Clarks steps into the right campaign fit and drives 22% more orders

For more than 200 years, Clarks has offered quality footwear that combines style and comfort. However, in recent years, reaching customers online has become more challenging. Rising traffic costs and intensifying competition on Google made it difficult to meet sales targets.

Clarks needed to find additional revenue opportunities without compromising traffic or sales volume. Working with its marketing agency, Tinuiti, the brand turned its focus to Microsoft Advertising to diversify its approach.

Together, they shifted their marketing strategy for Performance Max (PMax) with a goal to reduce cost per sessions (CPS) and increase revenue, all while staying within a limited budget. From there, the team would work on improving sales metrics like order volume, conversion rates (CVR), and return on ad spend (ROAS).

Tinuiti had seen strong performance from Search ads, so they worked with Clarks to refine its PMax campaigns. At the time, running two to three campaigns simultaneously meant the brand struggled to reach minimum conversion thresholds, keeping campaigns stuck in the learning phase and limiting performance across CPS, CVR, and ROAS.

To address this, the team implemented a more streamlined approach...

• Consolidate campaign structure: Combining PMax campaign structure from two to three segmented campaigns into a single primary one centralized data and improved learning phases.
• Layer in shopping inventory: Incorporating inventory from the brand’s product feed allowed the team to increase exposure across the entire catalog.
• Enhance audience signals: Introducing more prospecting and retargeting audience groups helped Clarks target new audiences aligned with their customer personas as well as re-engage past purchasers.
• Scale strategically: The team started with reduced budgets, then increased investment as main KPIs (CPS, CVR, ROAS) improved.

With everything in one campaign, the algorithm had more data to work with, which helped it get out of the learning phase faster and start scaling. Once that happened, performance picked up.

Orders increased by 22%, while spend dropped by 6%. CPC fell 15% and CPS dropped 13%, making traffic more efficient overall. CVR improved by 10%, which helped drive a 25% lift in ROAS. And the campaign reached a much larger audience—with 248% more impressions—to support scalable growth.

Beyond performance gains, the test also provided clearer insights into what was driving results, giving the team a stronger, data-backed foundation for continuing to scale in the second half of the year.