“We got a good number of leads from Google Adwords but many of those are irrelevant or not a good fit for our sales and marketing teams”. If you also experience this then you need to review and analyze your campaigns closely. A lot of businesses make mistakes while setting up Adwords campaigns and end up losing money because of bad account and campaign structures which ultimately results in low conversion rates and irrelevant leads.
To have Adwords generate qualified leads, you need to have tightly and intelligently structured campaigns and optimize them regularly. We cannot let it fly on the auto-pilot mode and expect great results. At least not until the campaigns have been running for a long time and already converting with a healthy conversion rate and healthy share of qualified leads.
Here in this article, we are going to discuss 5 methods which greatly help in generating qualified leads from Adwords.
1. Have different offers for TOFU, MOFU and BOFU keywords
Not all keywords are same and not everyone is looking to buy. In fact, around 80% of search queries are informational and around 50% of qualified leads are not ready to buy first hand. So, instead of showing the same piece of content to everyone clicking on your ads irrespective of the intent behind their query, you should take the approach explained below.
Once you have compiled a list of keywords, divide your list into 3 smaller lists namely top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) keywords, middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) keywords and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOTF) keywords.
TOFU list should have keywords which are intriguing in nature, where the searcher is not yet ready to buy. But if those searchers are educated well, they can be converted into leads and customers in the long run. For example: you provide real estate investment services and you find that there are 50 monthly searches (see data in the image below) on “is real estate a good investment”. What you can do is write an informative blog post and add this keyword in your campaign linking to the blog post. In general, you should target blog posts using TOFU keywords. There are definitely less chances that someone reading a blog post would contact you. But you can place sensible CTA (other than contact us) on your blog post which the user would find helpful. For example: a free ebook.
MOFU list should have keywords where intent of the user is to learn more about a topic. Let’s take the same example of real estate investment service. The keywords “real estate investment strategies” and “best places to invest in real estate” have 30 and 50 monthly searches respectively (see the same image above). You can come up with an ebook guide explaining the main concepts of real estate investment. Possible offers on MOFU keywords can be ebook guides, explainer videos, white papers, checklist, etc.
BOFU is a stage where the searcher’s intent is to decide. And keywords in this stage are more of transactional in nature. For example: the keyword “real estate investment companies” receives 110 monthly searches. You can target your free consultation page OR a client’s case study OR an investment return calculator on this keyword. Generally, offers like free trial, free demo, free evaluation, free consultation, a discount coupon, etc. work best for BOFU queries.
2. Use power words + relevant language in ads and landing pages
Words carry psychological effects. Experimenting different words in your ads and landing pages greatly benefits to generate qualified leads. Instead of taking a generic approach towards your ads and landing page copy, try something different. By generic, I mean using words which are too banal that everyone is using in your industry. Obviously you should use your industry buzzwords. But you should also give a shot to experimenting power words. You can find a huge list of power words here and here. There should be something helpful for your business as well in these lists.
Another thing that’s equally important is the use of relevant language keeping in mind your audience demographics. If your audience for a particular keyword is C level executives, then your language (in ads and landing pages) should be more formal and should have words with which they define their problems and goals.
Where should you use power words and language?
Ads: Headlines (most important), display URL, description, ad extensions (callouts, sitelinks)
Landing Page: Heading (very important), subheading AND/OR benefits, form CTA and button (very important), CTA buttons, other headings
3. Offer what you promise in ads
Ever been to a website only to find everything but what you are looking for? Then you know what I am talking about. If I am clicking on an ad promising me a free trial, or a free report, I want to see that very offer on the website I would land on.
One of the most common mistakes many businesses/marketers make in PPC is they point users to homepage or any service page on the website. Generally, homepage and service pages are not optimized to generate leads. These pages either don’t have what is promised in the ad or have too many offers (CTAs) which ultimately confuse the visitor. In general, the ideal case scenario is sticking to one offer on landing page and having as few exit links as possible.
A dedicated landing page offering exactly what is promised in the ad is what generates qualified leads. How the information is presented on the landing page is different, though.
