Build a Marketing Strategy That Actually Works

Not long ago, I spoke to the owner of a dog-care brand. They sold natural shampoos and grooming kits online. They were “doing everything right”: Instagram ads, Google Ads, blog posts, newsletters, but sales had stalled. Traffic grew, yet revenue didn’t.

That feeling is common. I’ve seen it with SMEs and with much bigger brands. One of the UK’s largest supermarkets faced a similar problem on a larger scale: they were investing heavily in digital, but results plateaued. By using GA4’s predictive audiences, they found a way to target “swing shoppers” and improve their returns dramatically, achieving an 84% increase in ROAS and a 48% drop in CPA compared to older retargeting methods.

Whether you are a dog-care product brand or a supermarket giant, the story is the same: working hard in marketing doesn’t always pay unless your efforts are grounded in strategy and data.

The most common mistake is aiming for “more traffic” and chasing vanity metrics rather than defining an outcome tied to business value. We need to reframe the goal into something real. For example, grow shampoo sales by 25% in six months. Suddenly, every tactic, including ad spend, SEO, content, and email, has a clear focus.

Big brands have learned this lesson too. Little Greene, a British paint and wallpaper brand, migrated to GA4 to improve their eCommerce tracking and compliance. Instead of tracking just “site traffic,” they established clear outcomes: video engagement, downloads, outbound clicks, and conversions across multiple international stores. With those in place, they were able to make strategic decisions with confidence.

When goals are specific, you can measure progress, spot problems early, and align your team around what matters most. But to measure that success, you first need to know who you’re trying to reach.

The dog care brand assumed their best buyers were young, social-media-driven dog lovers. But GA4 told a different story: their repeat, high-value customers were often older pet owners searching Google for “sensitive dog shampoo” or “natural flea treatment”. They converted better through search and email campaigns than flashy Instagram posts.

A similar discovery transformed Curam, a platform matching clients with care professionals. By running structured GA4 experiments, they realised small changes in messaging and form design led to big shifts in behaviour. Nine experiments over six months resulted in a 35% uplift in conversions.

The insight is clear: your audience is rarely who you think it is. Data reveals the truth, and when you align with it, growth follows. Once you know who your audience is, you can stop wasting money on channels that don’t reach them.

When we analysed the client’s channels, the truth became clear:

Paid Social delivered 39% of traffic and 12% of sales.
Organic Search delivered 18% of traffic and 28% of sales.
Google Ads delivered 23% of traffic and 37% of sales.
Email delivered 20% of traffic, but nearly half of repeat sales.

We reallocated the spend away from low-ROI channels and invested more in high-converting ones.

This same principle drove results for a Luxury British fragrance brand. They weren’t seeing the sales growth they wanted despite strong visibility. After shifting the budget to where the data pointed, they achieved a 575% uplift in PPC ROAS, an 871% increase in order volume, and a 954% increase in new customer sales.

The takeaway is simple: stop rewarding traffic for traffic’s sake. Put your money where the results come from. But once you’ve found the right channels, the real work is making sure your customers don’t get lost on the way to a sale.

GA4 gives you more than dashboards. It gives you the ability to see what’s working and where customers drop off. You can find valuable insights with GA4 to support your strategy.

For dog care brand, GA4 highlighted two big issues:
Many customers abandoned at checkout when shipping costs appeared. We fixed this by showing shipping earlier and offering free delivery thresholds.
The mobile users bounced because product pages loaded slowly and “add to cart” buttons were buried. We improved mobile UX, which lifted conversions almost immediately. Page load speed is important and slow pages drive customers away.

Bigger brands use the same playbook. Napkyn helped a multi-brand global footwear retailer deploy GA4 and server-side GTM at scale, with consistent tracking across dozens of brands and markets. This meant every market could see exactly where customer journeys broke down and fix them, saving hundreds of hours in deployment and ensuring accurate, scalable insights.

When you see clearly where customers are dropping, you can make small changes that deliver results. But fixing those issues isn’t a one-time thing.

Step 5: The Power of Experimentation: Test, Learn, and Refine

You can have the best data in the world, but if you don’t use it to test new ideas, you won’t achieve your full potential. Experimentation is the engine of growth. It’s about taking the insights from GA4 and creating hypotheses to test.

For example, the dog-care brand used their GA4 insights to test:
A new headline on their most popular blog post to see if it increased click-through to product pages.
Two different versions of their checkout page: one with a single “Pay Now” button and another with a “Buy with PayPal” option next to it.
A series of email subject lines to see which ones led to the highest open rates among their most valuable customers.

Each test provides a clear, measurable result, allowing you to quickly scale what works and discard what doesn’t. This culture of continuous improvement is what separates good marketing from great marketing.

Step 6: Make GA4 Part of Daily and Strategic Decisions

For dog care brand, GA4 moved from being a monthly “reporting tool” to part of strategic planning. Weekly check-ins flagged underperforming ads. Monthly reviews revealed customer retention patterns. Quarterly reviews shaped decisions about new product lines and pricing strategies.

This ongoing loop is exactly how ASDA achieved success with predictive audiences. They didn’t wait for quarterly reports. They made data a continuous part of their decision-making, allowing them to pivot quickly and scale what worked.

Data isn’t just about looking back but about making smarter moves every step of the way. When your entire team is aligned around a data-driven approach, the benefits compound.

When you combine clear goals, audience understanding, channel prioritisation, and actionable GA4 insights, the benefits are transformative:
Higher conversion rates and fewer abandoned checkouts
More loyal, repeat customers
Reduced wasted ad spend and better ROI
Confidence in every marketing decision

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For SMEs, that might mean lifting shampoo sales by 25% in six months. For larger brands, it might mean the kind of results seen by ASDA, Curam, Little Greene, Napkyn, or the Luxury British fragrance brand.

The scale differs, but the process is the same. This approach doesn’t just fix problems; it creates a continuous growth engine.

Building a Data-Driven Culture

The technical steps are only half the battle. The real transformation comes from building a culture where data is trusted and used by everyone – from the marketing team to the executive suite. It’s about shifting mindsets from “I think this will work” to “The data shows this is our best path forward”.

If you’re working hard but not seeing the payoff or if you simply don’t trust your data enough to make informed decisions, then it’s time for a different approach.

We help businesses bridge the gap between “doing marketing” and “doing marketing that works.” Contact us for a free discovery call and we’ll help you turn website visitors into customers.