Solved: Golf company ROAS dropped to .77, help!

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Honestly, seeing a return on ad spend (ROAS) suddenly drop off a cliff is a rubbish feeling, and it’s one of the most common reasons people get in touch. It’s incredibly frustrating when something that was working just... stops. The good news is it's almost always fixable. The bad news is that the fix is rarely just about tweaking the ads themselves. Your ROAS dropping from 1.6 to 0.77 isn't the actual problem; it's a warning light on the dashboard telling you something deeper is wrong with the engine.

So, instead of just giving you some generic tips, I'm going to walk you through how we'd diagnose the real issue. This isn't about finding a magic bullet, because they don't exist. It's about building a solid, predictable system for acquiring customers for your golf company, so these sudden drops become far less common and much less scary. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at why your ROAS really dropped...

First things first, let's put out the immediate fire. When ROAS tanks, the temptation is to start frantically changing everything – pausing campaigns, rewriting all the ads, slashing budgets. That's usually the worst thing you can do. You need to be a detective, not a demolition crew. A ROAS drop is usually down to one of three things: something you changed, something the platform changed, or something your customers changed.

Did you recently launch new creatives or start testing a new audience? Even a small change can sometimes have a big, unexpected impact. Did you scale up the budget too quickly? The algorithms can get a bit wobbly when you do that, and costs can spike while they re-learn. It’s also worth checking if your website is running fine. Any slowdown in page load speed or a glitch in the checkout process can absolutly kill your conversion rate overnight, and your ad platform will report that as a poor ROAS.

More often than not, though, it's external factors. We're talking about algorithm updates from Meta or Google, which happen all the time. Your ads could have been performing well because they'd found a pocket of high-converting users, and an update just shuffled the deck. It could also be increased competition. Maybe a competitor has just launched a big sale or a new product and is bidding aggressively, driving up your costs. It could even be seasonality. Is there a major golf tournament on? That could distract your audience. Or are you heading into an off-season period where fewer people are actively buying gear? You have to think about the entire ecosystem your ads live in.

To make this a bit clearer, here's a quick diagnostic process you can run through. It's the first thing we do when we see a performance dip.

Working through this stops you from panicking. But here’s the brutally honest truth: while this diagnosis is important for short-term fire-fighting, if you're building your whole strategy around maintaining a specific ROAS number, you're building on sand. You need a much stronger foundation.

I'd say you need to stop obsessing over ROAS...

This might sound controversial, especially coming from an ads guy, but your obsession with ROAS is probably what’s causing the frustration. ROAS is a simple, seductive metric: money in vs. money out. A 1.6 ROAS means for every £1 you spend, you get £1.60 back. Simple. But it's also dangerously misleading because it tells you absolutely nothing about the *quality* of the customer you just acquired.

The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Acquisition go?" but "How high a CPA can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer to that is a metric that most businesses don't track properly: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Do you know what a new customer is actually worth to your golf company over the next 1, 3, or 5 years? Do they just buy one set of clubs, or do they come back for balls, gloves, apparel, and a new driver every two seasons? If you don't know that number, you're flying blind.

Let's do some simple maths. Say your average first-time order is £100. At a 1.6 ROAS, you're paying £62.50 to get that customer. Seems okay. But what if that customer goes on to spend another £400 with you over the next two years? Their total value is £500. You still paid £62.50 to get them. Suddenly, that acquisition doesn't just look 'okay', it looks like an incredible bargain.

Now, let's take your current 0.77 ROAS. For that same £100 order, you're now paying £130. On the surface, that's a loss. You're losing £30 on the first sale. But if that customer is still worth £500 in the long run, you've spent £130 to make £500. That's nearly a 4x return on your investment over time. It's still a profitable move. Without knowing your LTV, you'd pause that campaign and miss out on a valuable customer because you were too focused on the short-term ROAS of a single transaction.

This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality clicks and allows you to confidently spend more to acquire the *right* customers who will stick around and spend more. To make this tangible for you, I've built a simple LTV calculator below. Plug in your own numbers and see what your customers are really worth.

Once you know this number, we can establish a target Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). A healthy ratio is often 3:1 LTV to CAC. So if your LTV is £450, you can afford to spend up to £150 to acquire a customer and still have a very healthy, profitable business. This single shift in perspective changes everything about how you should approach your advertising.

You probably should define your *real* customer...

