Max campaigns without excluding brand terms

This allowed PMax to go for the low-hanging fruit instead of finding new buyers.

When they realized the issue, they tried shifting PMax into prospecting.

A few weeks later, they saw their ROAS had crashed from 3.5X to 1.8X.

So they panicked and planned to switch back to the old approach.

It felt like the smart, “data-driven” move. But in reality, they had just locked themselves from scaling.

The drop in ROAS was just a natural outcome of:

1. Reaching a broader audience.

2. “Training” the algorithm to target a different type of traffic

And even though the campaign got less profitable… it had far more room to scale.

Because the thing is…

Just because it works better doesn’t mean it scales better.

We worked with a brand stuck at $17k/month in spend that we scaled to over $40 million in sales on Google.

We had another brand plateaued at $8k/month in spend that hit $3.4 million just one year later.

The biggest difference is what their accounts are optimized for.

Before, they only chased low-hanging fruit like brand searches and easy Performance Max sales.

Those were highly profitable.

But they only went for a limited pool of customers.

The breakthrough came when we pushed them into less profitable but more scalable zones.

We moved beyond product searches into informational queries (e.g, "how to improve skin after 50.")

We launched YouTube campaigns targeting cold audiences.

We expanded into new countries with localized strategies.

These new sources of traffic were less profitable upfront.

But they opened a much bigger path for scale.

Btw, I’m not saying 1.8 ROAS is a standard, we’ve seen prospecting campaigns, even YouTube campaigns, hit a 3-4x…

But the bottom line is when it comes to Google Ads, it’s best to have a professional that constantly finds and expands into new, scalable territories… instead of trying to squeeze more from the "profitable" zones.

We built our service around this philosophy. 

Instead of chasing vanity metrics, we push accounts into scalable territories.

This way, you can unlock bigger budgets, more markets, and more sales.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn

How we can help:

Get a free Google ads audit: For brands spending more than $20k/mo. or making over 1 million annually, we’ll identify the key bottlenecks in your account, and turn it into a free 90-day scaling plan. Click here.

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