In the competitive world of digital marketing, generating leads through PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns is a fundamental strategy for many businesses. However, while generating a high volume of leads is challenging, ensuring these leads are of high quality is where the real difficulty lies. High-quality leads enhance ROI from ad spend, making it imperative for marketers to refine their strategies continuously. This blog explores essential techniques for improving lead quality in Google Ads, focusing on sophisticated targeting, the integration of AI and machine learning, and advanced conversion tracking methods. We’ll delve into how you can not only attract more leads but ensure they are the right leads that will drive your business forward.
Targeting in the Age of AI and Machine Learning
Targeting has always been the number one factor in determining success with Google Ads. However, in the era of AI, it extends beyond the manual selections you use.
Traditionally, advertisers have employed bottom-of-the-funnel Google Ads targeting options, such as precise keywords with more restrictive match types, to hyper-target the ideal audience. Once demand in this area is saturated, they start to move up the funnel, employing broader targeting options.
In the era of AI, the approach to Google Ads targeting has significantly evolved beyond traditional manual methods. AI and machine learning algorithms now enhance targeting strategies to widen the potential audience.
For instance, AI-powered tools can reverse-engineer historical conversion data to identify patterns of high-intent buyers and predict in real-time auctions who the most qualified potential customers are, thus predicting user behavior, identifying patterns, and automatically adjusting bids and targeting criteria based on performance. This means that, instead of relying solely on predefined audience segments, AI systems can discover potential customers based on complex user interactions and engagement metrics that may not be immediately apparent.
Before AI in Google Ads, advertisers used online and offline conversion tracking for reporting to measure ROI, and as the foundation for manual optimisation. However, in the AI era, the machine relies on conversion tracking (both online and offline) to optimise lead quantity and quality, respectively. Therefore, you must train Google Ads to generate the maximum number of leads at the lowest cost using online conversion tracking, and simultaneously train the system to enhance lead quality with offline conversion tracking.
Measure Lead Quality & Value
Online leads vary significantly in levels of qualification and value, making it essential to establish ways to report on the value of leads. There are several ways to measure lead quality, but a straightforward and effective metric is the conversion rate from lead to customer. This rate reflects the quality of your leads; a high conversion rate suggests that a substantial portion of these leads are converting into customers, indicating high quality. Conversely, a low lead-to-customer conversion rate implies that the leads are not suitable, even if they are cheaper to acquire.
If you rely solely on Google Ads’ online conversion tracking, you will find yourself depending on an average CPA (Cost Per Lead), which can result in overpaying for low-quality leads and underpaying for high-quality ones, instead of optimal balance between quantity and quality.
To go beyond merely measuring cost per lead, you need to set up Google Ads offline conversion tracking by integrating your CRM or POS with Google Ads. This will allow you to measure deeper into your sales funnel, including tracking the final purchase event, and assess the quality of each lead more accurately.
Focusing on measuring lead quality to direct budget and efforts towards high-quality leads in your PPC campaigns enhances your return on investment. Additionally, improving lead quality enables salespeople to focus on more promising opportunities, streamline their sales processes, and cultivate a loyal customer base.
Lead Generation Vs Revenue Optimisation
Generating sufficient leads with PPC campaigns at a set target cost per lead can be a complex task when the goal extends beyond mere lead acquisition to securing high-quality leads that translate into offline sales.
Using Google Ads for lead generation is distinctly different from driving sales in e-commerce. While a lead represents the initial step in the sales process, a purchase signifies its conclusion. This means e-commerce companies are training Google’s AI to get the most customers at the lowest cost- and also the highest value customers, where as lead gen service providers are just training Google’s AI to get them leads at the lowest cost.
To address this, many service providers now import their CRM sales funnel stages and revenue data into Google Ads. This integration allows them to leverage the same sophisticated levels of reporting and optimisation that are typically used in e-commerce, thus tailoring their strategies based on actual revenue generation rather than initial lead capture.
Lead generation itself is not straightforward, primarily because the initial interaction occurs at the very beginning of the sales cycle. This early stage opens the door for a wide array of potential customers to engage, including those who may not have the actual means or intention to purchase the final service. To mitigate this, it is essential to develop targeted strategies that not only attract higher-quality leads but also actively discourage unqualified individuals from filling out contact forms or making inquiries.
Train Google’s AI (Machine Learning) what a Quality Lead is
Google’s ad bidding algorithm is a machine learning system that determines levels of intent, surpassing manual targeting which optimises toward a historical average rather than individual intent in real-time auctions.
