112: Office Hours | From Pause to Profit: How FamilyTreeDNA Rebuilt Paid Search & Exceeded ROAS Goals with Sara Reinhold

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor. I'm your host, Danny Gavin. And together with industry leaders and marketing experts, we'll explore the meeting point of mentorship and marketing. We'll discover how these connections have affected careers, marketing strategies, and lives.

Now get ready to get human. Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast. Today we've got a case study style episode in store where we'll be breaking down a long-term Optage partnership that evolved dramatically over nearly three years. I'm super excited to be joined by Sarah, Paid Search Guru at Optage.

She has played a huge role in developing the strategy behind various campaigns for this client. And I'm excited to pick her brain and hear about the hands-on execution from start to scale. As we discuss the ins and outs of some of the strategies we've implemented, we're going to talk about the initial challenge the client came to us with, the pivots and recommendations made, the scaling decisions, performance and results. Most importantly, we'll talk about what big lessons this case and many others like it have taught us about paid search and growth timing.

All right. So, Sarah, how are you doing? I'm great. I'm excited to be here.

Amazing. Who is Family Tree DNA? So Family Tree DNA is a D2C DNA testing and genetic genealogy company focused on helping people discover, verify, and kind of expand their family history. They would call it breaking through brick walls, if you will.

So unlike many consumer DNA brands, Family Tree specializes in more advanced ancestry research. So they're the only company offering a comprehensive DNA testing and matching through their autosomal DNA test called Family Finder. And then they also offer YDNA tests, which are actually exclusive to Family Tree. And they're the only Y DNA testing and matching database in the world.

And Y DNA basically just traces your father's paternal line through the Y chromosome. And then they also offer MT DNA, which is mitochondrial DNA testing, which is also exclusive to family tree. And they're the only MT DNA testing and matching database available for that as well. And that more reveals your mother's maternal ancestry side.

So for the Y DNA tests, um, genetic males can take that. And then the MT DNA tests, even though it tracks your mother's side, both um genetic males and females can take that. So, you know, with all of that, they also offer like super powerful matching tools and they also have like a highly engaged genealogy community. So they offer a lot of things which really sets them apart from other companies, and that makes them really fun to work with.

And I was gonna make a joke that you sound like you have some sort of like biology or pre-meta background. But as we all know, check out our other episode. Sarah does. Yes.

So that's why that's why she can talk so cool, even though she doesn't work for them, which is awesome. Yes, previous nurse here. So yeah. So to set the scene for our listeners, could you give us a general idea of where they were when they first came to Optage?

When Family Tree first came here, their paid media presence initially with us was very limited. We were only running paid search with a relatively small budget of around $7,000 a month. And that was including management fees. And they had actually paused advertising entirely for about two years prior from um 2022 to 2024.

So we were essentially restarting paid media from the ground up, rebuilding momentum and reintroducing the brand into the market. And I think the reason why they paused advertising was because they felt like it really wasn't doing anything. It was like, is it really helping? Is it not?

So they shut it off. And then it came to a point where it's like, we want more sales, so we need to turn it on again. And I think that's where they found out. Yeah.

And I think their company was bought by someone new as well at that time. And they did not see the benefits of marketing, and they were the ones that told them to pause. Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Can you tell us what initial goals were set after getting familiar with the client situation?

So we had a couple of different ones. We wanted to re-establish a paid media presence after that extended pause, regain efficiency by prioritizing high-intent traffic and proven channels. And then we wanted to do that by building on historically strong performance rather than just starting from scratch. So it's nice to have that um historical data.

What stood out to you when you looked at it and analyzed it? Yeah, one of the things we were most excited about was the client's historical performance because even though they had paused advertising for a couple of years, the data they had before the pause was strong. Um, we were seeing roads consistently up of four, which gave us confidence that paid media worked for the business. And it meant we weren't just starting from zero.

Um, so we could use that historical data as a benchmark to build, rebuild smarter, leaner campaigns and focus on what had already proven to convert and scale from a place of evidence rather than just, you know, initial experimentation. So when we first launched the ads, I believe there's a period of time where things weren't going well. Um, what data point or what things concerned you the most at that time? The biggest red flag for us early on was ROAS.

