Trailblaze: 3x profit in under a year with no new launches

Placement optimization wasn’t running, so we weren’t competing for top-of-search at all. That was the first lever to pull.

The catalog had grown to include products outside the core brand. Every dollar spent there was a dollar that could be working harder on the products that defined the brand, so there was room to focus the spend and sharpen the positioning.

The core products had real history but weren’t being actively pushed. Some had been selling steadily for years, prices were sitting below what the listings could support, and the seasonal pushes hadn’t been timed to the demand.

Outdoor gear sells in waves, and the ranking has to be in place before the season starts, so getting ahead of that calendar was a clear opportunity.

We focused the catalog first, stepping back from products outside the core brand so the spend went to what mattered. Then we turned on placements and pushed the core products to top-of-search.

Most of the work was keywords. We put the full budget behind one keyword, drove it to position one, then moved to the next.

One of the most competitive keywords in the niche took months to win, but once we held it, its sales pulled up our organic rank on the broader keywords for free. Win one, use it to win five.

We also ranked seasonal keywords before demand hit instead of chasing it, reusing the prior year’s winners to skip testing.

Finally, we raised prices on the giftable items, since a strong ad position gives you room to charge more, and split a few variations into their own listings for more shelf space.

ACoS dropped from 29% to 21%, and TACoS came down too. Every product sold more than the year before.

Prices are up across the whole catalog, so margin is higher on every sale, and rank sits well ahead of where it started.

All of it with the same products that were already there.

The win came from steady work on the existing lineup. Someone in the account every week, pushing one thing at a time: focusing the catalog, switching on placements, winning keywords one by one, and raising prices once the position could support it.

Profit tripled, sales grew, and rank held, all on products that were already there.