Solved: Low ROAS on Google Shopping, Try Engagement Ads?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I've had a look over the situation you've described with your ad campaigns, and I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance. It sounds like a frustrating spot to be in, seeing your ROAS drop despite trying different things with your creatives and audiences. It's a really common problem, but the solution is rarely to switch away from conversion-focused ads.

Honestly, the dropping ROAS is usually a symptom of a deeper issue, not a sign that "sales ads" have stopped working. Let's get into what might really be going on.

Don't press the eject button: Why engagement ads are a trap

Alright, let's tackle your main idea first: stopping sales campaigns and trying engagement ads instead. In my experience, this is one of the fastest ways to burn through your budget with absolutely nothing to show for it. It feels like you're doing something different, but you're actually just pointing the ship towards an iceberg.

Here’s the brutally honest truth about ad platforms like Meta: the algorithm is incredibly powerful, but it's also incredibly literal. It does exactly what you tell it to do.

When you set your campaign objective to 'Engagement', you are giving it a very clear command: "Go and find me the people within my target audience who are most likely to like, comment, and share my post, for the lowest possible cost." The algorithm will do this brilliantly. It will find the serial-likers, the people who love to drop an emoji, the ones who share everything. What it won't do is find people who buy things.

Why? Because the users who are most likely to engage are often the least likely to ever pull out their credit card. Their attention is cheap because other advertisers, the ones optimising for conversions, aren't bidding for them. You're essentialy telling Facebook to find you the worst possible audience for an eCommerce business. I've seen it time and time again – vanity metrics like likes and comments go up, but sales flatline or fall even further. It's a classic misstep.

The best form of brand awareness for an eCommerce store is someone buying your product, loving it, and telling their friends. That only happens through conversion. Awareness is a byproduct of sales, not a prerequisute for them. We've managed campaigns for eCommerce clients that have driven incredible returns, like a 1000% ROAS for a subscription box or a 691% return for a women's apparel brand. Every single one of those campaigns was optimised for conversions, not engagement.

A quick word on your tracking concerns...

You mentioned being worried about tracking, that people see an ad and then search for you directly. Yes, this happens. Attribution is not, and will never be, perfect. Apple's iOS changes made it even harder. However, it's not the reason your ROAS is tanking. The data inside Ads Manager is a directional indicator of performance. If an ad is working, you will see a profitable ROAS inside the platform, even if some extra sales are happening 'off the books'. If the in-platform ROAS is 2, the true, fully-attributed ROAS might be 2.5 or 3, but it's not going to be 8. A 2x ROAS is a clear signal that something is fundamentally broken with the strategy, and blaming tracking is a distraction from solving the real problem.

We'll need to look at the real culprit: Your offer and your audience

When ROAS drops to unprofitable levels like 2x, it almost always comes down to one of two things, or a combination of both: a weak offer or a mismatch with your audience. You've tried new creatives and warm audiences, which is tinkering around the edges. We need to look at the core of your strategy.

Think of it this way: a great creative can't sell a bad offer, and the world's best offer won't sell if it's shown to the wrong people. Your current ROAS suggests you're spending money to show an offer to people who either don't want it, don't want it right now, or don't feel the price reflects the value.

The number one reason campaigns fail is the offer. It's not offering enough value, or it's being presented to an audience that has no urgent need for that value. They don't have the 'pain' your product solves. For example, we ran a campaign for a cleaning products company. We didn't just sell "powerful cleaner". We identified the audience's pain: the stress and embarassment of having a messy home when guests come over unexpectedly. The offer became a solution to that specific anxiety. The result? A 633% return. The product didn't change, but the way it was positioned as a solution to a real problem did.

So, you need to ask yourself some hard questions:

• -> What specific, urgent problem does my product solve for a specific group of people?
• -> Is my pricing aligned with the perceived value of solving that problem?
• -> How does my offer compare to my competitors? Am I just another option, or am I the obvious choice?
• -> Can I improve the offer without changing the product? Think bundles, free shipping, a free gift with purchase, a subscription discount. These can dramatically change the maths of an ad campaign.

This leads directly to your audience. "Warm groups" are great, but they are finite. To scale, you have to get cold traffic to work. And for that, you can't just target broad demographics like "women aged 25-44". That's a recipe for wasted ad spend. You need to stop thinking about demographics and start thinking about psychographics – the pains, problems, and desires that drive your ideal customer.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is not a person; it's a problem state. For instance, if you sell high-quality kitchen knives, your ICP isn't "people who like cooking." It's the frustrated home cook who is sick of their blunt knives squashing tomatoes and making food prep a chore. They have an active, urgent pain. Find that person, and you can sell them a knife. You find them by targeting interests related to their pain – maybe they follow specific celebrity chefs known for technique, buy premium ingredients, or follow pages about kitchen organisation. You get specific. You get inside their head. This work comes first, before you spend another pound on ads.

