It’s by far the biggest need of any business large or small: more customers. No matter how great your service or your sales process, relying on your existing customers alone isn’t enough to sustain your business. That’s where lead generation comes in.
Lead generation involves creating an enticing offer to excite and pique the interest of your target audience, so that they’ll be interested enough to want to take the next step and learn more.
But what are the best ways to generate leads?
You have a variety of options at your fingertips to help you bring more leads into your sales funnel, including content marketing, social media, search engine optimization and more. But one of the most effective methods is also one of the easiest to start: Google Ads.
Why Google Ads are Perfect for Lead Generation
Not every person who visits your website or even clicks on your ad will ultimately become your customers. And although you can tweak your sales funnel to help nudge the odds in your favour, you’ll still ultimately lose a lot of prospects no matter how finely-tuned the process may be. Your goal in marketing is to lose as few of those prospects as possible, while turning the ones who have shown some interest, into full-fledged customers.
Google Ads makes this easy by allowing you to precisely hone in on exactly what your target audience is searching for at any given moment. However, before you just dive in, it’s important to take a step back and prepare yourself and your marketing team for what’s to come. Taking steps to prepare now can not only save you a lot of time and money, it will also help ensure that you’re targeting the right prospects at the right moment.
Step One: Set Your Objectives
The first step in using Google Ads for lead generation is to know your objectives and go over those goals with your team. You want to be sure that everything: your marketing, your campaigns, and your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are all in alignment before you even spend a single cent. When you launch your Google Ads for lead generation, you want everything working in tandem like a well-oiled machine.
Step Two: Understand Your Funnel
The next stage in the process is to understand your funnel and your prospect’s journey through it. Google calls this your “lead-to-sale” journey. What are the steps that prospects take in your funnel in order to go from a lead to a sale? At what points could they drop off? This will help you pinpoint the “value” of each conversion action, which is illustrated in the next step.
Step Three: Know Your Values
Many businesses stumble on this step and understandably so. That’s because there is no “one-size-fits-all” value that you can assign to a conversion action. The best way to answer this question is to determine how much that customer’s action in your funnel would generate for you in terms of profit. Having conversion tracking set up within your preferred analytics platform can help you better understand what number you should assign to this value.
Thankfully, Google Ads offers a conversion action calculator based on your business objectives and things like your market share, revenue and profit to help you come up with this number.
Ads Will Only Take You So Far
Google Ads for lead generation are not a magic bullet. That’s why you want to be sure to have everything ready and optimised to perform before you launch a single ad. In the case of lead generation, that means having the combination of excellent copy and creative to attract a users’ attention, followed by a safe yet effective way to measure your results.
What do we mean by “a safe and effective way to measure your results?” Simply put, the cookies that are set when your target audience member clicks. Ideally, you’ll want to use first-party cookies; that is, cookies that track visitor information directly from your website. This is opposed to third-party cookies, which track visitor clicks and other information from other (third-party) sites.
As you might have guessed, first-party cookies are far more valuable and cause far less issues with regard to privacy concerns. Some browsers and mobile devices will block third-party cookies outright, so the closer to your site you can keep the data, the better.
Are There Certain Strategies I Can Use to Get Better Click-Through and Conversion Rates?
If you’ve been using Google Ads for any length of time, you’ll know that the end-game is not just to get a conversion and have the user take the action you want them to take, but also improve your ROAS or Return on Ad Spend. This not only means you pay less per click but it also greatly increases the chances your ad will be shown to your target audience.
The good news is that there are several tried and true strategies for getting better click-through and ultimately, conversion rates, including:
Use a Clear Call-to-Action
Rather than just leaving your call-to-action as a cut-and-dried “Click Here”, let your prospect know exactly what they stand to gain as a result of clicking, such as “Watch A Quick 5-Minute Video”, “Shop Sale Items Now for 30% Off” or “Request a Free Consultation With One of Our Friendly Experts.”
Optimise Your Landing Pages
Your landing page is the first place a user goes after clicking your ad. The best part about using Google Ads together with your landing pages, is that you can target those landing pages to connect with the user based on where they are in the funnel. For example, if they’re researching Google ads management, the landing page would detail exactly why they should want to work with your company rather than sending them to the default home page or an article about how to manage their Google ads on their own.
Set Yourself Apart from Competitors
Depending on what you’re offering, you can set yourself apart from competitors by specifically referencing them in your ads. A landing page that spells out the details of you versus your biggest competitor could be precisely what your potential customer is looking for if they’re evaluating both solutions.
Include Social Proof
How many thousands of customers have you helped? How many years have you been in business? How many five star reviews do you have attesting to the quality of your service? These are the things that you can and should include as social proof in your Google Ads. Not only does it serve as an excellent call-out, but it also puts peoples’ minds at ease knowing that they’re doing business with a legitimate and highly-recommended company.
Leverage Extensions
Last but not least, make good use of extensions where it makes sense to include them. Depending on your business, this could be pricing, call-outs, sitelinks and more. This allows people to see, at-a-glance if your product or service is right for that at that moment without having to click and search on your site or landing page.
Google Ads for Lead Generation
As you can see, Google Ads can be an excellent tool for lead generation, but just like any other channel, including social media and content marketing, there are pros and cons to it. That’s why it’s a good idea to work with a reputable company that understands all of the nuances of Google Ads and how to leverage those ads for maximum ROAS and conversions.
Keep in mind that using Google Ads for lead generation is just one piece of the puzzle. You’ll also need to make sure you’re properly following up with your prospects and giving them every reason to want to do business with you. That means ensuring your site loads fast, is mobile optimized, is built to convert and much more.
Google Ads can get you far but the ads in and of themselves are not the complete solution. However, they’re one of the best ways to cost effectively generate leads who are interested and engaged with what you have to offer, and who are looking to take the next step in the sales funnel. Contact the experts at CLIQ MC today to learn more about how we can help you reach your lead gen goals using Google Ads!