Across our search campaigns, we were really struggling to hit a ROAS of even just one. And anytime we did get above that, it was very inconsistent. And that told us that even though we were capturing intent efficiency, the efficiency just wasn't there. Performance max was actually our strongest channel at the time, but it came with major constraints.

We were only able to run it as a feed-only campaign with a single GTI in, which limited both scale and stability. And even so, PMAX generally outperformed Search, landing somewhere between like a 1.5 and two rows. However, the performance was heavily dependent on sale periods.

So outside of promotions, we saw significant dips in efficiency, which made it clear that the setup wasn't sustainable long term. And that combination, Search struggling to break even and PMAX performing better, but being highly volatile during or due to the fee limitations and having just one product at the time was the moment we knew the initial relaunch approach needed to change. We had proof the demand existed, but the structure and inputs weren't strong enough yet to support consistent profitability.

And for those people who don't know what a single GTIN is, so obviously they've got a couple products that they have. So single GTIN would just be like one of those products, a single, you know, you would say like a skew. A single skew, that was the only thing that was being pushed at the time. Yeah.

And the one that they did have was their autosomal DNA test, which other competitors have. So we weren't even advertising for their products that set them apart. All right. So things weren't going well.

What did you do? Like what changed? Well, we were so bummed when we realized the gold that we thought we had struck, you know, having a bunch of strong performing data turned out to be no longer effective. And at the time, I was still pretty green in the PPC world.

So my wonderful agency, Optage, Wink, had given me capacity to where I could spend the time to really start from scratch. So initially I was like, darn, this isn't gonna be as simple as I thought. But that turned quickly into a determination. Me and Brianna, who was also working on it with me at the time, we were honestly pretty offended by the lack of performance, which gave us motivation to figure out something that could work.

Cool. So what actions were taken to conduct research and evaluate what's going wrong? How what can we get to be better? We immediately paused our brand and non-branded search campaign so that we could establish a clean baseline while preserving costs.

And then from there, that's when we launched our performance max feed-only campaign, which immediately outperformed the search, even with just the single product. And we briefly reintroduced the branded search to test its impact. But when its ROAS underperformed and began to cannibalize the PMAX performance, we just paused it again about it was about after two weeks. And in parallel, we restructured the account from the ground up, which meant, you know, conducting the fresh keyword research and then validating it against the historical performance data.

So if a keyword had worked in the past, but it wasn't supported by current data or intent, we just left it out. And after conducting our own separate research, it seemed like there was a definite intent mismatch and structural issues. So just to clarify, on the PMAX side, was there a strategic change in the direction on PMAX, or was it always feed only? Not necessarily.

It was always feed only. And we were working, or they were really working on getting more GTINs for us to run. So basically, from when we launched it, we we ran the brand and on non-branded search campaigns. We ended up pausing those.

That's when we pivoted to feed only PMAX. And we ran the one product, and we basically did that until March. And March was when they were able to provide us with the other GTINs and we were able to expand the products through the feed only. So one of the big pivots was not necessarily something that you did, but it was the client adding additional GTINs, adding additional products to the feed.

How did that change how the PMAX campaign performed? Like I said, in March, we added the additional GTINs, which was great because basically these are the products that are going to set them apart from other companies. And doing that gave the algorithm more products to work with and expanded reach. So it really allowed us to improve ROAS consistency and better capture incremental conversions across the product catalog.

It's something I think about like with Meta. I know it's like a total different conversation, but it's sort of like when you limit something to only one thing, it's kind of hard to find winners, right? So if you give something more to play with, it gives it a better chance. Kind of like if you go to Vegas, well, you usually lose all your money.

But if you play different games, you have a better chance of winning than if you go play one game. Very true. You know, I know there's some chatter out there. Should you have a feed-only PMAX or not?

In this case, it was specifically feed-only PMAX. So why did that make sense for this client? So feed-only PMAX gave us the cleanest way to capture bottom funnel demand while kind of minimizing noise. With the underperforming search, it allowed us to lean into high-intent shopping signals, stabilize the ROAS, and re-establish conversion data in the account that was recent.

Awesome. So if you would have had all the other features in PMAX, it may have muddied up the waters. And therefore, in this case, where we were trying to get a really strong ROAS, we needed that clean data, clean products to get Google to do exactly what we needed them to do. Exactly.

