CASE STUDY: How We Achieved a $0.25 CPC for a Canadian Cigarette Brand on Google Ads
Category
Google Ads Case Study
Market
Canada Cigarette Retail
Role
Keyword Strategy, Smart Bidding, CRO
Timeline
Background: The Client & Their Challenge
A Canadian cigarette retailer was struggling with high Google Ads costs. Expensive clicks, strict policies, and weak Quality Scores made it difficult to scale profitably.
Main challenges:
- ❌ High Cost per Click (CPC), making ads expensive to scale
- ❌ Strict advertising policies, limiting ad placements
- ❌ Low ad visibility due to poor Quality Scores
- ❌ Difficulty differentiating from competitors
They needed a Google Ads strategy that could:
CPC Reduction
Achieve a lower CPC while maintaining quality traffic
ROAS Growth
Improve return on ad spend (ROAS)
Visibility
Increase ad visibility and engagement
The Challenges – Why Their Ads Were Costly
- 🔹 Google’s restrictions on tobacco-related advertising made keyword selection difficult
- 🔹 High competition in the industry resulted in inflated CPC rates
- 🔹 Low Quality Score due to poor ad relevance and landing page experience
- 🔹 Lack of proper bid strategies led to inefficient spending
⏳ We had 30 days to optimize ad performance and reduce CPC to below $0.30.
Our Google Ads Strategy for Reducing CPC
We implemented a 3-step approach to optimize their Google Ads performance:- ✅ Focused on long-tail keywords with lower competition
- ✅ Refined ad copy to align with Google’s policies while maintaining high CTR
- ✅ Used responsive search ads to dynamically adjust messaging
- ✅ Switched to Maximize Clicks and Target CPC bidding
- ✅ Excluded underperforming keywords and reallocated budget to high-converting terms
- ✅ Implemented negative keywords to reduce wasted spend
- ✅ Optimized landing pages to increase ad relevance and reduce bounce rates
- ✅ Added trust signals such as secure checkout and delivery guarantees
- ✅ Improved page load speed, reducing drop-off rates by 18%
Results After 30 Days
📊 Key Metrics Before vs. After Our Optimization
| Metric | Before | After | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per Click (CPC) | $0.48 | $0.25 | 🔻 48% |
| Click-Through Rate (CTR) | 3.4% | 5.2% | 🔼 53% |
| Quality Score | 5.6 | 7.9 | 🔼 41% |
| ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) | 2.2x | 3.5x | 🔼 59% |
| Bounce Rate | 56% | 38% | 🔻 18% |
- ✅ CPC dropped to $0.25, a 48% decrease
- ✅ CTR increased by 53%, leading to higher engagement
- ✅ Higher Quality Score resulted in better ad placements
- ✅ ROAS increased by 59%, making ads more profitable
CPC Dropped by 48%
CTR Increased by 53%
ROAS Improved by 59%
Want to Reduce Your CPC & Improve Google Ads Performance?
If your online cigarette store is facing high CPC, low CTR, or poor ROAS, we can help.
Our data-driven approach ensures compliance-friendly advertising while maximizing ad performance.