CDD Case Study: Solidify Mortgage
Search and Display Campaign
Google Ads case study illustrating the successes achieved for a mortgage loan originator utilizing the Google Ads platform.
Who are they?
Solidify Mortgage Is a Mortgage Loan Origination company that does home loan purchases and refinancing in California. They have offices in Carlsbad and San Ramon California and do a lot of business in San Francisco and San Diego.
What were their objectives?
San Diego is home to one of the largest military bases in the United States. Solidify came to CDD with the goal of acquiring more mortgage leads, specifically for military home loans and refinances.
The marketing manager at Solidify had tried using Google Ads to generate leads, but had little success. The cost per lead acquisition was above $200 and they were getting a lot of irrelevant traffic to the website that bounced. Essentially, they were wasting money and ready to give up.
What did we do?
CDD re-engineered Solidify’s paid search and display campaigns. There were several targeting features that Solidify was not taking advantage of and there were so many irrelevant keywords that the relevant keywords didn’t have a chance to show. The click through rate (CTR) of the ads were only 0.62%. And when searchers were clicking, they were coming from terms like “homes for sale” and “realtors in my area”, maybe that’s alright for a realtor, but not ideal for a loan originator.
CDD adjusted the campaigns by utilizing different match types for different keywords, blocking out irrelevant keywords and phrases, using dynamic targeting as well as dynamic ads and adjusting bids to take advantage of keywords that had proven to be effective.
What were the results?
Instead of getting bounces and wasting ad dollars on useless search terms, Solidify generated 189 leads in four weeks.
| Week | Impressions | Clicks | Leads | Cost Per Lead |
| Week 1 | 6,142 | 156 | 23 | $92.14 |
| Week 2 | 8,234 | 189 | 32 | $71.42 |
| Week 3 | 10,252 | 212 | 62 | $42.19 |
| Week 4 | 14,142 | 242 | 72 | $16.42 |
Out of the 189 leads during this 4-week span, 23 became funded mortgage loans.
Those 23 mortgage loads were worth a total of $9,039,422. Solidify profited $92,132.44 from an ad spend of $3,400.
In 30 days Solidify went from giving up on Google Ads to earning $92,132.44 from a $3,400 investment.
