Profession is the leading recruitment services website in Hungary, helping companies from a wide range of industries connect with people looking for jobs. Profession wanted to get more people to complete job applications on the site and app, and the team was looking for efficient ways to use search marketing to make that happen.
Focusing on lucrative sectors, a new bidding approach helps Profession attract job more applicants.
About Ringier Axel Springer Media AG
Portfolio of more than 160 digital and print products in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia
Established in 2010
Parent company of Profession.hu
Goals
Drive people to complete job applications
Improve mobile performance
Approach
Analysed each job category’s return on investment
Set up cost per acquisition targets for each job category
Used machine learning technology optimise bidding accordingly
Results
Increased job applications coming from Google Ads by 25%
3.5X better conversion rate year over year on mobile
Alongside their challenge of driving more job applications every year, Profession wanted to focus on driving more job applications on mobile devices. These had historically performed below desktop in terms of cost per acquisition and overall conversion volumes.
With automation a hot topic, Profession was keen to see how using automated approaches could help them meet their goals. The team started by trialing Target CPA bidding (tCPA) on a small number of search campaigns.
As a Google Ads Smart Bidding strategy, tCPA sets bids to help get as many conversions as possible at the target cost per acquisition set by the advertiser. It uses advanced machine learning to automatically optimise bids and offers auction-time bidding capabilities that tailor bids for each and every auction.
As the Profession team already knew exactly what return on investment each job category was delivering, it was straightforward to set up the cost per acquisition targets by job category and then let the machine learning technology optimise bidding accordingly.
After testing this approach on a handful of smaller campaigns, some great initial results convinced the team to scale it across their search and display campaigns. As a result, Profession saw 25% more job applications coming from Google Ads and a 3.5-fold better mobile conversion rate year over year.
For other companies seeking better marketing performance through automation, the Profession team has two key pieces of advice. Start by identifying the right target cost per acquisition based on your business goals. Then test your approach on a small number of campaigns, but if you see great performance don’t be afraid to scale quickly.
“Target CPA proved to be a successful tool for us not only to improve our job application rate but also to save time for our agency. We are curious to see what the future holds for us on the field of automation."
–Balázs Varga, Head of Marketing, Profession.hu
