How The Quote Company boosted digital engagement and conversions

Services bidding platforms, where suppliers like plumbers and electricians ‘bid’ on quotes to potential customers, are under increasing pressure to find innovative ways to stand out from the crowd.

In a bid to tackle this challenge head-on, The Quote Company recently implemented Marin Software’s Smart Sync technology to drive conversions and productivity.

Founded in Perth in 2011, The Quote Company was preceded by Solar Market, which provides obligation free quotes to customers to help them find the best deal on solar installers. The business has since expanded operations across Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Ireland.

The business model seeks to help make life easier for customers by taking the hassle out of finding reliable service providers, while also making life easier for suppliers by delivering a reliable flow of sales leads.

Achieving effective cross-publisher management

In order to drive leads at a profitable ROI, the company’s small in-house marketing team manages search programs with specific targets for each lead channel. Initially, the Quote Company was finding success running high-volume search campaigns on Google, and smaller yet cost-effective campaigns on Bing.

However, a significant challenge arose when faced with the process of copying changes from Google to Bing campaigns, which proved to be both time consuming and tedious. Additionally, due to lower search volumes on Bing, the marketing team could not justify spending an equal amount of time managing those campaigns relative to Google. This led to costly errors and out-of-date ad copy on Bing.

“We’re a lead generation company, so we spend quite a bit of money in the search area, and we have quite a wide range of different verticals we’re operating in as well as different campaigns,” The Quote Company search and display marketing manager, Mitchell Kelly, said. “And it is a lot to manage. It got to a point where we couldn’t really do it manually anymore. So all these efficiencies were being found in Adwords, but were not really being effectively pushed across into Bing.”

The solution: Implementing Smart Sync technology

To combat these issues, The Quote Company decided to try Marin Software’s Smart Sync feature, designed to help advertisers experience the benefit of advertising across channels without the hassle of creating and managing campaigns separately.

Using Smart Sync, The Quote Company was able to copy information at the account, campaign, and group levels from Google to Bing. Once copied, Smart Sync continued to sync any changes the team makes from Google to Bing, ensuring all campaigns remain matched and current.

“With Smart Sync, all the changes like ad copy changes are automatically pushed across, so things everything across Google and Bing are similar,” Kelly explained.

This streamlined way of management has allowed The Quote Company to treat Bing simply as an extension of overall search reach.

More leads, more efficiencies, more profits

Since implementing Smart Sync, The Quote Company has realised major ad spend efficiencies and time savings. For example, in just two weeks, the group saw a 66.7 per cent increase in conversions from Bing campaigns for only a 5.2 per cent increase in cost per acquisition. Time spent managing Bing campaigns also reduced by two hours a week.

In addition, The Quote Company benefitted from specific recommendations and resources from its Marin Software account team, above and beyond the support available from the publishers, extracting more value across its search marketing programs.

“Using Smart Sync, we are able to manage Google and Bing campaigns in tandem, saving time and increasing efficiencies so we can deliver more quotes and leads for our customers,” Kelly added.

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