How We Achieved 4.1x ROAS for an Indian D2C Brand in 90 Days (Step-by-Step Case Study)

The Problem: ₹15L Monthly Ad Spend, 1.2x ROAS

When this health supplement brand came to us in January 2025, they were spending ₹15 lakh per month on Google and Meta Ads and barely breaking even. Their previous agency had been running campaigns for 8 months with minimal improvement.

The brand's leadership was frustrated, close to shutting down their paid media entirely.

Here's exactly what we found, and what we did about it.

The Audit: Where the Money Was Bleeding

Our first step was a full performance audit. What we discovered:

Google Ads Issues:

• 67% of budget going to broad match keywords with zero commercial intent
• No conversion value tracking — only counting leads, not revenue
• Shopping campaigns not using product feed optimisation
• No brand protection campaigns — competitors were hijacking their brand name
• PMAX campaigns with generic asset groups cannibalising search campaigns

Meta Ads Issues:

• All 14 ad sets targeting interests — no lookalike audiences
• Creative testing fatigue — same 3 creatives running for 5+ months
• No retargeting separation between warm and hot audiences
• No WhatsApp conversion tracking
• Broad targeting without demographic refinement

Landing Page Issues:

• Homepage as the landing page for all campaigns (catastrophic for conversion)
• Mobile page speed score: 34/100
• No social proof above the fold
• Add-to-cart to purchase conversion rate: 8% (industry average: 22%)

The 90-Day Restructure Plan

Week 1-2: Fix the Foundation

Before touching budgets, we:

1. Implemented proper conversion value tracking — connected purchase value, not just purchase count, to Google Ads
2. Fixed Core Web Vitals — mobile speed score went from 34 to 81 in 10 days
3. Built a dedicated landing page for each top product — single-purpose, social proof heavy, fast loading
4. Added WhatsApp conversion tracking using Meta CAPI

Week 3-4: Google Ads Restructure

We paused all underperforming campaigns and rebuilt from scratch:

New Campaign Architecture:

• Brand Protection Campaign (exact match, low budget, protect the name)
• Competitor Conquest Campaigns (modified broad, separate budget)
• High-Intent Search — exact and phrase match only
• PMAX — with proper asset groups per product category, negative keyword lists
• YouTube for Upper Funnel — educating the audience on Ayurvedic benefits

Key decision: We switched to Target ROAS bidding only after accumulating 30+ conversions per campaign per month. Before that, Maximize Conversion Value.

Week 5-6: Meta Ads Overhaul

Audience Architecture:

Cold (40% of budget):

• 1% lookalike of purchasers (last 180 days)
• 1% lookalike of high-value purchasers (top 25% by order value)
• Interest targeting as a test only

Warm (35% of budget):

• Video viewers 50%+ (last 60 days)
• Instagram engagers (last 30 days)
• Website visitors who didn't add to cart

Hot (25% of budget):

• Add-to-cart abandoners
• Checkout initiators
• Past purchasers (for cross-sell/upsell)

Creative Strategy:

We produced 16 new creative variations in the first month:

• 4 UGC-style video testimonials (performed best)
• 4 product benefit reels (30 seconds)
• 4 educational carousel posts
• 4 discount/offer static images (surprisingly worst performers)

Week 7-10: Optimise and Scale

With proper tracking in place, we could now make data-driven decisions:

• Identified that Sunday 7-10pm was the highest conversion window — shifted budget accordingly
• Found that women 28-42 in metro cities had 3x the LTV of other segments — increased bids for this segment
• Discovered WhatsApp conversions were being credited to social when they came from Google — fixed attribution
• Cut the bottom 30% of ad sets by ROAS and reallocated budget to top performers

The Results: Month 1 to Month 3

Total additional revenue generated in 90 days: ₹92 lakh Agency fees in same period: ₹5.4 lakh ROI on agency investment: 17x

Key Lessons

1. Fix tracking before fixing campaigns — you're flying blind without proper data
2. Landing pages matter more than ads — we saw a bigger improvement from CRO than from any single ad change
3. Audience structure is everything — separating cold, warm, and hot audiences 3x'd our Meta efficiency
4. UGC always wins — our highest performing ad in this campaign cost ₹3,000 to produce (a WhatsApp video from a happy customer)
5. Attribution is broken by default — most brands are making decisions on bad data

Is your ad spend stuck in similar patterns? Book a free performance marketing audit with Digital Ishtihaar — we'll audit your accounts and show you exactly where your budget is leaking.