• 78% increase in lead volume
  • 16% cut in lead costs

A little about Blue Shield

Blue Shield of California, an independent member of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, is a not-for-profit health plan with 3.3 million members, 4,800 employees, and one of the largest provider networks in California. Founded in 1939 and headquartered in San Francisco, Blue Shield of California offers a wide range of commercial and government products throughout the state. The company has contributed more than $125 million over the past four years to the Blue Shield of California Foundation — which was named one of BusinessWeek’s 20 most generous corporate foundations.

Health providers are up against a competitive and distinct environment when it comes to search marketing. Marin Software’s flexible advanced bidding optimization capabilities played an integral role in helping AMP Agency achieve Blue Shield of California’s aggressive lead generation and efficiency goals within such a unique search atmosphere.

Troadio Satizabal
Online Marketing Manager at Blue Shield of California

The agency AMP picked to drive volume for Blue Shield

Blue Shield selected AMP Agency to help scale their campaigns to drive maximum lead volume at target cost-per-lead (CPL) efficiency goals. The challenges facing this goal were two fold; 1) Identifying this volume/efficiency equilibrium; 2) Doing so in an extremely competitive bid landscape marked by rising cost-per-click (CPC) rates. The campaign hit its efficiency goals, but this was at the expense of conversion and click volume. Click volume alone dropped by 10% in one week.

Time of day bidding used to optimize effort

In light of this volume challenge, a solution needed to be applied in order to drive toward not only efficiency but maximum volume at efficiency. AMP utilized the bid optimization capabilities in Marin Software and applied their expertise by supplementing them with additional business rules. To hit volume goals, the initial bid rules were reset with two additional components, time of day (TOD) and bid to position. Under this new approach, CPL rules were set to run every evening while new bid-toposition rules were implemented to run every morning.

Saving time with campaign management has allowed Blue Shield to expand their effort

This new blended approach allowed the campaign to keep top positions and spend to pace while giving the CPL focused bid rules much larger date set in which to apply its optimizations. The results of this new approach were significant:

  • Increased lead volume by almost 78%
  • Cut lead costs by 16%

Combined with the insight and expertise at AMP Agency, Marin Software was able to overcome the challenge at Blue Shield of California and deliver results in the face of a rapidly changing environment.