180% growth in branded search:
Scaling lead generation for Australian Unity Home Health

Australian Unity Home Health Care provides essential in-home care services for elderly individuals across the east coast of Australia. With ambitious customer acquisition goals, they approached Social Garden to help them transition from their existing Always On paid advertising strategy to a more agile, performance-driven marketing model.

Australian Unity required a more dynamic approach to not only meet their immediate need for high-quality leads but also to build a sustainable pipeline for the future.

The challenge at hand was multifaceted. Australian Unity sought to better align their advertising efforts with their business goals by refining their audience targeting and improving the quality of leads. They needed a more strategic channel approach that could stand out in a highly competitive market while also offering clearer insights into what was driving conversions. Beyond that, they wanted to explore whether their current strategy was capturing the full potential of search demand for their services.

  • 180%
  • Increase in branded search volume
  • 60%
  • Rise in calls from non-branded search
  • 160%
  • Growth in form submissions from non-branded search
  • 96%
  • Improvement in impression share for non-branded search

Services

Unlocking
Growth Potential

Our performance marketing strategy was built on three key pillars to allow us to pivot quickly in response to performance data and generate deeper insights at scale.

  1. Richer audience targeting to attract more qualified leads
  2. A channel strategy that offered greater visibility in the market
  3. A focus on agility through continuous testing and optimisation

One of the primary objectives was to enhance Australian Unity’s search performance by improving key metrics such as click-through rates and conversion rates. Additionally, we worked to create clearer visibility into the conversion actions driven by search activity and provide greater performance insights by region. The challenge lay in segmenting their campaigns effectively to reach not only the recipients of care but also the key influencers in their decision-making process. Finally, balancing short-term conversions with long-term growth, while optimising budget allocation for maximum return on investment, was a central focus of our solution.

Precision Targeting &
Smarter Search

To meet Australian Unity’s key objectives, Social Garden undertook a strategic approach that built on the client’s existing strengths in search while introducing key optimisations to enhance lead quality and overall performance.

We began by auditing their current campaigns and identified low-effort, high-impact optimisations, ensuring minimal disruption to lead volume. Our key steps included:

  • Conversion Event Segmentation: Transparent reporting to optimise towards specific outcomes over time.
  • Keyword Segmentation: Grouping keywords by theme and search volume to allow for responsive budget adjustments based on performance trends.
  • Refined Search Match Types: Minimising wasted spend on irrelevant terms.
  • Regional Segmentation: Structuring campaigns around three key reporting regions, aligning with the client’s internal targets.
  • Distinct Audience Segmentation: Introducing more targeted audiences using first-party data to enhance prospecting.
  • Top-of-Funnel Campaigns: Executed on Meta and Google Display to build awareness and contribute to branded search growth.

Precision Targeting & Smarter Search

We then restructured the search
campaigns into two key stages:

Middle of Funnel (MOFU):

  • Targeted users actively searching for a home care provider.
  • Merged phrase and exact match campaigns for better budget fluidity.
  • Tested bid strategies to maximise leads while lowering CPC.
  • Introduced observation audiences to identify high-performing segments.
  • Added experiments testing headline content for conversion impact.

Bottom of Funnel (BOFU):

  • Focused on branded terms, capturing users who were already familiar with Australian Unity.
  • Segmented brand campaigns by region for responsive budget adjustments.
  • Protected Australian Unity’s search results from competitor bidding through strategic pinning of brand terms.
Testing, Optimising, and Scaling

Testing, Optimising, and Scaling

Throughout the campaign, Social Garden implemented a series of key optimisations, continuously refining the strategy to improve performance. Using a test, learn, and scale framework, we consistently drove innovation, ensuring that our approach evolved to deliver increasingly better results.

Some of the key optimisations included:

Conversion Tracking Enhancements:
  • Previously, all forms on the Australian Unity site were tracked under a single conversion, with calls only counted as CTA engagements.
  • We worked with Australian Unity’s internal team to integrate call data via GA4 into the ad account as conversions, tracking only new prospects and excluding existing customers.
  • Segmented out HCS-related forms, differentiating conversion types between form and call submissions.
  • Assigned different values to form vs. call conversions, later incorporating value-based bidding to optimise towards the most valuable leads.
Keyword Segmentation and Prioritisation:
  • Collaborated with the AU CRM team to identify top-performing keywords based on customer acquisition data.
  • Split these high-performing keywords into dedicated campaigns, allowing for dynamic budget allocation based on performance trends, ensuring maximum return on lead outcomes.
Ad Copy Optimisation:
  • Replaced a mix of outdated expanded text ads with responsive search ads, segmenting ad copy by keyword theme.
  • Conducted experiments to test messaging combinations by pinning headlines (H1 or H2) to maximise CTR and conversion rates, refining to find the most effective ad copy.

These ongoing optimisations drove consistent improvements in both lead quality and campaign efficiency, surpassing previous agency efforts.

Results Exceeding Expectations

Through strategic optimisations and a performance-driven approach, Social Garden delivered impressive year-on-year growth in leads for Australian Unity Home Health, surpassing the client’s ambitious goals for search performance. By the end of the year, data revealed not only a substantial increase in lead volume but also an improvement in lead quality, resulting in a rise in new customer acquisitions attributed to marketing efforts.

This success was driven by our focus on achieving measurable growth across key metrics, with standout results including:

  • 180% increase in branded search volume
  • 60% rise in calls from non-branded search
  • 160% growth in form submissions from non-branded search
  • 96% improvement in impression share for non-branded search

These achievements underscore our commitment to not just meeting client expectations but also pushing the boundaries for what’s possible through innovative strategies and a results-driven mindset.

Author Image

“It’s been a rewarding journey with Australian Unity across the past year! Inheriting their ad account foundations meant we could build on what they had trialled in the past, and hit the ground running with some of our best-practice optimisations. This allowed us to focus on developing a strategy that would help the team reach their goals (and understand how they got there!) “

– Georgia Worswick, Director of Advertising at Social Garden

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