It was the most conservative approach to get them the goals that they needed. So between adding the more GTINs, doing your keyword research, overall, the success of the campaigns increased. All right. So that brings us to the big shift scaling the account.

So after working with a small budget, getting PMAX to work, doing testing for the search campaigns, and we saw some really good success. The client was like, hey, you guys are doing well, and we've got some demands from up on high that we need to, you know, push sales a little bit more. I think it's time that we go all in. And at that point, the client was like, okay, we have a chunk of money and we want to do more.

We don't just want to do Google, but even in Google, are there other things that we can do? What about paid social, Meta? We want to spend money on creating really, really cool ads. So it was amazing because we did really well for the small amount, and that gave them the confidence, let's move this even higher.

And and the idea was that guys, if you can now take a larger budget and do even better, then who knows what's the steps after that. So but at that point in time, we had an issue. How are we going to take this new amount of money and be able to prove the return on investment? Do we want to do it through a three-month blitz and spend a lot of money or a six-month sustainable scale?

And I remember at that time, it kind of seemed like they were pushing us to do the three-month, but we had to step back and be like, okay, what's actually going to be super successful? So therefore, Sarah, could you talk us through the internal optage decision around should we do three months or should we do six months? Yeah. So the choice was between concentrating into that three-month blitz, like you're saying, and then potentially keeping that budget for the next three months if performance was good.

Or the second choice was spreading that same budget over six months. So essentially, we'd be getting less money that way. And internally, we decided on the six-month sustainable approach because the campaigns were extremely sensitive and required time to retrain properly. And it took longer than expected to get both non-brain and search and PMAX aligned with the right intent and to push the algorithms in a productive direction.

We intentionally chose time over speed. And by pacing spend more conservatively, we gave ourselves the runway needed to stabilize performance, validate the structure, and rebuild reliable conversion signals, especially adding in the completely new service line, which we didn't have previous reliable performance data on. All right, Sarah. So now for the good stuff.

What did we help build? Let's talk about the goals and strategies that we implemented during that six-month phase of the partnership. Yeah. So we first improved our non-branded search campaigns.

We basically just continued optimizing the existing search campaigns while taking advantage of the higher budget to expand into higher funnel ad groups. This allowed us to capture more exploratory searches and drive broader awareness while maintaining strong intent alignment for conversions. And then we also wanted to maintain our feed-only performance max because that was the core driver results. And we had the extra GTINs at this point.

So that allowed us to improve ROAS consistency and better capture the conversions across the product catalog. We wanted to launch some YouTube campaigns and we ran two different campaigns to test which delivery model performed best. The TCPV target cost per view campaign focused primarily on efficiency and engagement, whereas our second one, TCPN, which is target cost per milli, prioritized reach and awareness. And after evaluating performance at the end of the six-month period, we decided they delivered honestly pretty similar results.

However, TCPA delivered higher engagement while also still getting the reach and awareness that TCPM got. So we ended up consolidating way later to just the TCPB. And then lastly, we ended up actually, we had built and launched a competitors campaign. And although it was generating conversions, it was very costly and it didn't meet our aggressive ROAS targets at the time.

So we decided to deposit temporarily and basically just revisit it once the six-month performance phase was over and goals allowed a little bit more flexibility. That's amazing. And I think one of the other cool things about this is, you know, a lot of clients that we have stay away from YouTube because naturally the KPIs for YouTube aren't the same. You're most of the time, you're not going to see direct sales.

But in the world of full funnel marketing, where we need to like create a demand and what's going on, it's important to have YouTube. And obviously you're going to look at the final total, how much money you spent and what that ROAS or what that ROI looks like. But I think it's awesome that this client in particular was open to spending money at that top of the funnel, even though that money directly you wouldn't necessarily see sales. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah. So really just adding YouTube in. We hadn't been targeting the upper part of the funnel quite yet with them. You know, PMAX could kind of reach higher up, but it really is more middle of the funnel to lower.

And so, um, and really the client came to us excited about YouTube as well. Like they understood that awareness was really important for just the whole brand as a whole. And so, really, we were excited to capture that upper funnel. And they we made it very clear that it wasn't gonna get any type of conversion data necessarily unless, you know, here and there.

