Case Study: Scaling Revenue to One Million with Precision Keyword Targeting in the French Market

In the world of digital marketing, few campaigns capture the essence of efficiency as well as this one. Over the course of twelve months, a carefully structured Google Ads campaign transformed a modest advertising budget into a powerful revenue engine, generating a turnover exceeding one million euros from an ad spend of only 162,000 euros. The project centered around a high-intent keyword strategy, targeting the French-speaking market with calibrated precision.

While the company in question has requested anonymity, its success story offers valuable insights for advertisers seeking to maximize return on ad spend (ROAS) through geographic concentration, keyword optimization, and disciplined measurement.

This case study explores the project from inception to outcome, providing a practical look into how the right mix of relevance, reach, and refinement can drive highly scalable performance—without overextending budgets or complicating execution.

Background

The advertiser operates in a competitive service sector where customers often initiate their journey on Google Search. The product offered is relatively premium in price compared to competitors, which naturally requires a level of user trust and relevance before conversion can occur.

Historically, the client had been experimenting with mixed digital strategies: a blend of social media advertising, local directory listings, and minimal paid search activity. Results were inconsistent. Conversions lacked trackability, and the client was unsure which marketing channel produced the best leads.

When the new search-centric strategy launched, the decision was clear: rely solely on measurable performance and keyword intent. The core objective was growth through efficiency, not growth through expansion. Investing in users with high consideration and actionable intent would replace the brand’s previous approach of chasing broad awareness metrics.

Objectives

The campaign sought to achieve the following goals:

• Increase qualified lead volume while maintaining profitability.
• Develop a clear structure to identify which keywords produced the most value.
• Focus exclusively on potential customers in the French-speaking market.
• Build measurable and repeatable systems that could later expand into neighboring regions.

Campaign Structure

The campaign design prioritized simplicity and scalability. Rather than dispersing energy across multiple campaign types, the structure concentrated on a single channel: Google Search Keyword Campaigns.

This focus enabled efficient control of cost per click (CPC), keyword segmentation, and accurate attribution of conversions.

Key Components:

1. Search Intent Segmentation: Keyword groups were categorized based on the buyer’s stage of intent—from general curiosity to direct purchase readiness. Branded queries were separated from non-branded commercial terms, ensuring that budget allocations matched the user’s potential to convert.
2. Ad Group Relevance: Each ad group contained a narrow cluster of related terms. Ad copy and headline variations were built around these high-intent queries, increasing the Quality Score and reducing CPC over time.
3. Geo-Specific Targeting: The initial focus was strictly the French market. Later, the campaign was carefully extended into Switzerland and Luxembourg, both of which have strong French-speaking populations. Importantly, these new geographies were not approached as broad market expansions but as linguistic and behavioral extensions of the original audience.
4. Device Strategy: After extensive testing, no measurable difference in performance was found between mobile and desktop clicks. The campaign therefore adopted device parity—keeping bids consistent across platforms to avoid unnecessary segmentation.
5. Budget Allocation: The total ad spend of 162,000 euros was distributed evenly throughout the year, with slight seasonal adjustments based on conversion trends. The team used monthly optimization cycles to reallocate funding toward the most profitable ad groups.

Keyword Research and Optimization

Keyword strategy sat at the heart of the campaign’s success. A substantial portion of initial planning involved competitor audits and reverse engineering of search terms that historically produced strong ROI in similar industries.

High-performing categories included:

• Transactional phrases containing clear purchase intent verbs.
• Geo-modified queries including French city names or regions.
• Long-tail combinations that mirrored natural conversational search patterns.

The foundation keyword list began with approximately 600 terms. Over time, it expanded to more than 1,500 active keywords through continuous testing. Negative keywords were aggressively managed to prevent wasted clicks on informational or poorly aligned searches.

Average CPC declined steadily over the first six months as Google rewarded meticulously matched content with better ad rank. By month seven, cost efficiency stabilized at a near-optimal level.

All campaign components were connected to in-platform conversion tracking, ensuring complete visibility on every relevant lead form, call, or sale event.

Creative Strategy

Text ad copy followed a principle of consistency over creativity. The goal was alignment with searcher intent, not persuasion through flair. Advertisements mirrored exact keyword phrasing to boost relevance.

Each ad used a clear call to action, transparent pricing or service description, and trust elements such as guarantees and local availability. Landing pages were designed for rapid conversion—concise, mobile-friendly, and with load speeds under three seconds.

Responsive Search Ads provided adaptive flexibility, automatically testing headline and description combinations to maximize click-through rate (CTR). By the third optimization cycle, the campaign achieved an average CTR of 8.5%, significantly above industry benchmarks.

Geographic Insights

The decision to focus initially on France proved wise. Concentration allowed for deeper optimization—learning from local behaviors, dialect nuances, and regional CPC variations.

