Turning Existing Search Demand Into a New Growth Channel

A premium homeware brand selling considered, design-led pieces, the kind of thing people research before buying. Strong direct sales, great organic SEO, almost no paid search presence. Their entire paid budget was in Meta and Pinterest, trying to inspire people to want the product.

Conversion rates from paid social were frustrating, because they kept trying to interrupt people rather than catch them mid-search. Meanwhile, their Google Search Console showed thousands of branded searches a month going completely unmanned. People were already looking. Nobody was there to meet them.

Capture the demand that already existed before spending more to create new demand. Build a search strategy that paid for itself.

Audited the full search landscape, branded terms, category terms, competitor terms, and a long list of intent-heavy queries ("best linen duvet cover," "design-led homeware UK") that were generating real volume. Built a search campaign architecture around three tiers: brand defence, high-intent category, and research-phase terms with different landing experiences for each. Set distinct KPIs per tier rather than blending everything into one ROAS number.

• Branded search alone reached target iROAS within 6 weeks. They had been gifting revenue to competitors for years
• Category search reached target ROAS within 6 weeks
• Blended paid-media conversion rate increased 2.1x as high-intent search became a meaningful part of the channel mix
• Blended CPA across paid acquisition fell 34% as Search captured high-intent demand more efficiently than the existing channel mix, while increasing the total acquisition volume by 22%

"We were running ads to get people to want our products. Meanwhile people were already searching for exactly what we sell and finding our competitors instead. " Head of eCommerce, homeware brand