But really, we wanted to do this, wanted to test creative and and really drive leads lower into the funnel so that our other campaigns that we'd already established could capture the people that we got through that. Awesome. That's a great explanation. Thank you.

So after these changes, a full funnel, what results did the team see after from this six-month approach? So I think it's important to say that our internal target was a ROAS of 1.6. That was our ideal ROAS goal.

We had kind of like a middle of the ground and then like the lowest floor ROAS that we could get. And we ended up getting an overall ROAS of a 1.72. That's including paid search, paid social, our creative fee, our management fee.

So we basically blew it through the roof and it was really exciting for everyone involved. Right. Because that scale really was the client were like, one is like the the worst case scenario, but we'd be technically okay. Uh two is like the highest, and then the expectation, like you said, was more of like a 1.

6 or 1.5. And the fact that we came out swinging at a 1.7, like it was like, oh my gosh, it's just crazy.

Yes. So because of that, um, I mean, really, six months pouring it in, trying all these different strategies, and then actually having this winning model, a Q4 comes along and the client is super thrilled. And so, what did they decide to do? They decided to give us an additional budget, which was 5.

7 times our original budget, which was so exciting and a little intimidating. Some people don't even spend that over a year, right? So here we're having like a quarter, and it's like, okay. So with that sort of budget, there's a lot more to be done.

And especially it's holiday time. So the creative that maybe you used, Q2, Q3, it's very different. The messaging is very different. So tell me a little bit about setting up the Q4 campaigns for success.

This time we were leveraging the confidence we had built over the six-month performance window. And unlike before, when budgets were cautious and we were testing carefully, this time we were able to aggressively allocate budget to areas where we knew worked well, like PMAX and on-brained search were main drivers. And then while also experimenting with new channels such as DemandGen and being shopping. So essentially, we were combining data-backed certainty with strategic expansion, which allowed us to drive results at a scale we hadn't attempted before.

And this basically resulted in me doing a rapid campaign build. It was, we we ended up expanding our PMAX. It was no longer feed only. We added in our headlines, descriptions, images, and our new like video assets.

I ended up building an evergreen demand gen um that was on maximized clicks and then a holiday demand gen on max conversions that I had for the highest sale periods, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday. I built a holiday non-branded search campaign, relaunched the branded campaign. And then that's when we narrowed our YouTube campaign to the Best Performer, which was the Target CPV. And we launched some holiday video assets there.

And then we also launched that small bing shopping campaign. So a lot happened very quickly. What aspect of this end-of-the-year push are you most proud of? I am most proud of the team's courage and conviction.

At first, it felt really risky, but we realized that it was entirely data-driven and confidence-backed. The push was ultimately about doing what was best for the client. And sometimes that means taking calculated risks to maximize results. We also spent so much time on planning and cross-collaborating with our service lines.

So the teamwork really made it. And one thing we haven't spoken about is just how great their internal marketing team is. Yes. So tell me a little bit, how did the collaboration go with them to elevate the Q4 strategy?

There was a lot of trust with the client at the very get-go when we first started advertising with them, but it got stronger over time. They valued our opinion. We really value theirs, though. They are amazing as a marketing team.

They bring deep expertise and a very clear understanding of their business. So it makes it so fun to collaborate with them. And that dynamic makes it super easy to have honest conversations and make decisions confidently, especially when trying something new, like the Q4 end-of-year push. And honestly, transparency with them is really critical.

And it was helpful that they knew so much. But like early on, um, there's a lot of underperformance and that could have shaken confidence. But by sharing those challenges openly with them, explaining the data and outlining next steps, we really maintained trust with them. And being upfront about what we knew, what we didn't at the time, and how we planned to fix it really allowed us to treat early setbacks as learning opportunities.

And that really funneled our trust going into Q4. And like I said, they're just amazing. They would send us um, you know, their internal plans, totally mapped out in these beautiful Excel sheets. And it would really help us on the Optage team plan for the holidays and just the whole Q4 period.

With so much effort, with amazing cross-collaboration between Optage's teams and with the internal team. Man, did we have one heck of a payoff? I'm gonna quote the client, but they said it's pretty incredible, but we are 61% above where we were last year. This is the first time since Q4 of 2021 that we're up in a certain segment of product from a previous year.

