Sage

Information about the company

The Sage Group plc, commonly known as Sage, is a British multinational enterprise software company based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. As of 2017, it is the UK's second largest technology company, the world's third-largest supplier of enterprise resource planning software (behind Oracle and SAP), the largest supplier to small businesses, and has 6.1 million customers worldwide. It has offices in 24 countries. The company is the patron of the Sage Gateshead music venue in Gateshead.

Commercial approach

‘’The vast majority of our accounts were managed manually, with less than 1% of active keywords undergoing bid changes”, explains Sage’s Director of Global Media Kevin Alderson. “We were aware of the potential value of machine learning and were keen to apply automation across our accounts to drive both efficiency and performance.”

Google Ads Smart Bidding uses advanced machine learning to drive informed, accurate bidding decisions. In contrast to a manual approach – where bidding is adjusted a few times a day or week, if at all – automated bidding adjusts bids for each and every auction.

Google Ads success story

Once Sage made the decision to switch their search campaigns to automated bidding, the first step was to align their campaign goals with an optimal automation strategy. They then identified appropriate conversion and micro-conversion events, identified their relative values and allowed Google’s system to optimise over time.

Results

- Now using automated bidding for 98% of accounts.
- Overall conversions increased by 53% and cost per acquisition has dropped by 26%.
- For generic keywords, conversions went up by 29% and cost per acquisition fell by 35%.
- For branded terms, clicks increased by 10% and cost per click decreased by 16%.