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Updated: September 2026
+125%
revenue in 7 months. A nicotine-free pouch brand from the United States
A DTC store on Shopify, the American market, strong competition and a category customers increasingly ask AI about. We took over SEO, AI visibility, sales measurement and ads. Below is the full record, month by month.
- Industry
- Nicotine-free pouches, DTC
- Market
- United States
- Platform
- Shopify, headless store
- Period
- February to September 2026
- Scope
- SEO, AI, measurement, ads
+125%
Store revenue
February → August
−53.2%
Customer acquisition cost
February → August
×2.1
Return on ad spend (MER)
February → August
×10.6
Google clicks
per week
×65
AI citations
26 → 1,692
[01] / Starting point
A good product nobody was searching for
In February 2026 the store sold mostly to people who already knew the brand. Three numbers show where we started.
Problem 1
80%
A brand known only by name
of Google clicks came from queries with the brand name. Anyone who did not know the company never found it.
Problem 2
66%
Sales with no source
of purchases had no channel attached. The ad budget was split on instinct, not on data.
Problem 3
26
AI said nothing about the brand
citations in AI answers across the United States. Assistants were recommending competitors.
[02] / Google
From 523 to 5,566 clicks a week
For the four months before the start, Google traffic sat still at around 500 clicks a week. Growth begins a month after the engagement starts and has not stopped. We built content around the questions customers actually type: rankings, comparisons and guides.
Google clicks, week by week
Source: Google Search Console, all countries, complete weeks from 29 Sep 2025 to 31 Aug 2026. The October spike is a one-off wave of brand-name queries
×10.6
Clicks per week
From 523 to 5,566 a week.
×20
Google impressions
From 15.6k to 311.7k a week.
113 → 1,254
Google keywords
The number of queries the store shows up for.
8.1 → 6.6
Average position
With twenty times the reach.
Where the clicks come from
Source: Google Search Console, queries with and without the brand name, monthly
New customers, not existing fans
×32
more clicks from queries without the brand name
These are people looking for the product, not the company. In the four months before the start such queries brought 294 to 597 clicks a month and did not grow. In August there were 8,926 of them, or 79% of all clicks.
[03] / Visibility in AI
When a customer asks AI, AI recommends this store
From October to February, AI cited the store 20 to 26 times and nothing moved. Today ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI cite it 65 times more often. Visitors who arrive from AI buy more than three times as readily as search visitors.
Citations in AI answers
Source: Ahrefs, citations of the domain in AI answers, United States
Who cites the store
- Gemini 2 → 318
- AI Overviews 0 → 238
- AI Mode 0 → 225
- Perplexity 5 → 180
- Copilot 5 → 139
- ChatGPT 6 → 64
February → September 2026, citation count
×65
AI citations
From 26 to 1,692 in seven months.
24 → 681
Cited pages
AI reaches for the store guides and rankings.
4.6%
Conversion of AI traffic
More than three times higher than search traffic (1.4%).
3.4%
Revenue from AI assistants
A channel that did not exist in the reports in February.
[04] / Sales
Traffic that turns into orders
Before the engagement revenue was falling: from an index of 122 in October to 73 in February. Since the start it has grown six months in a row, and August is 35% above the best month before we came in.
Store revenue, monthly index
Source: Shopify, net sales excluding test and cancelled orders. January 2026 = 100
+125%
Revenue
August against February.
+99%
Orders
Almost twice as many parcels.
+125%
New customers
Growth comes from demand outside the existing base.
+116%
Revenue from returning customers
Customers come back and buy more.
[05] / Efficiency
More sales from every advertising dollar
In autumn 2025 a new customer cost up to 97 dollars, and the return on ad spend was half of January levels. Today a customer costs 32 dollars. Organic traffic lowers the cost of every order, so ads no longer carry all the sales.
Return on ad spend (MER), index
Store revenue divided by ad spend. January 2026 = 100. Grey bars: before the engagement
Customer acquisition cost
All ad spend divided by the number of new customers
×2.1
Return on ad spend
Every advertising dollar works more than twice as hard.
−53.2%
Cost per new customer
From $67.62 in February to $31.63 in August.
×2.9
Meta campaign ROAS
From May to September, after rebuilding the account.
2.0
Google Ads ROAS
Steady through the whole engagement.
[06] / Sales measurement
Truth in the data first, budget second
In May we rebuilt sales measurement from the ground up. Only then could we see which channels earn, and move budget to where it pays off.
Purchases with no source attached
Source: Google Analytics 4. Lower is better. September: data through the 9th
Where revenue comes from, August
- Organic search 36.6%
- Paid search 18.8%
- Direct 8.2%
- Google cross-network 4.7%
- Google Shopping 4.4%
- AI assistants 3.4%
- Paid social 3.3%
Source: Google Analytics 4, channel share of revenue
66% → 11%
Purchases with no source
We know where 9 in 10 orders came from.
9.0 / 10
Meta data quality
Match quality of purchase events.
100%
Catalogue match rate
Every product correctly matched in ads.
36.6%
Revenue from organic Google
The largest sales channel in August.
[07] / Content
Articles that sell better than the store
Rankings and comparisons earn more than collection pages. We write about what customers ask before buying and lead them straight to the cart.
Which pages earn
- Home page 21.0%
- Collection: product line A 13.3%
- Article: ranking of the best nicotine-free pouches 11.2%
- Article: alternatives to nicotine pouches 8.3%
- Collection: product line B 4.4%
- Article: 7 best nicotine-free pouches 2.5%
- Article: are there pouches without nicotine 2.5%
- Article: a guide to nootropic pouches 2.3%
- Article: a guide to focus pouches 2.3%
- Article: best nicotine-free options 1.9%
Source: Google Analytics 4, share of organic search revenue, 1 Jul to 9 Sep 2026
31%
Organic revenue from articles
Seven guides in the top ten pages.
48
Articles in one wave
Topics chosen from a competitor gap analysis.
2 of 4
Top pages are comparisons
Customers compare before buying. We give them that answer.
[08] / Store speed: Core Web Vitals, field data from real phones
LCP, content load
Passed2.07 s
Google threshold: 2.5 s
INP, response to input
Passed153 ms
Google threshold: 200 ms
CLS, layout stability
Passed0.02
Google threshold: 0.1
[09] / Timeline
Seven months, month by month
No magic and no single big move. The result is the sum of weekly work.
01 / February
Start
Audit, keyword strategy and a content plan around customer questions.
02 / March
First content
Technical fixes and the first guides. Google impressions grow sevenfold in a month.
03 / April
48 articles
A wave of content from the competitor gap analysis. Over 2,500 clicks a week.
04 / May
New measurement
Sales measurement rebuilt and a new Meta ad account. Customer cost falls 22% in a month.
05 / June
Scale
Over 5,000 clicks a week. The lowest customer acquisition cost of the whole period.
06 / July
Record
6,851 clicks in one week, a new product line and a seasonal campaign.
07 / August
+125%
Revenue 125% above February, return on ad spend more than twice as good.
[10] / Your move
These results
can belong to
your brand
Seven months were enough to double revenue and halve the cost of a customer. Book a 30-minute call: we will show you where to start in your store. Black Friday 2026 falls on 27 November.
Warsaw / Head office
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02-591 Warsaw, Poland