That means success cannot come from chasing traffic alone. It has to come from understanding intent, improving lead quality and making smarter decisions across the full search journey.
At Jaywing’s Marketing Roadshow, we shared how Shawbrook approached that challenge, using paid and organic search together to improve efficiency, strengthen visibility and drive more valuable applications.
“Rather than competing purely on scale, the market rewards expertise, relevance and trust.”
Cat Byrne, Account Director at Jaywing
Why paid media isn’t a fixed tap for savings
Shawbrook operates across specialist markets, including savings, commercial lending and property finance. Each area comes with different audiences, behaviours and measures of success.
On the savings side, the market is highly competitive and rate-led. Customers compare quickly, rates fluctuate often and media investment has to respond with the same level of agility. When Shawbrook’s rates were highly competitive, the strategy was to increase spend and put the rate front and centre in ad copy. When rates were less competitive, the focus shifted to protecting budget, building trust and leaning into wider brand strengths such as service, credibility and awards.
This meant paid media was not treated as a fixed activity. It became a responsive investment model, designed to push harder when the opportunity was strongest and pull back when efficiency was at risk.
Organic search played an important role, too. Rate visibility, product page structure and comparison information all had to work harder, so customers could find the details they needed without unnecessary friction. For high-net-worth savers, this also meant making Shawbrook’s relevant USPs clearer and easier to find.
Why volume isn’t the goal in commercial finance
The commercial side required a different approach. Here, the customer journey is longer, more considered and often much higher value. Audiences may be smaller, but their intent can be significantly stronger. The opportunity was not about volume at any cost. It was about reaching the right people, with the right message, and understanding which enquiries were genuinely valuable.
“The challenge wasn’t simply driving more traffic. It was understanding which users were genuinely valuable to the business.”
Rob Wood, Biddable Director at Jaywing
A form submission isn’t a qualified lead
One of the biggest shifts came from closing the gap between form submissions and qualified leads.
Like many lead generation campaigns, the platform could see when someone completed a form. But that did not tell the full story.
“A form submission is not the same thing as a qualified commercial finance opportunity.”
Rob Wood, Biddable Director at Jaywing
By feeding richer lead quality data back into Google Ads, Shawbrook and Jaywing were able to give the platform a clearer picture of which campaigns, audiences and keywords were driving real business outcomes. That allowed optimisation to move beyond surface-level conversions and towards higher-value applications.
Alongside this, organic activity helped make complex products easier to understand. Clearer application steps, more relevant landing pages and specialist content helped support users through higher-consideration journeys, while also improving relevance for paid traffic.
“We wanted users to land on the site and immediately feel that Shawbrook was a bank they could trust.”
Amelia Thomas, Head of Organic Media Content at Jaywing
What happens when paid and organic actually talk
The result was a more connected search strategy, where paid and organic activity informed each other rather than working in isolation.
Across an example Shawbrook campaign, this approach helped deliver:
• 200% increase in applications
• 69% reduction in CPA
• 120% increase in conversion rate
• 7% reduction in media spend
The key lesson was simple: in specialist financial services, growth does not come from simply spending more. It comes from knowing when to invest, where to pull back, what signals to trust and how to use data to focus on the customers most likely to convert into real value.
For Shawbrook, that meant building a search strategy around agility, quality and intent. And in a market where trust, relevance and expertise matter, that made all the difference.