A High-Intent Google Ads Engine for Backroad Mapbooks

The Word “Map” Attracts the Wrong Buyer

Backroad Mapbooks is Canada’s most trusted source for adventure and backcountry maps: hiking, fishing, all-terrain vehicle trails, topographic maps, and GPS backroads guides. People already knew the brand. New buyers were harder to reach. A search for “map” also means navigation apps, free PDFs, and school tools.

Three problems showed up early. Most “map” searches are not buyers. Places such as British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Vancouver Island need their own words, and broad matches need a weekly look. The ads had to sell the printed mapbooks and also make the online maps app known.

If you sell into a category with a common word in its name, you already know this problem. Half the traffic you pay for was never yours.

Blocking the Wrong Searches Did the Heavy Lifting

We ran the Adventure-Based Keywords ad group as a living system, tended weekly. The strategy unfolded in three phases across Q1 2026, each building on the last.

1. Keyword architecture: casting the right net. We bought searches from people already looking for Canadian adventure maps: activity terms, the brand and the product, and place names. Branded searches had some of the highest click-through rates, up to 47.64%.

2. Negative keyword management: filtering out irrelevant traffic. The most useful work was blocking the wrong searches: school queries, navigation tools, people hunting free or discounted maps, other stores, off-season activities, and places we do not serve. As the real search terms came in, broad blocks were tightened to phrase and exact match.

That list is the part worth copying. Most accounts have a keyword plan and no exclusion plan, and the exclusion plan is what decides how much of your budget reaches a buyer.

3. Active keyword testing and rotation. The campaign was never static. Keywords were enabled, paused, added, and removed based on real performance signals throughout the quarter, preventing budget from pooling in underperformers and giving high-potential keywords room to prove themselves.

4. Ad creative aligned to buyer intent. Creative was treated as a conversion lever. The winning Responsive Search Ad spoke directly to the transactional intent of someone searching for Canadian adventure maps. It named the full range of outdoor pursuits and presented the brand as the Canadian source for serious outdoor adventurers.

364% Return on Ad Spend in Q1 2026

The Adventure-Based Keywords ad group delivered across Q1 2026. Activity-specific keywords attracted qualified traffic. The negative-keyword work improved traffic quality steadily over the quarter, and the creative refresh matched the message to what buyers were after.

The account-level picture is the one the homepage quotes as +107%. Across the six months from November 2025 to May 2026, paid revenue ran 107% above the same months a year earlier and paid orders ran 124% above, measured across every paid channel we manage for Backroad Mapbooks in our six-month report to the client. The ad group above is one engine inside that number. The homepage’s 17× figure is a separate Meta campaign for wall maps, which returned 17 times its ad spend over 7 days (client review call, June 2026).

The campaign also surfaced a clear buyer profile: an established outdoor enthusiast, predominantly male, mobile-first, and engaged across weekdays and weekends, a high-value segment that responds well to specific, activity-relevant messaging and a trusted Canadian brand. That profile is a result in its own right. It tells the next campaign who to talk to before a dollar is spent.

“The Adventure-Based Keywords ad group is one of the clearest examples of what disciplined paid search management looks like in practice. We built the keyword architecture with intent at the center, and the 364% ROAS is a direct result of that. Every negative keyword added, every creative refresh, every keyword rotation was a deliberate decision.”

Abbey Dela Cruz, Strategic Director, Strataigize

Treat Negative Keywords as Half the Job

Branded terms need their own budget. Blocking the wrong searches matters as much as buying the right ones. A campaign nobody has touched in a month drifts.

Open your search-terms report this week. If you cannot fill a page with exclusions, you have not looked hard enough. The commercial page is Google Ads.