Here’s a good example of delivering what is promised. I searched for “antivirus for windows 10” and an ad for Avast popped up. Upon clicking, I landed on a page which offered exactly what was mentioned in the ad. Below are the screenshots of Google SERP and Avast landing page.
Read these posts to analyze your current landing pages and learn how to optimize them for conversions. Finally, it is best to create landing pages using landing page builders. There are many but I personally like Unbounce.
4. Ask qualifying questions in the landing page form
According to a study by BrightTALK, for B2B marketers, the ideal number of fields on web registration and download forms is between three and five for 79% of respondents, while only 16% said it was six or more. While reducing form fields and asking lesser questions do help in generating more leads, it might also result in unqualified leads.
For example: if you provide recruiting solutions to businesses and you run ads on Google Adwords targeting only businesses, there are high chances that candidates will also be clicking on your ads and will even fill the form knowing that you provide recruiting. Qualifying form fields will greatly help reduce candidate leads here. Fields like “How many positions you want to fill” and “Which position you want to fill” will reduce candidate leads to a great extent.
You might argue that increasing number of fields will reduce conversion rate. The answer to this question is “test it out”. You will have to get your hands in the water to find out if it’s hot or cold. Similarly, you should test adding fields which are relevant to your audience and compare your conversion rates until you start getting desired results. What matters at the end of the day is quality of leads and not quantity of leads.
5. Target brand and competitor keywords
Once your business starts getting traction, people start searching your business on Google by your brand name. You need to check this regularly. Anyone searching your business by its name is actually interested in learning what you do. Although most of the websites rank organically for their brand terms in Google, however, it is highly recommended to show your ads on brand terms. Below are some benefits of doing so.
- If you are not targeting your brand terms, chances are your competitors would do it. Why leave your bite for others?
- Your homepage or any page ranking organically might not be optimized for conversions. However, through an ad, you can point your visitors to a conversion optimized landing page. This will reduce CPA and increase conversion rate.
- Brand terms are mostly cheaper than your other keywords. This will reduce overall costs of your campaigns.
- Appearing both organically and inorganically on brand terms develops a sense of credibility in the eyes of your audience.
- Brand terms usually attain higher Quality Score which results in higher Quality Score of the account overall.
- You can change the messaging of your ad/offer/landing page as many times as you want.
As we mentioned above that your competitors might bid on your brand terms, you can bid on their brand terms as well. Anyone looking for your competitors by name is a good indicator that he is looking for something that you already provide and might be interested in comparing different options. You should capitalize on this. Craft an ad listing your USPs over your competitors and if possible, create a landing page comparing your service/product with your competitors’.
Have a look at this screenshot. I searched for “Cloudflare CDN” and an ad from CDN77 popped up. The headlines and display URL had me to click on CDN77 ad.
6. Run remarketing campaigns
Remarketing campaigns are great for re-engaging visitors who have visited your website in past but have not converted. Qualified visitors and leads at lower cost are two of the most enticing reasons to go with remarketing. However, success with remarketing lies in understanding and segmenting your audience. The more segmented audiences you have, more qualified leads you will generate.
Remarketing campaigns run on both Google Display as well as Google Search Network. You have to start by creating remarketing lists in Google Adwords or Analytics. Once you have created lists, you need to come up with sensible offers to show to those lists. Here is a guide on remarketing from Google.
7. Testing
It is not possible to run profitable PPC campaigns from day one. It takes a few weeks to a few months before understanding the best keywords, best ad positions, best verticals, problem areas, etc. The best part of using Google Adwords is it offers comprehensive measurability. This allows businesses to test multiple offers, ads, landing pages, images ads, messaging, etc.
You can test different offers for different keywords (first point of this blog post), create multiple ads with different words and messaging (second point of this blog post), test more than one landing page, test multiple headlines, etc. In addition to this, you can also test multiple campaign settings like delivery methods, ad rotation, bidding strategies, etc.
What’s important with testing is you should measure the impact of every change you make. A simple document listing particular changes along with dates would help here.
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Let us know how you generate qualified leads with Google Adwords in the comment below. If you liked this blog post, please share it!