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+32% ROAS — Beating Seasonality for a French Outdoor Sports Retailer
Client
The client is a multi-season French e-commerce retailer offering ski, cycling, running and streetwear gear. Demand peaks in winter but softens sharply during the spring–summer transition months, creating cash-flow pressure and inventory risk.
Challenge
The goal was to keep sales growing in the low season and unlock maximum revenue during the winter surge — without letting average customer-acquisition cost rise. Two obstacles stood in the way:
- Seasonality whiplash — traffic and purchase intent can swing more than 60% between quarters.
- Budget efficiency — scaling spend in peak months must not erode ROAS.
Approach
We built a three-move plan to smooth seasonality and let the algorithm chase revenue:
- Product feed rebuild (Feb 2024). Clean GTINs and richer size and price attributes helped Smart Bidding learn faster.
- Season-specific Performance Max portfolios (Nov 2024). Winter budgets throttled up automatically while spring budgets dialed back.
- Switch from tCPA to Maximize Conversion Value bidding (Jan 2025). We let the algorithm chase revenue, not just conversions.
Results
ROAS hit 20× in March — up 75% month-on-month. Against the previous period, the account delivered:
- +32% ROAS overall — vs. the previous period.
- −18% CPA — cheaper acquisition.
- +56% conversions (YoY) — winter portfolio.
By rebuilding the feed and letting season-specific portfolios and value-based bidding do the heavy lifting, the client grew through the peak without letting acquisition costs climb.