The algorithm evaluates numerous factors, including the bid, ad and landing page quality, expected click-through rate, historical performance data, and individual behaviours such as websites viewed or other patterns indicating levels of intent.
The higher the quality of data you provide to Google, the more accurate and effective the algorithms will be for your bidding.
You can enhance data quality by:
- Setting up both online and offline conversion tracking for lead scoring.
- Filtering customer lists to include only your highest-quality customers, maintaining a minimum of 1,000 users.
- Assigning conversion values to distinguish more profitable leads from others for better customer scoring.
Algorithms like Google’s ad bidding system are designed to undergo a learning phase and enhance performance by leveraging a feedback loop. This loop enables the algorithm to learn from past conversions and adjust its strategies for improved outcomes. With accurate and high-quality initial inputs, the algorithm lays a strong foundation for the learning process, enabling it to make increasingly precise bidding decisions as it refines its understanding of user behaviours, preferences, and industry trends.
Fuelled by the right inputs, this positive feedback loop results in more accurate learning and improved bidding decisions, enhancing campaign effectiveness and improving return on investment.
One of the best practices for enhancing your lead quality is to use Google Ads offline conversion tracking and Enhanced Conversion Tracking for Leads. Offline conversion tracking allows you to link online ad interactions with offline actions, such as in-store purchases or phone orders, better informing Google’s bidding algorithms on whom and what to optimise for increased profits and offline sales.
Start New Campaigns Using Match Type
When starting out, it is generally better to use restrictive match types. As you progress, you can expand your approach to include broader keywords or broad match types, particularly if you have both online and offline conversion tracking in place. Exact and phrase match types offer the most control over keyword matching, so if a significant number of your leads are coming from your broad match terms, this might be causing issues.
To address poor matches, you’ll need to adopt one of two strategies:
- Be more vigilant with search query reviews and the addition of negative keywords, or
- Limit your use of broader match types.
It’s crucial to monitor your Google Ads search terms report to ensure that the searches generating leads are also leading to conversions.
Using Lead Scoring with Forms
If you cant get offline conversion tracking installed, another option to consider is using lead scoring with your forms. If certain forms on your website consistently deliver higher-quality leads than others, consider implementing lead scoring within Google Ads using ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) bidding. Assign a higher conversion value to forms that generate better-quality leads. For instance, assign 1 point to a newsletter sign-up form, 2 points to a contact us form, and 3 points to a demo booking form. After accumulating over 50 conversions, switch your bidding strategy from Target CPA to ROAS. This adjustment allows Google to differentiate the value of each form, optimising to secure more demo bookings and contact inquiries while reducing the emphasis on newsletter sign-ups.
An enduring strategy that remains effective in the age of AI involves adding more qualification fields to your lead forms. Although this may reduce the total number of leads, it tends to improve lead quality and trains the AI to recognise what constitutes a good lead.
Optimising Form Fields for Enhanced Lead Quality
When enhancing forms on your website, landing page, or Google Ads Lead Form Extensions, increasing the number of form fields can lead to an improvement in lead quality. Ensure that the additional questions are relevant and could provide valuable insights to your sales team upon following up. For example, consider asking for information such as annual revenue, number of employees, or income level.
By including questions about the industry, job title, and company name, you enable your sales team to tailor their approach to the specific needs of the lead. This preparatory research helps make the initial contact more effective, making the lead feel valued and understood—a definite win-win scenario.
Additionally, it’s crucial to be precise with the information you request in the forms. For example, distinguishing between asking for a generic email address and a work email address can significantly affect the quality of information received. Similarly, refining your keywords (e.g., from “insurance” to “life insurance”) ensures you’re targeting the correct audience.
Furthermore, consider implementing multi-redirect forms that lead to various thank-you pages based on the user’s selections before form submission. This technique helps prevent unqualified leads from being counted as conversions, enhancing the overall effectiveness of your lead-generation efforts.
Optimising Form Using BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe)
The BANT sales framework is an effective strategy to ensure that the leads generated are highly qualified and more likely to convert. Here’s how each element of BANT can be incorporated into a lead form:
Budget: Include questions to determine the prospective customer’s budget. This can be direct, such as asking, “What is your budget for this project?” or more indirect, such as options that range from budget tiers, helping you gauge their spending ability.
Authority: To ascertain if the lead has the decision-making power, you might include a question like, “What is your role in the purchasing process?” This helps identify whether you are talking to a decision-maker or an influencer within the company.
