First for Women provides financial services including short-term insurance, life insurance, business insurance and personal loans. While the company had seen great success on search, they understood the limitations of exact-match keyword bidding. “We wanted to make sure our ads trigger on all available and relevant queries without having to comb through search query reports and manually add keywords”, explains Paid Search Manager Gavin Parker. To meet their needs, they decided to try Dynamic Search Ads.
About First for Women
Short-term insurance, life insurance, business insurance and personal loans
Launched in 2004
Based in Johannesburg, South Africa
www.firstforwomen.co.za
Goal
Capture maximum user demand
Minimise manual keyword management
Approach
Launched Dynamic Search Ads
Results
81% increase in click-through rate
62% reduction in cost per acquisition
“Since activating Dynamic Search Ads we’ve realised how much traffic we missed by having a keyword-only approach. Now instead of finding new keywords, we simply update our website with more relevant content.”
– Gavin Parker, Paid Search Manager, First for Women
First for Women believed Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) would maximise the opportunity to capture user demand without having to manually select the right keywords. “Not only does DSA use our website content as ‘keywords’, it also creates the most relevant ads and points users to the most relevant landing pages”, Gavin says.
Comparing generic DSA traffic to generic keyword campaigns, the company saw an 81% increase in click-through rate and a 62% reduction in cost per acquisition.
Upon realising performance gains like these, First for Women then applied the AdWords Smart Bidding strategy Target CPA to their DSA campaigns. “DSA and Target CPA work great together”, Gavin says. “We are now 100% confident that we are capturing as much relevant traffic as budget allow, while giving the system the opportunity to learn, predict and set the right bid for the right user.”
First for Women reports that using automation has allowed the team to be more strategic in their day-to-day efforts, spending less time managing search campaigns and more on website and content optimisation. “We realise that DSA relies on content, so we are constantly looking at ways to improve what we say and how we say it”, Gavin says.
“Going forward, Dynamic Search Ads will form a key part of our paid search strategy.”
– Gavin Parker, Paid Search Manager, First for Women