Right, so now we know we need to acquire high-LTV customers, not just cheap transactions. The next question is, who are they and how do we find them? This is where most businesses go wrong. They create a vague, demographic-based profile: "Male, 35-65, interested in golf, high income." That tells you nothing useful and leads to generic ads that speak to no one.

You need to forget demographics and define your customer by their pain. By their specific, urgent, expensive nightmare. Your customer isn't just "a golfer." They're in a specific *problem state*. Your job is to become an expert in that state. For example:

• The Frustrated Slicer: This isn't just a guy who plays golf. This is a man who loves the game but is on the verge of quitting because he cannot, for the love of God, stop slicing the ball into the trees on the right. He's embarrassed in front of his mates. He's spent hundreds on lessons that didn't work. His nightmare is another humiliating round. He'll pay almost anything for a solution that promises a straight shot.
• The Gear-Obsessed Techie: This golfer's pain isn't his performance; it's his fear of missing out (FOMO). He reads every review, watches every YouTube video. His nightmare is finding out his playing partner's new £500 driver has a 2% higher smash factor than his. He craves the latest technology and the status that comes with it.
• The Aspiring Improver: This player is serious. They have a handicap and they want to lower it. Their nightmare is plateauing. They practice, they play, but they're stuck at a 15 handicap. They're looking for an edge – better data, better training aids, better equipment that gives them measurable improvement.

These are three completely different people with three completely different problems. A generic ad for "Great Golf Clubs" will be ignored by all of them. But an ad that says, "Tired of telling your friends you'll 'find it in the woods'?" speaks *directly* to The Frustrated Slicer. An ad showing a launch monitor graph with improved ball speed speaks *directly* to The Gear-Obsessed Techie.

This deep understanding is the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy on platforms like Meta. Instead of just targeting the broad "Golf" interest, you start layering. For the Techie, you target people who also like specific tech review channels or high-end brands like TrackMan or Titleist. For the Slicer, you could target people who follow specific golf instructors known for fixing slices. You move from shouting into a crowd to whispering in the right person's ear.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Once you know exactly who you're talking to and what their specific nightmare is, writing the ad copy becomes ten times easier. You stop selling products and you start selling solutions. You stop listing features and you start selling the transformation. There are a couple of classic copywriting frameworks that work wonders for this.

For a product, especially a training aid or something that solves a clear problem, you use the Before-After-Bridge framework. You paint a picture of their current pain (the Before), show them the dream scenario (the After), and then position your product as the vehicle that gets them there (the Bridge).

Example for The Frustrated Slicer:

• (Ad Headline) The Last Swing Aid You'll Ever Buy.
• (Ad Text) Before: You step up to the tee, your mates are watching. You swing... and there it is again. That weak, curving slice into the trees. Another lost ball, another dose of frustration.
• After: Imagine stepping up to that same tee with total confidence. A smooth, easy swing, and the ball explodes off the club face, flying dead straight down the middle of the fairway. The feeling is incredible.
• Bridge: Our 'Fairway Finder' training aid corrects your swing path instantly. It builds the muscle memory for a perfect, slice-free swing in just 15 minutes a day. Click here to see how it works and fix your slice for good.

For higher-ticket items, like a premium set of clubs, you can use the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework. You state the problem, you pour salt in the wound by describing how much it sucks (Agitate), and then you present your product as the clear solution.

Example for The Aspiring Improver:

• (Ad Headline) Your Off-the-Rack Clubs Are Costing You Strokes.
• (Ad Text) Problem: You practice hard, but your handicap has hit a wall. You're not getting the consistency or distance you know you're capable of.
• Agitate: It's maddening to see your scores stagnate while others in your group seem to improve. You know the problem isn't your work ethic; it's that your equipment is fighting you, not helping you. Every mis-hit feels like a personal failure.
• Solve: Our custom-fitting process matches your unique swing DNA to the perfect club head, shaft, and grip combination. We don't sell clubs; we build scoring weapons. Gain an average of 15 yards and cut 3 strokes off your handicap in 90 days, guaranteed. Book your free fitting analysis today.

Notice how neither of these ads talks much about the product's features (e.g., "aerospace-grade titanium," "low-spin shaft"). They talk about the customer's *outcome*. They sell confidence, lower scores, and the end of frustration. This is what gets people to stop scrolling and actually click. This is how you attract high-LTV customers, not just bargain hunters.

We'll need to fix your funnel...