Need: Incorporate questions that probe into the specific needs of the prospective customer, such as “What challenges are you hoping to address with our solution?” Understanding their needs helps tailor your communications and solutions effectively.
Timeframe: Determine the urgency by asking when they plan to implement or purchase the solution, for example, “By when do you need this solution implemented?” This helps in prioritising the leads and aligning your sales efforts accordingly.
By integrating these BANT criteria into your lead form, you can effectively qualify leads, ensuring that your sales team focuses their efforts on leads that are most likely to convert, thereby optimising the sales process and resource allocation.
How CRM Integration with Google Works
Integration with CRM or Database: Integrate your offline data with Google Ads by collecting and associating a Google Click ID (GCLID) with your leads. Alternatively, consider using Enhanced Conversions for Leads for a less technical and more streamlined implementation. Ideally, you should have an automatic upload of this data into Google Ads regularly. If you use Salesforce or HubSpot, Google Ads offers straightforward integration for uploading these offline sales conversions.
Revenue Attribution and ROAS Reporting: Once Google matches the lead with the originating click ID, it can attribute the ads, keywords, and campaigns that drive these valuable offline actions. You can access reports on associated metrics such as conversion value, conversion rate, and return on ad spend (ROAS).
Identifying Optimisation Opportunities: This data helps you understand which keywords, ads, or campaigns drive the most valuable offline conversions. These insights will assist you in making informed decisions about budget allocation, keyword selection, ad creatives, and campaign targeting to optimise your efforts.
Tagging and Tracking: With PPC campaigns, tag your URLs so all users are tracked back to the keyword level within your campaigns. Your first challenge is to ensure your marketing automation system is capturing this information. Your second challenge is to regularly extract this data and use it to optimise your campaigns. This information is crucial in deciding where budgets should be allocated, which keywords should remain active, and other campaign adjustments.
Mapping Your Sales Process Funnel Steps to Offline Conversion Stages within Google Ads
To fully leverage Google Ads for your business, especially when your sales process involves offline interactions, it’s essential to map your sales funnel steps to offline conversion tracking in Google Ads. This ensures that every stage of the customer journey is measured and optimised for better performance. Here’s how to align your sales process with offline conversion tracking:
Identify Key Stages of Your Sales Funnel
Begin by outlining the key stages of your sales process. Typically, this might include a qualified lead, proposal/negotiation, and closure. Each of these stages represents a potential conversion point that can be tracked.
Define Conversion Actions for Each Funnel Stage
For each stage of your funnel, map to a specific conversion action in Google Ads. For example:
- Lead Capture: Conversion is tracked when a customer fills out a contact form and provides their details. (This is recorded by Google’s online conversion tracking)
- Qualified Lead: Track when a lead schedules an appointment for consultation and send this from your CRM as an offline conversion. An offline conversion is recorded when a proposal is sent to the prospective customer.
- Converted Lead: This final conversion happens when the sale is officially completed
Disqualifying Leads from Converting
Ideally, you would disqualify unsuitable prospects before they click on your ad, thus saving you money. You can employ additional techniques after you have excluded sources of low-quality leads.
Using Price as a Disqualifier If you often encounter leads that generate prospects with price objections, consider including pricing details in your ad copy and on your landing pages. This approach prevents those who cannot afford your offerings from entering your funnel.
Ad Copy and Lead Qualification While striving to create the most appealing ad copy to increase click-through rates (CTR), ensure that this copy also attracts quality leads with a higher potential for conversion. We aim to purposefully deter certain users from clicking on our ads if they are likely not to convert.
Using Forms for Further Qualification If it’s impractical to display prices directly, use your online form to pose a qualifying question about the prospect’s budget or investment capacity. This allows you to direct leads towards more profitable follow-up tactics based on their responses. Additionally, consider including questions about the urgency of their need, such as the significance of the problem they are trying to solve or their time frame for resolution.
Landing Pages for Lead Qualification The copy on your landing pages is another vital tool for qualifying users. Use this space to clearly define what your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas look like. For instance, if your services are suitable for businesses of all sizes but you prefer working with companies that have over 250 employees, ensure your copy specifically mentions “Businesses with 250+ Employees” or similar parameters. You could also introduce a header that states, “Best suited for companies who…” followed by bullet points that detail your target customer characteristics. You have the flexibility to be as subtle or as bold as necessary, but ensure your landing page effectively helps to qualify users.
