Case study, US webshop, automotive

NorthCoastKeyless.com: six years of growth against Amazon and Walmart

A WooCommerce store for replacement car keys, competing in a price war with the biggest retailers in the United States. We act as its CMO and technical partner, made Google optimise for profit instead of revenue, and built the plugin that became a product.

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Revenue from Google Ads

+515%

2019 to 2025, while meeting target ROAS

Return on ad spend

+200%

grown during the engagement and kept while scaling

Years of engagement

6

growth in every single one of them

Channels run

4

Google, Meta, Reddit and Amazon

Google Ads revenue compares 2025 with 2019, the year before we took over the account in January 2020.
Google Ads conversion value for Northcoast Keyless between January 2019 and December 2024, growing steadily after Wolf+Bär took over the account in January 2020
Conversion value per month. The blue line marks the account handover in January 2020.

NorthCoastKeyless.com, a US retailer of replacement car keys for consumers, has become a market leader in the highly competitive automotive industry. Through its WooCommerce webshop the business achieved exceptional growth, driven by our work: six years of year over year revenue increases while hitting target ROAS. Acting as the webshop's CMO, we fixed bugs, implemented plugins, managed attacks, optimised hosting and speed, and ran Google, Meta, Reddit and Amazon, guiding the retailer to industry leadership.

The challenge

The approach

  1. Free strategy call. We discussed the business goals, audited the current setup and identified the areas for improvement. The result was an action plan with a quote.
  2. Google Ads and Amazon Ads management. We took full control, restructured and optimised the campaigns for profitability and balanced revenue growth.
  3. Ad spend optimisation. A data driven approach to improve campaign performance across channels.
  4. WooCommerce store optimisation. Better user experience, higher conversion rates and more customer engagement.
  5. A second income stream. AdSense on the informational pages, adding revenue alongside ecommerce sales.
  6. Fighting the price war. In 2023 we built a custom plugin that focuses campaigns on high margin products and sets the ad budget to profit volume, so the shop could keep healthy margins and avoid the race to the bottom. Out of it grew the Google Automated Discounts plugin for WooCommerce, now available to every shop.

The results

  • 515 percent revenue growth on Google Ads while consistently meeting target ROAS.
  • Sustainable profit and an end to the race to the bottom, through the custom Google Automated Discounts solution.
  • Market leadership: outperformed giants like Walmart and Amazon through profit focused optimisation and strategic pricing.
  • Diversified revenue: AdSense on informational pages and a WooCommerce store optimised for higher conversion rates.
  • Control during growth thanks to transparent KPI reporting and a 24/7 online dashboard.

What's next

With our ongoing support NorthCoastKeyless is positioned for further success, using advanced digital marketing strategies and innovative tools to stay ahead in the highly competitive automotive ecommerce space.

Quote

"I had a lightbulb moment about creating a solution that would make Google Ads optimise for profit rather than revenue. I reached out to W+B Agency, who were the developers of my conversion reporting plugin. Aleks and the team quickly understood my goal and created a custom plugin to report my profit margin to Google Ads for each sale. This allowed Google to optimise for my highest margin products, and it changed the game for my business. W+B Agency did not stop there. We continued to work together on more innovative solutions that bring massive value. I could not recommend them enough; they have been an integral part of my store's success."

Carrington Dillon, NorthCoastKeyless.com

Services in this project: paid ads and tracking, WooCommerce expertise, custom technical solutions.