I'd say you need to understand your numbers first

Before we talk about fixing your campaigns, we need to get one thing straight. ROAS is a useful metric, but it can also be a misleading one. A 2x ROAS on a £20 product means you spend £10 to make £20, which after product costs and overheads, is a loss. A 2x ROAS on a £200 product means you spend £100 to make £200. Depending on your margins, that might be perfectly acceptable or even profitable.

The real question isn't "How high can my ROAS go?" but "How high a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

LTV tells you the total profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire duration of your relationship. Once you know this number, you can make much smarter decisions about your ad spend. A common goal is to maintain a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means for every £1 you spend to acquire a customer, you should expect to get £3 back in profit over their lifetime.

Let's do the maths. This is where you can stop guessing and start operating from a position of power.

Once you know your Max Target Acquisition Cost, your whole perspective changes. You're no longer chasing a vague 'good ROAS'. Instead, you have a hard number. If your max CAC is £60, you can run ads and as long as your cost to acquire a new customer is below £60, you know you are building a profitable business long-term. This frees you up to test and scale with confidence.

You probably should implement a structured testing framework

You said you've "tried new creatives, proven creatives, warm groups everything you can think off". This sounds like frantic, unstructured testing, which is common when things aren't working. You throw things at the wall to see what sticks. To get out of this rut, you need a system. You need to structure your account properly to reflect a real marketing funnel.

I usually structure accounts into three core campaign types: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

• ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is your cold audience prospecting. The goal here is to find new potential customers who have never heard of you. This is where you test your interest-based audiences, lookalike audiences, and eventually broad targeting.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel): These are people who have shown some interest but haven't gone deep. They might have watched a video, visited your website, or engaged with a post. The goal is to nurture their interest and push them further down the funnel.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): This is your hottest audience. They've added to cart, initiated checkout, or viewed specific products. They are on the verge of buying. The goal here is to get them over the line with clear calls to action, reminders, or maybe a small incentive.

By seperating your campaigns like this, you can control your budget allocation, tailor your messaging for each stage, and clearly see where your funnel is breaking down. If your ToFu campaigns are getting clicks but your MoFu campaigns aren't, there's a disconnect. If your BoFu campaigns are huge but nobody is converting, there might be a problem with your checkout process or pricing.

Here’s a simplified visualisation of how that testing process flows. You start broad, identify what works, and then build on it.

How to approach creatives within this structure

Your creatives also need to be tailored to each stage. A cold ToFu audience needs a creative that stops the scroll and quickly communicates the problem you solve. The 'Before-After-Bridge' framework works well here.

• Before: Paint a picture of their current frustrating reality. "Tired of spending hours chopping vegetables with a dull knife?"
• After: Show them the ideal future your product enables. "Imagine gliding through prep work effortlessly, with perfect cuts every time."
• Bridge: Introduce your product as the way to get there. "Our Pro-Series Chef's Knife is the bridge to your new kitchen reality."

For your warm BoFu audience (e.g., cart abandoners), the message can be more direct. They already know who you are and what you sell. They just need a nudge. A simple "Still thinking it over? Your cart is waiting for you" or an ad highlighting your free returns policy can be enough. The point is, you're not shouting the same message at everyone. You're having a relevant conversation based on how well they know you.

You'll need a clear, actionable plan

I know this is a lot to take in. The key takeaway is that you need to stop making reactive decisions based on a single metric (ROAS) and start building a robust, strategic system for customer acquisition. It requires a shift in mindset from 'running ads' to 'building a growth engine'.

Based on our experience with numerous eCommerce clients, from those selling outdoor equipment to luxury brands, the principles are always the same: get the offer right, find the right audience, speak to their problems, understand your numbers, and test systematically. We've seen this approach drive powerful results for clients who were previously struggling, like generating an 8x return for an eCommerce store selling maps and navigation products.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a more digestible format. This is the main advice I have for you and what I would focus on for the next 30-60 days.

Implementing a system like this is a significant amount of work, and it requires discipline. It's easy to get impatient and fall back into old habits of random testing when you don't see results in the first few days. But this is the only sustainable way to build a predictable customer acquisition machine.

Navigating this, especially when you're also trying to run the rest of your business, can be overwhelming. This is often where expert help can make a huge difference. Having a team that has been through this exact process hundreds of times, across many different industries, can help you avoid costly mistakes, accelerate your learning curve, and start seeing positive results much faster.

I hope this detailed breakdown has been helpful and gives you a much clearer path forward. If you'd like to have a more in-depth chat where we can look at your ad account and website together and build a more tailored plan, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy consultation. It might be just what you need to get things turned around.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh