Three years of work that started with efficiency, moved to scale, and ended where good agency relationships sometimes should: with the client confident enough to take it all in-house.
Schuh is one of the UK and Ireland’s most recognisable footwear retailers, with more than 130 stores and a range that runs from Converse and Vans through UGG, Nike and Adidas to their own label. A catalogue that broad sits inside an auction landscape just as crowded.
60
119
55
% reduction in monthly spend (year one)
% increase in ROAS (year one)
% reduction in cost of sale
Year one — efficiency
Schuh wanted a closer look at where their paid search budget was actually working — and where it wasn’t. The ask was simple to state and harder to deliver: bring cost of sale down, push return on ad spend up, and don’t surrender ground in the auction along the way.
Footwear is one of the most crowded categories in retail search. Visibility is everything — but visibility you’ve overpaid for isn’t worth much. We pulled the account apart and rebuilt it around efficiency: tightening bids, redirecting spend toward queries that earned it, and stripping out the quiet waste that only shows up when you go looking.
Monthly spend dropped 60%, with CPCs down 54%. Clicks fell only 12% — and impression share didn’t move, which is the number that matters most for a retailer protecting its place in a competitive auction. Cost of sale moved from around 8% to under 3%, a 55% improvement. ROAS rose 119%.
Year two — scale
With a leaner foundation in place, the conversation shifted from “spend less” to “grow on top of this.” Year two was about taking the efficient account and finding room to push it — scaling activity where the maths supported it, without unwinding what year one had earned.
Year three — handover
By year three, Schuh had the confidence, the structure, and the data clarity to bring activity in-house. Our role changed accordingly: from running the account to supporting the transition — handing over a tidy operation, the thinking behind it, and the institutional memory of why it worked.
The same shelf space, for considerably less. Then a bigger account. Then a graceful handover.