So that is insane. Therefore, just a big reveal is our Q4 paid search, ROAS. 2.59.

And therefore, this is not just like a fake 2.59, but it's a 2.59 that actually caused the growth of a whole quarter that they've never seen in a period of four or five years. That's insane.

So, Sarah, what do you think ultimately unlocked this level of performance? It was the combination of just teamwork and strategy alignment. Internally, the team was incredibly collaborative. People stepped in wherever needed, whether that was strategic support, execution help, or simply just backing each other up during a very, very fast-paced period.

For example, our creative team truly pumped out some beautiful video and visual assets in a very, very short amount of time. And someone even came in to support that development who wasn't even assigned to the account. And I truly think that it was some of their best work and the performance reflected that. But from a performance standpoint, everything was finally working together.

The upper funnel campaigns drove incremental demand and awareness, which directly supported the lower funnel paid search. And at the same time, relaunching branded search ensured we protected the family tree DNA name and efficiently captured users who were primed by those higher funnel efforts, like YouTube. Wow. One thing that I want to talk about as well, it's a little bit of a veering, but what changes mentally when you go from managing a $7,000 budget a month to a $40,000 budget a month?

I am very conservative financially in all areas of my life, personal and work. So I'm naturally very cautious when it comes to spending a client's money responsibly. And the increased budget added another layer of pressure. At the same time, it became a really valuable challenge for me.

A budget of that size creates room for meaningful testing and calculated risk, testing that can ultimately unlock much stronger results for the client. So the key shift for me was reframing risk as intentional experimentation. And I leaned heavily on my team during that period to give me the confidence and reassurance I needed. And they helped keep my mind focused on the positive what if rather than the negative what if, you know.

Yeah. And I think that positive outlook is really important because if you go down the negative, it could take you to a bad place. It's not worth it. Wow.

And I think to end off, like we gave such a Roes number, but we actually did a customer satisfaction survey with this client recently. And the way we do it at Optimus is a little bit different. We actually have a face-to-face conversation and we actually get a different account manager who's not on the account to actually ask the questions. And we actually hit 100%.

And that's not just because of the things that we did financially to cause amazing campaigns, but also listening to feedback that we had from them earlier in the year and changed some of the things we did to make that relationship even stronger. I mean, also resulted in like a perfect score, which I think is so cool. First of all, congratulations you to Sarah for like an amazing year with this client. Like I don't think you could, it's like a storybook of like one challenge and building and the next and building and like ending off with like the gold medal at the Olympics.

And that's really what this was. So congrats to you and to the whole team. Thank you. So if we were to summarize here at the end of our conversation, what are some fast hit tips that listeners can learn from this year and the story?

What would you say? Okay, there's a couple. Just because it worked in the past doesn't mean it's gonna work now. There's too many changes that go on for that to happen.

There are huge impacts to pausing your marketing. Budget pacing matters just as much as budget size. And sometimes risk is good. Calculated risk could take your account to levels you never even imagined.

ROAS goals should guide what you don't run in addition to what you do. And really long-term partnerships outperform short-term wins. Yeah, that last one really sticks because, in the end of the day, like we've had people who want results like that. And usually in marketing, especially in Google Ads, it doesn't, you don't get that win in that first try.

And therefore, when you have a partner who's like, okay, we're gonna work on this together, we're gonna go through the highs and lows, that's when you can get the success. It's like anything in life, right? I think part of the problem we have these days is like young people, they look at, oh, wow, look at all these millionaires and driving Porsches on Instagram and TikTok, right? And they don't realize all the hard effort that it takes to actually get to that point.

And it is, it takes effort. So you need to have a willing partner who's gonna be willing to work through it together. And when you do, you have an amazing story like this of Optage and Family Tree DNA working together to make a remarkable, unbelievable 2025. So much so, then 2026, a whole lot more is coming our way.

And hopefully we'll have a part two in January of 2027. We'll talk about it. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for chatting with me today. It's awesome to see your growth and just all the cool stuff that you bring to Optage and to all of our listeners and to everything you do.

So keep up the good work. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I love talking about them, love them as a client, so it's always fun getting to Yakabam.

And thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We'll speak with you next time. Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast. Be sure to check us out online at thedor.

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