Testing Landing Pages: Brand Appeal vs Lead Generation
Evaluating Brand Appeal: How effective is your brand at attracting your ideal prospects, and are these high-calibre leads inclined to engage with your offerings? If you’re facing challenges in drawing quality leads or want to enhance your overall brand appeal, begin by examining and refining your brand strategy.
Enhancing Brand Identity: Consider revitalising your brand identity, encompassing updates to your website, advertisements, logos, and colour schemes. It’s crucial that these elements resonate strongly with your target customers to maintain relevance and attract the right audience.
Aligning Messaging with Audience Needs: Revisit your target audience to ensure that your brand’s messaging aligns precisely with their preferences and requirements. Clearly articulate your value proposition, underscoring how your brand uniquely addresses the specific challenges faced by your users. This clarity and relevance in messaging are essential for striking a chord with potential customers and enhancing lead generation.
Optimising for Lead Generation: While maintaining a strong brand appeal, focus equally on optimising your landing pages for lead generation. Implement personalised landing pages that not only reflect the brand’s identity but are also optimised for conversions. Use dynamic website content that adjusts based on the visitor’s preferences and past behaviours, coupled with behaviour-based retargeting ads to sustain engagement and improve conversion rates.
Balancing Brand Appeal with Conversion Strategies: The ultimate goal is to create landing pages that not only draw visitors in through compelling brand appeal but also efficiently convert them into leads. This involves a careful blend of aesthetic elements and functional design, ensuring that each landing page serves both to enhance brand perception and to drive actionable results.
By testing and continuously refining these aspects of your landing pages, you can achieve a harmonious balance between strengthening your brand appeal and boosting your lead generation efforts, thus fostering more meaningful interactions and conversions from your target audience.
How to Improve Lead Quality with Offline Conversion Tracking
Online conversion tracking helps increase lead quantity, while offline conversion tracking helps improve lead quality.
Conversion tracking is a vital tool in Google Ads for measuring success and improving campaign performance to enhance profitability and increase customer sales. Google Ads offers both online and offline conversion tracking. .
Most advertisers use online conversion tracking to measure the number of leads generated and the cost per lead. However, more companies are now extending this approach by incorporating offline conversion tracking, as recommended by Google, to gain deeper insights into lead quality and long-term value.
Remember, not all leads have the same value; some are more likely to turn into paying customers than others. Tracking what happens after the initial lead enquiry is crucial. By tracking leads through every stage of the sales funnel and optimising ad spend based on lead quality and revenue, you ensure your advertising budget is used efficiently, driving higher ROI and attracting customers who bring long-term value to your business.
Online Conversion Tracking
Google Ads records the number of people who fill out a form on your website as an online conversion, using the Google Pixel (Conversion Tracking Script) placed on your site. Success is measured by the number of leads and the cost per lead, which only considers the first step in your sales process (the lead enquiry).
Offline Conversion Tracking
Offline conversion tracking goes beyond just capturing form submissions by tracking what happens after the initial contact. Offline conversion tracking is a powerful feature that enhances your ability to track and optimise Google Ads using the progression of leads through your sales funnel.
By syncing lifecycle changes back to Google Ads, you gain improved optimisation and reporting capabilities through machine learning AI, ensuring that your marketing investments drive tangible results.
With Google Ads offline conversion tracking, you can determine whether a lead becomes a qualified lead, progresses to a deal, and eventually becomes a customer. Without offline conversion tracking, you only know who filled out a form. However, with Google Ads Offline Conversion Tracking, you gain insights into which businesses later scheduled a meeting, received a quote, and purchased your service. It also provides the machine with a quality dataset to learn from and optimise towards generating quality leads that convert into customers.
- Optimised Ad Spend: Allocate more budget to ads that attract leads similar to those who have previously purchased your service. Avoid wasting money on ads that only attract form fillers without further engagement. Knowing which leads convert into high-quality customers allows for more strategic budgeting.
- Improve Lead Value Measurement: CRM integration with offline conversion tracking helps Google Ads identify the most valuable leads. Whether you set bids manually or use automatic bidding, this integration ensures your money is spent wisely. Google Ads will prioritise leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers.
- Revenue-Based Customer Scoring: CRM integration can send sales revenue data back to the ad platforms, allowing you to score customers based on the revenue they generate and their purchase frequency. This information helps optimise your advertising to achieve better results.
How Google Ads Uses Offline Conversion Tracking for (AI machine learning)
This is just a basic theoretical overview of how the AI machine works behind the scenes.
Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition):
When an online lead is generated through an advertising campaign on platforms like Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn, this lead is recorded as a conversion using the platform’s conversion tracking scripts placed on your website. As the lead progresses through your sales process, an offline conversion is created each time a sales stage is completed.
The ad platform uses these conversions to assess the quality of the leads. Leads that progress further through the sales stages, such as becoming qualified or converting into customers, receive higher scores. For instance:
- An online conversion might score 1 point.
- A qualified lead might score an additional point.
- A converted lead (customer) might score another point.
In this example, a lead that becomes a customer scores a total of 3 points, while a lead that doesn’t progress beyond the initial stage only scores 1 point. Google Ads requests that leads be marked as “qualified” and “converted” to align with its lead stages, enabling the system to use a basic lead scoring method, such as:
- Lead (poor)
- Qualified Lead (average)
- Converted Lead (customer)
The Target CPA bidding strategy is then used to optimise for the maximum number of conversions, considering both online and offline data. Depending on the volume and quality of your conversion data, you can also test optimising for specific ad events, such as focusing solely on qualified leads instead of initial online leads.
Being able to see the cost for each of the completed steps in your sales process in both your CRM and within the online ad platforms takes your advertising light years ahead.
Target ROAS: (Return On Ad Spend):
Target ROAS is optimising solely for the highest customer sales revenue. It will optimise to get the most customers, but more importantly, the most high-value customers. So instead of optimising for lead quality using lead stage scoring, you optimise for customer value. This is similar to how e-commerce companies bid when they have products with different prices – making cost-per-sale optimisation insufficient.
Target ROAS bidding focuses on optimising for the highest possible revenue from customer sales, rather than just the number of leads or conversions. This strategy aims to attract not only the most customers but, more importantly, the highest-value customers.
Instead of optimising based on lead quality, as in Target CPA, the system optimises based on customer value. Similar to lead scoring, customer scoring is applied in future auctions, where the system bids more aggressively for ad placements likely to result in high-value customers.
This approach is particularly useful for e-commerce businesses with a wide range of product prices. When the cost per sale isn’t a sufficient metric for success, Target ROAS ensures that the bidding strategy focuses on maximising the overall revenue by prioritising higher-value transactions.
Target ROAS & Target CPA:
In a Google Ads campaign, you can optimise for either maximum leads (Target CPA) or maximum revenue (Target ROAS), but not both simultaneously. For companies with a mix of online and offline sales, this presents a challenging scenario.
Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): If you choose to optimise for maximum leads using the Target CPA strategy, you risk overpaying for lower-priced products or services. This occurs because the system focuses solely on generating as many conversions as possible, without considering the varying values of those conversions. This approach can result in a loss of high-value sales while generating more low-value sales.
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Alternatively, if you opt for Target ROAS, the system optimises based on the revenue generated from sales. However, without tracking offline conversions, this strategy can be flawed. Since offline sales aren’t recorded in Google Ads, the system lacks critical revenue data from offline sales, particularly the highest-value transactions that occur offline. As a result, the ROAS bid strategy will underperform, reducing spending on leads that significantly contribute to revenue but aren’t visible to Google Ads..
Companies can overcome this limitation and effectively utilise Target ROAS bidding by integrating offline sales data into Google Ads. By sending offline sales data back to Google Ads, the platform can account for both online and offline sales, including high-value offline transactions. This comprehensive approach enables more accurate optimisation to increase revenue and profit. (More profitable low-value sales, and more high-value sales)
Using Target ROAS with offline conversion tracking can also help avoid overspending on low-value products since the return on ad spend has a minimum threshold. The cost of implementing offline conversion tracking is minimal compared to the significant improvements it can bring to your ad campaign’s performance and overall revenue.
Summary
Improving lead quality is not just about tweaking a few settings in your Google Ads account; it involves a holistic approach to your entire digital marketing strategy. From choosing the right match types to utilising AI-driven targeting and integrating detailed conversion tracking, each element plays a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of your campaigns. Remember, the goal is to attract leads that are not only numerous but are genuinely interested in what you offer, thereby increasing the chances of conversion and customer loyalty. By implementing the strategies discussed, such as optimising your landing pages, refining targeting with AI, and employing smart conversion tracking, you can significantly improve the quality of your leads and ultimately, the success of your campaigns. Embrace these changes, and watch as your Google Ads transform into a more potent tool in your marketing arsenal.
