Automated bidding on CPA unlocks real value of search

Background

Coordinating search engine advertising across more than 12 highly competitive verticals would be a tall order for any marketing team. For Jérémy Lacoste, Head of Acquisition, Analytics and CRM marketing at the online financial services broker Meilleurtaux, it could easily feel impossible.

“Our service covers around 12 industries, including real estate, insurance, credit, and energy,” explains Jérémy. “Our main priority is to generate more qualified traffic and maximize leads, and our target cost per lead (CPL) varies from industry to industry because our objective is always to ensure that revenue per lead exceeds cost. We are a team of only two people, so if we tried to manage all of this manually, it would be impossible. That’s why we’ve automated our approach, saved a lot of time, and maximized our ability to analyze and optimize.”

Deploying automation to transform lead performance

When he first joined Meilleurtaux, Jérémy set himself the task of overhauling the brand’s search strategy—and preparing the ground for an automated approach. “It was a six-month project to optimize the campaign architecture, reduce the number of campaigns, and improve the volume of keywords we were targeting,” he says. The end result of that process was a streamlined campaign structure that gave algorithms the volume of data required to optimize around a priority metric. The next stage was to identify the right KPI—and the search platform that could translate it into value.

“We used Microsoft’s automated bidding to optimize our campaigns around a target CPA, and straight away, our performance in terms of lead volume increased 20%,” says Jérémy. “As a result, we’ve been able to increase our budget for search engine advertising (SEA) and increase our budget for Microsoft specifically.”

That increase has taken Microsoft Advertising’s share of Meilleurtaux’s SEA budget from 7% to 11% in just one year. “The reason for the increase is that we often get a better CPA on Microsoft compared to Google—but that’s not all,” says Jérémy. “We also get really good, proactive support—recommending new features and new extensions to our campaigns.”

Taking impact to the next level with Multimedia Ads

One such recommendation introduced Jérémy to Multimedia Ads—a unique Microsoft Advertising opportunity that showed the value of innovating on the platform. “It was a great opportunity to get real, visual impact within the search engine results page (SERP),” explains Jérémy. “We were very happy with the position that it gave us on the page. It was definitely a worthwhile investment of time to leverage an opportunity that’s only available through Microsoft.”

The balance between intelligent automation and bespoke opportunities is helping Meilleurtaux to unlock the full potential of search within its wider marketing strategy.

Between Q1 2021 and the same quarter in 2022, Meilleurtaux has seen conversions increase 48% while at the same time reducing the average CPL by 5%.

“Microsoft Advertising’s automated bidding has delivered huge value to us,” says Jérémy. “Obviously, it’s saved us a lot of time—but it’s also given us an invaluable holistic view. It’s enabled us to maximize leads and manage ROI across our different campaigns. We operate in very competitive markets and to get the support that we do from Microsoft, with insights and analytics, is hugely helpful for us.”