Case Study: −45% Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Financial Services · Paid Media Transformation

Client Overview

A national financial services provider specializing in consumer lending partnered with BrightFly Consulting to address rising acquisition costs across Google Ads. The brand operated in a highly competitive search landscape dominated by established banks, fintech lenders, and aggressive aggregator sites bidding on overlapping commercial keywords.

The organization sought to:

  • Lower cost per acquisition (CPA)

  • Improve quality of inbound leads

  • Eliminate wasted spend across non-converting regions

  • Establish a scalable, efficient paid media structure

  • Regain profitability from Google Ads and Local Services campaigns

The Challenge

Before engaging BrightFly, the brand’s paid media footprint was scattered across multiple standalone campaigns managed inconsistently over time. Key issues included:

  • Redundant campaign types targeting the same audiences

  • No unified bidding, budgeting, or measurement framework

  • Lack of geographic precision, resulting in spend leakage

  • Weak negative keyword structures, causing irrelevant impressions

  • Little alignment between search intent and ad experience

  • Excessive overlap between Google Search, Display, and partner networks

CPAs were rising steadily and lead quality was inconsistent across states.

BrightFly’s Approach

1. Unified Performance Framework

BrightFly consolidated all fragmented campaigns into a streamlined, multi-tier paid media structure aligned to the client's funnel stages and geographic footprint.

This included:

  • Organizing campaigns by region, product line, and intent

  • Standardizing bidding strategies across high-value segments

  • Establishing shared budgets to improve efficiency

  • Implementing cross-campaign audience rules for higher relevance

Outcome: The account moved from reactive optimization to a predictable, scalable performance engine.

2. Advanced Geofencing Strategy

To prevent wasted spend and maximize conversion density, BrightFly implemented precise geofencing parameters targeting only the highest converting metro areas and ZIP codes.

This included:

  • Pulling historical conversion data by region

  • Restricting bids outside profitable radiuses

  • Leveraging state-level compliance insights

  • Segmenting high-value financial centers for prioritized positioning

Outcome: Spend shifted away from low-quality areas and toward markets with the highest customer lifetime value.

3. Rigorous Negative Keyword Management

BrightFly performed a full-funnel search term audit to eliminate irrelevant and high-cost non-prospect queries.

Actions included:

  • Building multi-layered negative keyword lists (brand, competitor, intent, and category exclusions)

  • Blocking aggregator and low-quality keywords driving unqualified clicks

  • Removing adjacent industry terms that shared SERP surfaces with lending queries

  • Implementing always-on weekly refinement rules

Outcome: Wasted impressions dropped dramatically, improving both click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CVR).

4. Message + Intent Alignment

BrightFly rebuilt ads to match high-intent financial services workflows.

Enhancements included:

  • Benefit-focused ad copy aligned to lending outcomes

  • Clear qualification criteria to filter out low-fit users

  • Dynamic keyword insertion for precision relevance

  • Improved landing page alignment to product type and borrower intent

Outcome: Increased conversion rates from both branded and non-branded queries.

The Results (90 Days)

−45% Reduction in CPA

A nearly half-reduction in cost per acquisition, resulting in significant improvement in paid media profitability.

+62% Increase in Qualified Leads

More applications from higher-quality borrowers and financial service seekers.

+29% Higher Conversion Rate

Improved alignment between search queries, ads, and landing pages.

40% Reduction in Wasted Spend

Negative keyword restructuring and geofencing dramatically lowered leakage.

Stabilized Lead Costs Across Markets

High-performing regions showed materially lower volatility.

Why This Engagement Worked

BrightFly’s approach succeeded because it combined technical optimization with strategic media restructuring:

  • Unified Campaign Architecture eliminated internal bidding conflicts.

  • Geofencing Precision ensured targeting only the most profitable markets.

  • Rigorous Negative Keyword Governance kept the account exceptionally clean.

  • Search Intent Mapping improved ad-to-keyword relevance.

  • Performance Frameworks gave the client predictability and scalability across all markets.

This allowed the financial services provider to not only reduce CPA by 45% but also build a stable acquisition engine capable of scaling predictably across competitive regions.