Lunio helps Funding Circle uplift MQL conversion rate by 10%

Funding Circle is the leading platform for small business loans in the UK. Lunio blocked invalid traffic coming from paid search campaigns, helping to significantly improve performance. Using Lunio, Funding Circle saw a huge decrease in IVT rates, leading to improved conversion rates which fueled business growth.

Key stats:

• 10% increase in MQL conversion rate 

• 5.8% of spend saved in Google & Microsoft Ads

• 13.7% decrease in IVT

Funding Circle is a lending platform for small business borrowers. Established in 2010, and now the leading lending platform to SMEs, Funding Circle has extended more than £16.9bn in credit to more than 150,000 businesses globally. 

For small business borrowers, Funding Circle provides an unrivaled customer experience, delivered through its technology and data, coupled with a human touch. For institutional investors, Funding Circle provides access to an alternative asset class in an underserved market, and delivers robust and attractive returns.

James Coombs, Head of Digital, is responsible for ensuring the Funding Circle digital ad budget is used to drive high-quality leads as efficiently as possible. Problems with spam submissions and fake form fills led him to investigate invalid traffic, and the solutions available to tackle it. 

Finn Sullivan works alongside James as Funding Circle’s Digital Marketing Manager, and drives customer acquisition through Funding Circle’s paid advertising channels. 

The problem

In 2020, the market shift caused by the pandemic led Funding Circle to significantly alter the allocation of their marketing budget. Traditional offline methods, such as post and direct mail, were scaled back and more ad spend was put into digital channels. Paid search then quickly became their most effective driver of new leads.

Everything spent on digital campaigns at Funding Circle was meticulously measured, and efficiency was the number one priority as the company shifted their marketing focus.

The Funding Circle team was already aware of invalid traffic due to spam lead form submissions, and had received some small Google refunds in the form of “invalid activity adjustments”. But like many, they weren’t convinced Google was showing them the full picture when it came to IVT.

After conducting a traffic audit to reveal exactly how much ad spend was being wasted on Google Ads, Lunio was selected as the preferred tool based on product usability, helpful data-driven insights, and high-quality support.

Eliminating sources of wasted ad spend 

Invalid traffic rates coming from Google Paid Search reduced significantly after Lunio implementation - from an average of 16.84% in October 2022 to just 3.13% in December 2023. Funding Circle could then reinvest spend that would otherwise have been wasted back into their campaigns. 

James has also found Lunio’s insights and protection invaluable as Funding Circle expanded into new markets. 

The results 

Comparing paid search data from October 2022 to December 2023 YoY, the downstream benefits of blocking invalid traffic are reflected in improvements across Funding Circle’s key performance metrics. 

Funding Circle has continued to refine their campaign strategy since implementing Lunio, moving towards an offline conversion tracking model and focusing on ROAS. With Lunio acting as a protector of ad spend efficiency, Funding Circle has seen the following successes:

• 10% increase in MQL conversion rate (from impression to MQL)
• 13.7% decrease in average IVT rate (Oct 2022 vs Dec 2023) 
• 5.8% of spend saved in Google & Microsoft Ads

James and the team use Lunio as a hygiene factor behind their PPC efforts, as well as using it to monitor new platforms to better understand ROAS and the level of junk traffic they generate. 

Based on the value proven for Paid Search, Funding Circle expanded protection to other platforms - such as Bing, Meta, TikTok, and important growth channels such as Performance Max, where lead quality can suffer without any kind of filter in place. 

By automatically removing low-quality traffic and other types of IVT from their Performance Max campaigns, Lunio helps ensure Funding Circle continues to drive qualified pipeline with genuine conversion potential.