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It's all about the untold stories of amazing companies, amazing projects, their impact, and how you could do the same.
Because all around, companies big and small are breaking the mould with their campaigns, getting an edge, and turning a profit.
Nobody talks about them, because nobody knows about them.
I've been talking to the agencies leading these projects. And that's Great Business Stories.
This one is a masterclass from Liberty Marketing in how to make every cent of your budget work as hard as it can: no matter the size.
In this newsletter, I’ll go through:
The winning Google Ads structure that saved a company.
How customisation doubled their conversion rates.
Applying market intelligence to make every cent work harder.
Let's dive in 👇
The Google Ads restructure that saved Pure Property Finance
Pure Property Finance is a mortgage brokerage that finds finance for real estate professionals: their business matches the right lender, with the right borrower, based on risk appetite and project type.
And they were one of the first in their niche to focus on Google Ads and SEO to generate leads at a lower CPA than their competitors.
But others soon caught up; in 2020 they were paying up to £25 per click for some of their most competitive terms.
Then the pandemic turned their digital-first strategy from an advantage to a vulnerability.
Amid uncertainty, lenders withdrew from the market. As a mortgage broker, borrowers turn to Pure when normal routes to finance fail. So when lenders pulled out: demand for their services exploded.
But many of Pure’s lenders had pulled out too..
It’s like a flood of people coming into your shop, to find that the shelves are bare.
But with Google Ads, you’ve paid £25 for them to enter - and there are thousands every week.
11% more leads with 70% less budget 💪
As demand soared, so did their advertising bill. Usable leads were reduced to almost nothing. And their ads were bleeding so much money that the company was in danger.
They considered turning off their advertising, and hunkering down.
But they decided to capitalise on booming demand, with the help of an agency: Liberty Marketing.
Liberty took over the accounts. With advertising spend cut by 70% they:
Increased the volume of leads by 11%.
Halved cost-per acquisition (CPA).
Almost doubled conversion rates from 8% to 14.5%.
Increased click-through-rate of their adverts from 4.5% to 8.5%.
Helped Pure turn a profit for the year, while their competitors made huge losses
How they did it is a study in making your advertising work harder, and navigating a dynamic market for maximum ROI. And it’s a framework relevant to any business.
Here’s how it looks:
A winning ad architecture 🥇
Okay, okay, rebuilding Google Ad accounts isn’t the sexiest topic. But it’s literally what saved Pure.
That’s because products on offer from Pure’s lenders were changing constantly. One week, bridging loans were available in Wales, the next, they weren’t.
But they’d set up Google Ads to target broad keywords like "bridging loan" or "buy-to-let mortgage". When bridging loans weren’t available in Wales, they needed to keep the campaigns running to acquire leads in London.
So they were still paying to acquire Welsh users - at no return.
It’s like selling out of women’s shoes, then continuing to advertise to women because you’re only bidding on “shoes”: Pure lacked control over which ads were being shown to which people.
So the accounts were rebuilt from the ground up - to cater to different types of loan, location, and lender preference.
That granular structure allowed them to optimise 100% of their spend to align with their inventory.
But because the landscape was moving on a daily basis, they needed to adapt daily to keep making money on their ads.
Not doing so risked decimating their return on ad spend - if they invested in irrelevant keywords for even a short time.
You can see the effect across those four example keywords at an example ROAS of 50%.
To adapt their campaigns to movements in the market, so they were only spending to attract clients for active products, Liberty developed a dashboard that was key to the whole thing:
Market intelligence improved that ☝️ ROAS 4x
Real time information from a lender dashboard (a Google Sheet, that anyone could set up) was the secret sauce that made the system work.
Before
A “bridging loans” campaign runs nationwide.
A lender in Wales suddenly stops lending in that region.
Ads continue to be shown to Welsh users, bringing clicks and leads that waste budget, reduce ROAS and frustrate customers.
After
The dashboard flags that bridging loans are no longer available in Wales.
Liberty Marketing pauses the “bridging loans” ad group for the Wales region.
No spend is wasted on users in Wales, budget is focussed on high return areas.
Taking those four example ad groups - this would not mean a 25% improvement - but a 4x increase in return.
That’s illustrative - but it goes to show that, in a market where $1000 could be spent on only 40 clicks, how instant control of segmented ad groups was key to making money on their Google Ads.
Implementing this kind of granular control can have an impact on any kind of business where their offer changes depending on business dynamics, be that stock, or macroeconomics.
But it gets better:
How granular ads doubled Pure's conversion 📈
There’s another profound effect of this structure. And that’s what almost doubled both clicks and conversions.
As well as giving granular control over which ads were live, it gave Liberty Marketing, and Pure Finance granular control over messaging, and the user journey.
That meant each person searching had a message and a journey specific to their needs.
Pure therefore went from one generic ad like this one 👇
To several, specific ads customised to the user’s search, a bit like these:
These changes meant:
✔️ Better relevance = Lower CPC = Lower CPA
Google rewards relevance. By matching ad group, ad copy, and keywords to the search intent, you improve your Quality Score. That meant lower CPC, better ad placements and, in the end, a lower CPA.
🎯 Targeted ad copy increased CTR from 8 to 14.5%
Granular ad groups allow you to create ad copy that mirrors the search. So users searching for a "bridging loan in London" will see ads that mention "London", "bridging loans", and location-specific offers.
📄 Customized landings doubled conversions
When keywords, copy, and landing page align with search intent, it builds trust. Sending the user to a page 100% dedicated to what they were looking for, means they have fewer steps needed to make an enquiry. That increases conversion rate.
A Google Ads framework for all conditions
Liberty Media’s collaboration with Pure Property Finance is a playbook relevant to any company dealing with changing market conditions.
If your company adversities online, and deals with volatility in stock or business dynamics, there’s tonnes to apply in this granular approach.
And even if not, there’s juice to be squeezed from tailoring ads, boosting CTR and conversions, and making budget work harder.
And that's it!
I hope you enjoyed reading this first edition of Great Business Stories as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Keep your eyes open for the next one, it's going a beauty about how to make an "unsexy" product, cool as hell.
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