How We Helped a Museum Grow Online Sales by 146% Using Google Shopping & Performance Max
With no previous eCommerce advertising in place, this museum partnered with Tiny Giant to build a scalable paid media strategy. In just a few months, we turned a dormant online store into a high-performing revenue stream, delivering over $21,000 in new revenue with a 6.17x return on ad spend in 4 months.
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Overview
A museum with a historically in-person business model partnered with Tiny Giant to unlock a new source of revenue: its underperforming online store. With no previous advertising experience, minimal eCommerce traffic, and limited internal resources, the museum needed a lean but effective digital strategy.Through the use of Google Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, we helped the organization drive a 146% year-over-year increase in online sales. We generated over $21K in revenue from just $3.45K in ad spend, delivering a 6.17x return on their investment in less than one year.
The Challenge
Like many cultural institutions, this museum relied heavily on physical visitors and government funding. With changing visitor behavior and decreasing financial support, leadership sought a scalable way to grow revenue, without overextending their small internal team.
The key challenges:
- No existing paid media presence
- An online store averaging only ~$4,000/month in revenue
- Unoptimized product feed and Shopify store setup
- Concerns around whether digital ads could deliver a meaningful return
The Strategy
We focused on data-backed product selection, lean budget testing, and audience targeting that went beyond guesswork.
- Product Strategy:
- Analyzed GA4 to identify top-selling products from all sources
- Filtered out SKUs under $10 to ensure margin-positive outcomes
- Created segmented product groups for Google Shopping and PMAX
- Campaign Setup:
- Launched Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns in parallel
- Set up GA4 to track eComm conversions only (excluding donations, tickets, etc.)
- Implemented a 600% Target ROAS strategy, adjusted weekly based on performance
- Audience Targeting:
- Built targeting around past online shoppers, website visitors, museum members, and interest-based new audiences through Google’s AI
- Continuous Optimization:
- Improved product titles and feed quality
- Scaled budget slowly as performance proved consistent
- Excluded underperforming product categories and asset groups
Results
In just a few months, this campaign delivered powerful, measurable outcomes:
- Revenue from Ads: Grew from ~$0 to $21,320
- Ad Spend: $3,450
- Product Purchases Attributed to Ads: 457
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): 6.17x
These results were driven by strategic product segmentation, targeted campaign optimization, and consistent weekly adjustments. The impact was visible within the first two weeks and continued to scale with minimal wasted spend.
Bonus Impact
Though we only optimized for eCommerce conversions, the campaigns had an unexpected ripple effect.
- A meaningful portion of ad traffic also converted into ticket and membership sales
- GA4 data revealed users were either adding both products and visits to their cart, or purchasing only tickets after browsing products
Why It Worked
- We aligned paid media with proven organic demand (GA4-backed)
- Prioritized product margin and performance over guessing
- Used slow, data-backed scaling to protect ROI
- Created unexpected lift in related KPIs without additional spend
Feedback
“We weren’t sure digital ads would even work for us. This gave us confidence, and revenue we didn’t expect from our store.”
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