Muscle Squad

MuscleSquad, launched in 2017, is a UK-based sports and fitness company specialising in both home and commercial gym equipment.

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THE CHALLENGE

The primary goal for MuscleSquad was to maintain the momentum gained during the pandemic while achieving consistent year-over-year growth as the post-lockdown landscape evolved. With gyms reopening and restrictions lifted, MuscleSquad faced the challenge of adapting to a reduced volume of online searches and shifting consumer behaviour. The company recognised that despite their initial success, they still had relatively low customer awareness and market share compared to larger competitors in the fitness equipment industry.

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Additionally, MuscleSquad was struggling with inconsistent return on ad spend (ROAS), moving from steady performance to more sporadic results.

To address these challenges, Vagabond Digital was brought on board with the goal to increase brand visibility, drive targeted traffic, and enhance customer engagement to maintain growth while navigating the post-pandemic market conditions.

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THE SOLUTION

1. Feed Optimisation: One of the key issues identified was that GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers) were missing for all products, and many important product attributes were either missing or incorrectly listed in the product feed. Vagabond Digital addressed this by conducting a full feed optimisation, ensuring that all product titles, descriptions, categories, and product types were aligned with Google Best Practices. This optimisation also involved adding relevant EANs (European Article Numbers) across the feed, which enhanced the accuracy and visibility of MuscleSquad’s product listings across Google Shopping and other platforms.

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2. Account Restructuring: The existing account structure was not aligned with best practices, which resulted in inefficient ad spend and suboptimal targeting. Vagabond Digital restructured the account by segmenting products by category to ensure that the right categories were getting the appropriate level of coverage and budget allocation allowing for a more efficient approach.

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‍3. Campaign Setup and Ad Quality: The audit revealed that MuscleSquad’s campaigns were not set up in line with best practices, which contributed to low ad quality and underperformance. We revamped the campaign setups to improve ad relevance and quality. This effort helped the ads achieve an "Excellent" ranking, significantly increasing their visibility and engagement across search and social platforms.

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4. Audience Targeting and Signals: To ensure that campaigns were reaching the most relevant audience, Vagabond Digital set up audience signals based on a hyper-specific approach, focusing on product categories and previous interactions with the brand. This allowed for more precise targeting of users who were likely to be interested in specific product categories. The audience signals were continuously revised and optimised based on the search queries and performance data gathered from ongoing campaigns, ensuring that targeting remained highly relevant and effective.

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5. Google Analytics (GA) Tracking Fixes: A critical issue identified was that MuscleSquad’s GA setup was incorrect, leading to inaccurate tracking of key data across channels. This issue rendered the tracking data unreliable for optimisations and day-to-day account management. Vagabond Digital fixed the GA tracking issues, ensuring that all channels were correctly tracked. This provided MuscleSquad with accurate, actionable data that could be used for weekly optimisations and informed decision-making, improving the overall effectiveness of the campaigns.

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RESULTS

For MuscleSquad, we drove measurable growth through smarter campaign execution:

• +54% ROAS on Search campaigns (May–Dec YoY).
• Black Friday/Cyber Week: Achieved a 33% revenue increase and +54% new users, despite reduced spend.
• Rolled out Performance Max campaigns across product categories to maximise sales.

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Through campaign and product feed optimisation, we delivered sustainable YoY growth, strengthening MuscleSquad’s position in a highly competitive market.

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