Case 04 · B2B E-commerce · Commercial LED Lighting · United States
Six months of clicks, one persistent fix, finally, real purchases.
The problem
The client runs a narrow-niche B2B e-commerce operation selling commercial-grade LED lighting — DLC Premium and UL-listed fixtures with field-selectable wattage and color temperature — direct to contractors and facility managers through a WooCommerce storefront, with a separate quote path for bulk orders. When the account changed hands, ad spend was producing steady clicks and zero recorded Purchases. The account structure and conversion tracking couldn't tell a browsing click from a completed sale, so Google's own bidding had no real signal to optimize toward.
A product catalog this technical doesn't have one search audience — it has two, and they use almost the same words. "Recessed downlight," "vapor tight," and "selectable CCT" are exactly what a contractor searches for, and exactly what a homeowner searches for too.
What I did
Diagnosed the tracking gap masking real demand
Traffic volume existed from day one, but the account had no way to distinguish a real sale from a page visit. Maximize Clicks was optimizing for the wrong thing entirely, because there was no clean Purchase signal yet to bid against.
Built a systematic residential-exclusion filter
Layered a 100+ term shared "Residential Exclusions" negative list (chandeliers, home depot, walmart, pendant lights, night light) with a second 80+ term "Foreign Language and Irrelevant" list, plus retailer-brand negatives (Costco, Lowe's, Harbor Freight, Ace Hardware) — separating genuine contractor intent from consumer lookalike searches using the same technical vocabulary.
Corrected the same tracking mistake three times
Add to Cart and Begin Checkout kept getting re-elevated into the primary "Conversions" count — inflating one month's reported total to 133 while actual Purchases sat at zero. Each time it resurfaced (April, June, and again in July), it was caught and reverted, until Purchases was locked in for good as the account's only true conversion signal on August 3.
Expanded into adjacent, code-relevant commercial categories
Rather than only filtering out consumer intent, built out real coverage for B2B-specific categories the account was under-targeting — emergency and exit signage, LED panels and troffers, vapor-tight fixtures — the kind of code-driven purchases a facility manager makes but a homeowner never does.
Rebuilt the Search campaign structure from the ground up
Once Purchase tracking was reliable, rebuilt the primary Search campaign into a parallel, leaner structure with a dedicated "B2B Supply & Contractor" ad group — pausing legacy ad groups outright rather than continuing to tune them, so targeting matched what was actually converting instead of five months of accumulated test keywords.
Results over time
The account's real turning point is the August 3 tracking fix — everything since has held at a stronger, cleaner baseline:
Full results (April 2026 – Sep 13, 2026)
The key shift
Before August, every dollar spent was still an experiment in whether the account could tell a real buyer from a curious homeowner — the targeting work was real, but the tracking kept lying about the results. Once Purchases was locked in as the only signal that mattered, the same account produced 6 real sales in a single month, on the fewest clicks since the campaign began, and every conversion reported since has been a real one.
Recognize this in your own account?
If you sell technical products online and your Google Ads account can't tell a bulk buyer from a browsing homeowner, let's talk. I'll show you exactly where the overlap is costing you — no pressure.
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