Vodafone finds performance gains on the Microsoft Audience Network

Changing buyer journeys for mobile

It’s not always simple to connect marketing metrics with the business bottom line. For Vodafone Spain, though, changes in how consumers buy telco services mean the value of marketing performance has never been clearer.

A growing number of customers are buying the mobile, fibre, and television packages that Vodafone sells without ever speaking to an advisor or visiting a store. This rapid rise of online buyer journeys presents the company’s digital marketing teams with a simple equation: Every time they can ramp up the performance of digital campaigns with more conversions at lower cost, they’re increasing revenues and profitability.

Earning the right to innovate in digital marketing

“Online purchases represent a bigger and bigger share of customer acquisition—and that makes digital media increasingly important for us,” explains Borja Berzosa, Digital Strategy Team Lead for Vodafone Spain. “Consideration and branding matter too, of course, but performance is the most important area of all. The focus of our team is increasing sales by reaching the right audiences and finding efficiencies that lower our cost per acquisition (CPA).”

Where does a digital marketing team look for the performance advantage that can deliver increased sales at reduced cost? As Specialist Marketing Communications and Biddable Media Lead, David Llamazares Presa, explains: It comes down to earning the right to innovate.

“The digital environment is evolving day by day, and if you don’t move quickly when new platforms and opportunities appear, you quickly get left behind,” he says. “Our approach aims to balance stability and innovation. We have always-on digital channels like search marketing that provide us with a dependable flow of sales—and that provides us with the opportunity to test and activate new channels as they emerge, and see if they can become part of that always-on portfolio.”

The launch of the Microsoft Audience Network in Spain provided just such an opportunity—and one that Borja and David were quick to respond to. “We have a very good relationship with our Microsoft team,” says Borja. “They understand the telco sector, they understand our focus on innovation, and they understand the types of opportunities that are a good fit for us. When they told us about the Microsoft Audience Network, we knew it was something we wanted to test.”

Leveraging intent data on new channels drives increased reach and incremental sales

David and Borja could see the value to Vodafone of leveraging the same intent data that powers search marketing to deliver visually impactful native ads. “The Microsoft Audience Network gives us a new channel through which we can impact future customers,” says David. “We’ve increased our reach and delivered incremental sales that we wouldn’t have converted any other way. Getting up and running with the network was easy because we could adapt ad formats that we were already running on other channels. Within a month, we were seeing really positive results—beyond what we expected.”

From the start, the Microsoft Audience Network delivered the direct conversion-driving performance that Vodafone Spain demands from a digital campaign. Since implementing the campaigns, display acquisition has increased by 117% for Vodafone Spain whilst reducing cost-per-click by 69% compared to other display campaigns. It’s also helping to balance other objectives for the marketing team—by building awareness at the same time as generating clicks.

From test to core marketing channel

“Performance campaigns are really important to our strategy, but it’s not just performance KPIs that we track,” says David. “With the Microsoft Audience Network, we know that we’re reaching a wider audience that we aren’t necessarily touching through other channels, and that’s an important objective even when we can’t link it to sales directly. We see the impact of wider brand building activity in our overall conversion rates.”

It's no surprise that, six months on from its first test, the Microsoft Audience Network has already earned a place in Vodafone Spain’s first-choice lineup of digital channels. “This is now an ongoing campaign for us and a regular part of our monthly planning,” says David. “We’ve always had the volume of sales that we want from the network, and we’ve been able to work on optimizing around CPA and testing different copy and creative as well. It’s quickly becoming a core channel for us.”