Let's say we've got the targeting and the messaging right. People are clicking on your ads. But you're still not getting the sales, and your ROAS is in the toilet. This means the problem isn't with the ads; it's with what happens *after* the click. Your website and checkout process – your funnel – is leaking money.

You need to analyse your data and find the drop-off points. This is a critical diagnostic step:

• High Clicks, Low Landing Page Views? This is rare but could indicate a very slow-loading website. People click the ad but bail before the page even loads. Your site speed needs to be a priority.
• High Landing Page Views, Low 'Add to Carts'? This is a big one. It means your ad got them interested, but your product page failed to convince them. The common culprits are: poor product photography (golfers want to see every angle, every detail), weak product descriptions that just list specs instead of benefits, confusing pricing, or a lack of social proof like customer reviews and testimonials. Without trust, no one is adding to cart.
• High 'Add to Carts', Low 'Initiate Checkouts'? People are adding items but not starting the checkout process. The most likely cause is a surprise at the cart stage. Usually, it's unexpectedly high shipping costs. You should be upfront about shipping costs on the product page if possible.
• High 'Initiate Checkouts', Low 'Purchases'? This is the final, most painful leak. They've given you their details but bail at the last second. This is often caused by a long, complicated checkout process with too many fields, not enough payment options (no Apple Pay/Google Pay), or security concerns.

You can visualise this as a series of gates. If you're losing 50% of your potential customers at each gate, the number who actually make it through to purchase is tiny.

Improving any one of these steps can have a huge impact on your ROAS. For instance, for one of our eCommerce clients in the cleaning products space, we generated a 633% return. A small increase in your website's conversion rate means you get more sales from the exact same ad spend, which directly increases your ROAS. This is work that most advertisers ignore, but it's often where the easiest wins are found.

I'd say you need a better campaign structure...

Finally, let's talk about how your ad account should be structured. A lot of people just create one campaign, throw a few audiences in, and hope for the best. This is messy and makes it impossible to know what's actually working. A structured approach allows you to systematically test and allocate budget effectively.

We use a simple but powerful Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) structure.

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting: This is your cold audience. These are people who have never heard of your company before. The goal here is to introduce them to your brand and your products. This is where you use your pain-point based interest targeting and lookalike audiences (e.g., a lookalike of your past purchasers, which is usually a goldmine). The messaging here is all about grabbing attention and solving a problem.

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Re-engagement: This audience consists of people who have shown some interest but haven't taken a key action yet. They might have visited your website, watched 50% of one of your video ads, or engaged with your Instagram page. They know who you are, but they're not convinced yet. Here, you retarget them with different ads – maybe customer testimonials, reviews, or a video showing a product in action. The goal is to build trust and move them towards the purchase decision.

3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Closing: This is your hottest audience. These are people who have added a product to their cart but didn't buy, or who started the checkout process and abandoned it. They are on the verge of buying. You need to hit them with a direct, compelling offer to get them over the line. A simple reminder ad ("Still thinking about it?") or even a small discount code ("Complete your order and get 10% off") can work wonders here. This is often your highest ROAS campaign, but the audience size is small.

By separating your campaigns like this, you can control the message each group sees and allocate your budget more intelligently. You spend the bulk of your budget on ToFu to find new customers, and a smaller portion on MoFu and BoFu to convert the interested ones. This structure brings order to the chaos and turns your advertising from a gamble into a predictable machine. We've seen this approach work well for numerous eCommerce clients; for instance, we managed a campaign for a women's apparel brand that drove a 691% return. The principles are universal.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, so I've broken down the key recommendations into a simple table. This is the roadmap I'd suggest you follow to not only fix your current ROAS problem but to build a much more resilient and profitable advertising system for the long term.

As you can see, fixing a ROAS problem is rarely a quick fix. It requires a holistic look at your entire marketing approach, from your core business metrics to the copy in your ads and the design of your checkout page. It can feel a bit overwhelming, and that's completely normal.

Executing this properly takes time, expertise, and constant testing and analysis. It's not just about setting up the campaigns; it's about understanding the data, knowing which levers to pull, and continuously optimising every part of the system. This is where working with a specialist can make a huge difference. We've done this for dozens of businesses, from software companies to major eCommerce brands, and have the experience to diagnose these issues quickly and implement the solutions effectively.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail and have us take a proper look under the bonnet of your ad account, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can review your strategy together and give you some concrete next steps. It's often incredibly helpful to get a second pair of expert eyes on things.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh