SGT Grit

SGT Grit is a Marine Corps merchandise brand: unit t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and Marine gear. We run their advertising on both channels, and the Meta side has its own case study. On Google, the assignment was different: not more spend, better spend.

The Challenge

The account had run at real scale for years: $351K of spend in 2022, $269K in 2024, with the return hovering around 6x the whole time. Under that blended average, some spend earned its keep and some did not. The 2025 mandate was to find out which was which, cut what was not paying back, and keep the revenue engine running on what remained.

The Solution

• Rebuilt Performance Max around product categories with aggressive per-campaign targets: sweatshirts and hoodies at a 550% ROAS target, unit t-shirts at 500%
• Ran Shopping in two tiers: a consolidated all-products campaign on target ROAS, plus a Max Clicks catch-all for the long tail of the catalog
• Separated brand search into distinct Sgt Grit and Grunt campaigns, so each brand name's demand is measured on its own
• Kept focused non-brand search campaigns for Marine store and apparel terms
• Used a DSA-fed Performance Max campaign for catalog coverage
• Re-engaged past buyers with a Demand Gen remarketing video campaign

The Results

The trade was explicit: total revenue came down as unprofitable spend came out, from $1.73M in 2024 to $1.27M in 2025. But every remaining dollar worked harder, returning $10.19 instead of $6.41. The holiday quarter proved the structure could still scale when it mattered.