How a KL E-Commerce Brand Cut Cost-Per-Lead by Shifting to Microsoft Advertising

Earlier this year, a Kuala Lumpur e-commerce client came to us with a familiar problem. They were spending around RM60,000 a month on Google Ads to acquire B2B accounts for their office-supplies vertical. Cost per lead had crept up by nearly 40% year-on-year, and the pipeline was starting to feel expensive for the same lead quality.

We proposed a two-quarter test: shift 30% of their Google Ads budget to Microsoft Advertising, layer LinkedIn Profile Targeting on top, and measure lead cost and conversion rate side by side. Ninety days later, the numbers spoke for themselves.

The problem: rising Google Ads costs, same audience

The client had been running Google Search Ads for four years. Structure was tight, negative keyword lists were mature, and quality scores sat at 7-9 across most ad groups. There wasn’t obvious optimisation waste — the auction was simply getting more expensive as Malaysian B2B SaaS and office-supplies competitors piled in.

The audience they cared about was procurement managers and office admin heads at Malaysian companies with 50-500 employees. On Google, that audience is priced against every other B2B seller chasing the same targets.

The play: Microsoft Ads with LinkedIn Profile Targeting

Microsoft Advertising’s LinkedIn Profile Targeting is the only search-ad layer in the country that lets you filter by job title, industry, and company size. We rebuilt the client’s top-performing Google campaigns on the Microsoft Search Network with three additions:

1. LinkedIn job title targeting. We layered “Procurement Manager”, “Office Manager”, “Head of Admin”, and adjacent titles onto the keyword targeting.
2. Company-size targeting. Filtered to 50-500 employees, matching the ideal customer profile.
3. Malaysia-focused geo-targeting with district-level bid adjustments for KL, PJ, and Penang.

The results after 90 days

• Cost per click: RM4.20 on Google → RM1.90 on Microsoft (55% lower)
• Cost per lead: RM185 on Google → RM95 on Microsoft (49% lower)
• Lead-to-opportunity rate: 22% on Google, 31% on Microsoft (LinkedIn targeting improved qualification)
• Overall conversion lift on the integrated Google + Microsoft account: +27% in booked pipeline

The LinkedIn targeting was the difference-maker. Because ads only showed to procurement titles at appropriately sized companies, junk clicks dropped substantially. The account rep on the client side said sales calls were “already qualified before the discovery call”.

What we changed operationally

Beyond the campaign build, three things kept the account humming:

• Weekly negative keyword sweeps based on search-term reports. Bing’s search-term data is generally cleaner than Google’s, but early campaigns still need pruning.
• Ad copy tuned to Bing’s exact-match preference. Headlines used the exact target phrase in the first position. Bing rewards this consistently.
• Custom conversion tracking dashboard that tied Microsoft Ads clicks to CRM opportunities so we could report by pipeline value, not just leads.

What this means for other Malaysian businesses

The case works because the client’s audience defaults to Windows-and-Edge browsing at work, and LinkedIn Profile Targeting matched their B2B ICP. It won’t map cleanly to every business — a B2C fashion e-commerce brand wouldn’t see the same LinkedIn lift.

But if your buyer is a Malaysian corporate decision-maker on a Windows machine, Microsoft Advertising is almost certainly cheaper than Google for the same lead quality. Pairing paid campaigns with Bing SEO in Malaysia compounds the effect — organic and paid visibility reinforce each other on the same results page. Our free audit will size the opportunity for your specific keyword set and vertical.

If you’d like us to run the same analysis on your account, request a free Microsoft Advertising audit or explore our Microsoft Advertising Management service.