From dormant channel to 13× growth. Search was always there. The system wasn’t.
- Paid Search
- Campaign Architecture
- Competitor Conquesting
Introduction
Klar is one of Mexico’s leading digital banks, offering credit cards, savings accounts, and investment products to millions of users. Strong brand recognition, significant organic traffic, and one of Latin America’s most competitive fintech markets against Nubank, Plata Card, and Stori.
Despite its scale, Klar’s paid Search channel was virtually dormant. Non-brand investment was under 5% of total spend. The opportunity wasn’t demand. It was capture.
Search was always there. What was missing was the architecture to capture it and the discipline to scale it without breaking CAC. Klar didn’t need more budget to start. They needed someone to build the system first.
The challenge
Demand without capture
Klar’s Search setup had four structural issues. Brand and non-brand keywords were mixed in the same campaigns, distorting optimization signals and inflating perceived results. Non-brand ran on just 2 ad groups, making relevant ad copy and meaningful Quality Scores impossible. Competitors were bidding on Klar’s branded terms with no defensive strategy in place. And Performance Max was aggressively buying branded keywords, creating the illusion of acquisition while only capturing existing demand.
Klar held just 16% of total search traffic in its competitive set. Not a demand problem. A capture problem. The kind you can’t solve by increasing budget.
The Strategy
build the system, then feed it
Incrementalist rebuilt Klar’s entire Search architecture from scratch. Three workstreams ran in parallel:
Campaign Architecture from Zero
Designed and launched 5 non-brand campaigns segmented by intent: competitor conquesting as the primary acquisition lever, product-specific campaigns for credit cards and savings, and benefit-led campaigns around cashback and financial tools. Brand campaigns were separated and cleaned to protect existing demand without contaminating acquisition signals.
Progressive Scaling with Bidding Discipline
Started with volume-first bidding to feed the algorithm with conversion data, then progressively transitioned to CAC-focused strategies as signal matured. Budget allocation shifted weekly based on keyword-level performance, moving spend toward proven converters while continuously testing new territory.
Keyword Intelligence from Organic Signals
Leveraged Klar’s organic search data to identify high-converting terms the paid team hadn’t explored. Keywords from benefits pages, cashback content, and competitor comparison queries built a continuously expanding keyword universe informed by real user behavior.
The numbers tells the story
13×
+106%
+27.7%
What made the difference
Architecture over optimization
The previous setup wasn’t underperforming. It was structurally incapable of performing. No amount of bid adjustments or budget increases fixes a broken structure. Sometimes the highest-leverage move isn’t optimizing what exists. It’s admitting it needs to be rebuilt.
Competitor intent is acquisition intent
In a market where competitors dominate search volume, the people searching for Nubank or Stori are the exact people evaluating a neobank right now. Custom ad copy highlighting Klar’s specific advantages turned competitive search intent into net-new customers.
Feed the algorithm before constraining it
Scaling from zero requires patience in sequence: volume first to build conversion data, efficiency second once signal is stable. The discipline to transition at the right moment, not before, not after, is what separates controlled growth from wasted spend. The proof: budget scaled 2.5× with CAC under target the entire way.
Ready to build a system that compounds?
Manifesto
Paid media system is broken. And everyone knows it.
Ad Platforms became attribution machines. Claiming credit for every touchpoint, rewarding you for spending more, not for growing more. Their only incentive is your next dollar in.
Acquisition teams operate in silos. Paid has no say in the funnel it feeds. Creative has no loop back from paid. Each owns its metric. Nobody owns the outcome.
Agencies charge for doing, not for thinking. No motivation to challenge. No discomfort. No pushback. Just execution, reports, and invoices.
The result: millions spent on advertising that no CFO can connect to a business outcome.
We believe in one principle.
Every dollar of ad spend should show up in the P&L.
Whether it's optimizing costs, increasing revenue, or acquiring new customers. If it doesn't move the business, it doesn't belong in the budget.
We don't scale spend because spend is available. We scale when the unit economics say we should.
We own paid growth end-to-end. Because paid media is the fastest way to discover what works and what doesn't. It generates volume, it tests hypotheses, it exposes funnel gaps, and it reveals whether a business is ready to scale or needs to fix something first. That's not media buying. That's growth consulting with real money on the line.
This is incrementalist.