Home / Case Studies / UK Auto Finance
CONVERSIONS
15.3K
COST PER LEAD
£16.14
CONVERSION RATE
14.65%
INDUSTRY
Auto Finance
SERVICES
Google Ads
START DATE
December 2025
ENGAGEMENT
8 months
THE CHALLENGE
A bloated account burning budget
This account already had accurate conversion tracking, but it was set up as an offline import, so Smart Bidding could never learn from it in real time. On top of that the account had sprawled: 64 campaigns existed across its history with only 10 still enabled, and several of the strongest historical performers, some converting under £25 per lead, had been paused. What was left running was largely a single Manual CPC campaign converting at £318.50 per lead, roughly 12 times the account average. October 2025 alone spent around £50,000 without producing profitable deals.
THE SOLUTION
We rebuilt it around what Google could learn from
The fix here was structural, not budgetary. We repaired the tracking-to-bidding pipeline first, then cut a sprawling account down to something focused enough for Smart Bidding to optimise properly.
Tracking
Moved off the offline-only import so Target CPA could learn from conversions as they happened rather than days later, then standardised the account on Smart Bidding instead of Manual CPC.
Structure
Consolidated 64 sprawling, largely abandoned campaigns into 8 focused ones organised by intent, using SKAG and STAG structures, and retired the worst performing legacy campaigns instead of leaving them spending.
Keywords
Cut the keyword list from 1,662 to 190, shifted exact match from 20% to 42% of keyword spend, and reviewed the landing page for friction between click and form submission.
THE RESULTS
More leads for the same budget
Cost per lead down 41%
Cost per lead fell from £27.53 to £16.14, helped most by retiring the Manual CPC campaign that had been producing leads at roughly 12 times the account average.
72% more conversions
Conversions grew from 8.89K to 15.3K while spend rose less than 1%. This was an efficiency result, not a budget one.
Conversion rate doubled
Conversion rate went from 7.27% to 14.65% after an 89% cut to the keyword list removed a large amount of low intent, unpredictable traffic.
