£820k more revenue
Stone Store × Hankinson
Reigniting growth after three years of flat revenue.
Natural stone · Porcelain tiles · Outdoor paving
The headline
Growth restored. Marketing made commercially accountable.
£23k less spend
Spend / revenue
Consecutive YoY gains
The commercial challenge
The platform looked successful. The business did not feel the benefit.
Stone Store specialises in natural stone and porcelain tiles, alongside outdoor paving. By July 2025, growth had stalled while acquisition costs continued to rise.
A large-agency, automation-led approach had allowed Performance Max to absorb an increasing share of budget. Google reported activity, but total business revenue was not keeping pace with the investment. Organic visibility was also declining.
The answer was not another campaign optimisation. It required senior commercial direction across paid media, SEO, customer experience, conversion and measurement.
What the agency model created
More automation. More cost. Almost no incremental growth.
Cross-network / PMax investment£2.53mJuly 2022–June 2025
By the first half of 2025, Cross-network campaigns consumed 86% of Google spend. Investment in that channel rose by 33% year on year, while dashboard revenue moved by only 1.5%.
Spend rose far faster than revenue
2022 indexed to 100320240160800
202220232024
Marketing spend +215%Revenue +18%
Where Google budget went
H1 comparison+£173k extra PMax investment for broadly flat revenue
PMax versus direct control
The budget moved away from accountable campaigns.
Cross-network expansion did not supplement direct Search and Shopping. It increasingly replaced them—concentrating spend inside Google’s least transparent campaign type.
PeriodPMaxSearch / ShoppingTotal spendRevenueEfficiency
2022 → 2023Automation expansion+446%−18%+146%+14%−54%
2023 → 2024Further investment+10%+93%+28%+3.6%−19%
H1 2024 → H1 2025Before Hankinson+33%−43%+12%+1.5%−9%
20225.8%Spend / revenue
202312.6%+116% worse
202415.5%+23% worse
H1 202517.8%Peak inefficiency
For every £100 of revenue, marketing cost more than tripled—from £5.83 in 2022 to £17.84 immediately before the intervention.
The intervention · July 2025
Stop managing the platform. Start directing the business.
Agency-led automation
- Platform attribution treated as the answer
- PMax absorbed the majority of budget
- Channel activity disconnected from total revenue
- Rising cost accepted as the price of growth
0102
Fractional marketing direction
- Investment judged against business turnover
- Migration into controlled Search and Shopping
- Paid, SEO, UX and CRO managed as one system
- Commercial outcomes—not platform credit—set direction
Ten-month matched comparison
The line changed direction.
July–April£843k
positive commercial swing from £820k additional revenue and £23k lower marketing cost.
9consecutive months
of year-on-year revenue growth following the transition month—from August 2025 through April 2026.
ASONDJFMA
Month-by-month proof
Growth became repeatable—not a single exceptional month.
+1.3%Aug
+16.7%Sep
+24.3%Oct
+21.1%Nov
+41.6%Dec
+16.6%Jan
+21.3%Feb
+8.2%Mar
+8%Apr
From black box to controlled growth
Shopping rebuilt around products, margin and intent.
Before01
One automated system
Cross-network campaigns bundled audiences, placements and products together, allowing the platform to decide where budget flowed.
SearchShoppingDisplayYouTubePMax
After08+
Commercially distinct Shopping portfolios
Budget and ROAS controls were rebuilt around actual product economics and customer demand.
- Stone-effect porcelain
- Natural stone tiles
- Marble-effect porcelain
- Outdoor tiles
- Stone paving
- Concrete effect
- Wood effect
- Priority product lines
Visibility
Know which products consume budget and which generate commercially valuable demand.
Control
Set investment and ROAS according to margin, stock, seasonality and growth potential.
Incrementality
Judge paid media against total turnover—not the revenue the advertising platform awards itself.
Compounding gains
Paid efficiency was only one part of the result.
Organic traffic
Organic traffic doubled while category visibility was rebuilt.
Stone tiles
Category-leading visibility for a commercially critical search.
Porcelain tiles
Top-five visibility in one of the market’s most competitive categories.
Floor tiles
Broadening non-paid demand beyond individual product campaigns.
Services
A connected response, not another channel plan.
Google Ads
- Shopping
- Search
- Display
Website UX, Design & CRO
SEO
A note on evidence
Paid-media figures are taken from Stone Store’s historical dashboard. Cross-network reporting ends when the migration away from PMax begins in July 2025. The £843k commercial swing measures revenue growth plus reduced marketing cost; a quantified net-profit claim requires gross-margin and operating-cost data.
Your growth constraint
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