After six months, the campaign entered its second phase: expansion into French-speaking Switzerland and Luxembourg. This was not done to chase volume but to leverage linguistic synergy. These markets shared cultural and linguistic overlap with the French audience, allowing the same ad copy, landing pages, and bidding logic to perform without modification.

Results exceeded expectations. Both Switzerland and Luxembourg demonstrated conversion rates nearly identical to those in France, with slightly higher average order values due to greater spending power. No decline in lead quality or volume was observed.

The data confirmed that a small multilingual extension can yield measurable growth when executed within culturally consistent boundaries.

Device Performance

Across most campaigns, marketers encounter significant device variability. Surprisingly, this project revealed parity between mobile and desktop in terms of both conversion rate and cost efficiency.

CTR, CPC, and conversion metrics remained near-equal throughout the year. Rather than introducing device bid adjustments—which might have overcomplicated optimization—the campaign maintained uniform settings.

This balance not only simplified reporting but highlighted the product’s broad appeal and the landing pages’ consistent usability across screen sizes.

Conversion Tracking and Analytics

ROI accountability required accurate measurement at every stage. Google Analytics 4 was linked directly to Google Ads, enabling multi-touch attribution and event-level tracking. Conversions included:

• Visit duration beyond a threshold of engagement.
• Form completions and direct inquiries.
• Online purchases or service bookings.
• Click-to-call actions on mobile devices.

Through conversion value tracking, revenue was directly tied to ad interactions. This granular clarity allowed the team to calculate exact ROAS in real time.

At campaign conclusion, total turnover stood slightly above one million euros, representing over a sixfold return on ad spend (ROAS = 6.17).

The precision of this measurement system enabled the client to reinvest confidently—knowing that every euro spent produced a predictable multiple in revenue.

Optimization Process

Optimization followed a disciplined rhythm. Each month, results were reviewed holistically, not just by conversion rate but by profitability and emerging market patterns.

Key iterative adjustments included:

• Keyword pruning: Eliminating underperforming terms that consumed clicks but failed to convert.
• Match type refinement: Shifting from broad match modifiers toward phrase and exact matches.
• Ad variations: Testing new headline combinations for superior engagement.
• Audience layering: Gradually incorporating remarketing audiences to re-engage previous site visitors.
• Budget flow: Redirecting funds from stable but less profitable ad groups into scalable performers.

By quarter two, these efforts lowered cost per acquisition (CPA) by nearly 30%. By quarter three, the campaign achieved steady-state maturity, needing only light monthly adjustments rather than deep overhauls.

Results Overview

Annual Metrics:

• Annual turnover: €1,000,000+
• Ad spend: €162,000
• ROAS: 6.17
• Average CTR: 8.5%
• Conversion rate: steady between 4.8–5.2% depending on seasonality
• CPA reduction: –30% within six months
• Geographic efficiency: France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg yielded nearly identical cost performance
• Device performance: Statistically identical between mobile and desktop

Observations:

The campaign’s success hinged less on innovation and more on disciplined execution. Instead of reinventing the wheel, the team optimized fundamentals—relevance, bidding efficiency, and measurement accuracy.

Keyword-centric campaigns remain among the most controllable and profitable forms of digital advertising when objectives are precise and audience intent is well understood.

Key Lessons Learned

1. Clarity outperforms complexity: The decision to run a single keyword-focused campaign avoided dilution of results. Overly diversified strategies often hide inefficiencies that simple setups easily reveal.
2. Language consistency matters: Extending into Swiss and Luxembourg markets succeeded precisely because language and cultural signals were aligned. Advertisers expanding into neighboring territories should consider linguistic similarity before scaling geographically.
3. Data beats assumptions: Device parity was a surprising finding. Many campaigns presume mobile dominance, but only empirical testing can confirm such trends. Let the data guide—not bias.
4. Iterative optimization compounds results: Monthly refinement turned good performance into great performance. ROI scale stems from regular, incremental improvements, not radical campaign resets.
5. Track everything at value-level granularity: Assigning revenue to each conversion, rather than merely counting leads, empowered financially driven decision-making. Measurement transforms marketing from speculation into economics.

Conclusion

This campaign illustrates the extraordinary potential of a disciplined, keyword-driven approach in the French-speaking market. By investing in precision rather than aggression, the advertiser achieved one million euros in turnover from a tightly controlled €162,000 budget—an ROI few channels can replicate.

The expansion into Switzerland and Luxembourg validated the idea that growth need not mean reinvention. Geographic, linguistic, and behavioral alignment made scaling seamless. Equally significant was the finding that device type did not materially impact performance, simplifying optimization and allowing full focus on audience intent.

Ultimately, this project reinforced a timeless truth: success in search marketing depends not on how many clicks you buy but on how precisely you buy them.