Getting the house in order: How we smashed year-on-year Paid Media performance for HomeServe

As one of the country’s leading home assistance providers, HomeServe has over 25 years’ experience in looking after UK homes and,  if you’ve ever had a burst water pipe or broken boiler and struggled to find someone to help quickly or wanted to have cover in place for when things do go wrong, you’ll probably want to give them a call. The problem is that not enough people are aware of the service they offer.

HomeServe had always focused their brand-building efforts in Direct Mail but, in 2021, they knew they had to mature their digital activity too, so they came to RocketMill. Our mission was to onboard, optimise and evolve their search accounts, plus test new channels, to increase brand awareness and drive performance in a noisy and competitive market.

In order to deliver against the brief we completely overhauled HomeServe’s search account. This included a full account restructure, the introduction of new bidding strategies and the launch of new campaign types to drive efficiency and enable growth in sales ahead of their peak. We did this in two stages:

1. Our first task was to restructure the account as the current set-up was too complex to manage and was focused on reaching a broad, rather than qualified, audience, which was leading to high CPAs and poor performance. By testing intent and conversion-based bid strategies we were able to effectively convert audiences at a more efficient rate. This approach led to early gains in non-brand performance and reduced CPAs. The savings made were reinvested into future activity.
   
2. Once the foundations were in place we introduced Discovery Campaigns and Dynamic Search Ads to better engage prospective customers with visually rich brand creative. This allowed us to identify new audiences and raise awareness of HomeServe’s services. We did the same through Facebook, Display and YouTube to drive additional demand for the HomeServe brand, which we could then effectively capture and convert via Search

By strengthening HomeServe’s account with new ad formats and taking a ‘test and learn’ approach to campaign activation we were able to reach new audiences and raise awareness of the HomeServe brand, then capitalise on that new, in-market volume across all paid media activity to drive huge YoY gains.

Between October and December 2021 HomeServe saw the following uplifts from Paid Search:

• A 10% YoY increase in total homeowner sales
• A 122% YoY increase from non-brand sales
• A 143% YoY increase in landlord sales 

Not only that, we also delivered the following results from new campaign types: 

• A 3,800% YoY increase in homeowner sales generated from Google Display and Video campaigns 
• A 64% reduction in non-brand CPA through the introduction of Dynamic Search Ads (in comparison to Standard Search Ads)

“RocketMill has been a brilliant partner to HomeServe and it’s a pleasure to work with them on a day-to-day basis. Always fair and challenging in the right way, we have built a trusting relationship and have open conversations. Never complacent, the RocketMill team always push each media channel as hard as possible, and are open to testing and trying new things for the good of the HomeServe account.”