Lead Generation With Google Ads – A Brief Overview
Virtually any business needs to drive sales and or generate leads and Google Ads can be a fantastic way to achieve those goals.
This basic principle is by running one or multiple choices of Google ads campaigns structure to target and audience and generate some form of direct response or action, such as signing up for a newsletter or filling in a customer/client contact form.
It can even be something as simple as literally driving traffic to the website. However to get the best from the process and to try and attribute a return on the advertising investment (ROI), we need to look at the goals/conversions that need to be achieved in these campaigns.
By setting up goals/conversion factors we can tell Google exactly what success for the campaign looks like and optimise the campaign to achieve more of those successes.
- Encourage the completion of some kind of contact form
- Generate leads by gathering contact details through a sign-up page
- Simple Increase traffic to your website to build brand awareness
What Campaign Types Are There?
There’s a range of campaigns that can be tailored to your desired need that can utilise everything from keywords, audiences, titles, descriptions and imagery. And sometimes combinations of these campaigns can work well to achieve the end goal/conversion.
Search Campaigns
Probably the one we’re all most familiar with is ‘Search’. When we’ve typed some kind of question into Google, we get a list of results for that search, some ‘organic’ results and those that are paid for that you’ll see ‘sponsored’ close by the listing. We’ll look at what goes in to a search campaign shortly.
Performance Max
The newest of the campaign structures from Google and still even now after a few years is evolving. It’s been designed to make use of all of Google surfaces (search, Youtube, email platforms), giving ability to put in both text based assets in to a campaign as well as imagery and video, as well as allowing some direction on audiences, keywords and search themes. The other benefits to Performance Max is that in selling products or lead generation, the touch points that people make to get to a final decision are getting wider. Using desktop and mobile devices, looking at imagery and search results. It’s all in one approach does mean customer or client targets can be easier to get in front of using this style of campaign
Search and Performance Max – The Power Pair
The ultimate goal is to get as much relevant traffic to your desired size and encourage those visitors to take that action that can be followed up on, such as a lead form submission.
At its conception, Performance Max was very much promoted as an easy(ish) method for less experienced users of Google Ads to be able to utilises many of the campaign structures in one place. However it was at the expense of some of the reporting that’s available with other campaign structures, actually allowing you to see what it is that’s likely driving your goals/conversions or indeed lack of. Performance Max needs some leading and this is where the power pairing of Search and Performance Max work together to get more results.
Necessary Keyword and Theme Research
We all look for things differently on the internet and especially when it comes to our own businesses. Keywords, descriptive phrases or themes we think are associated with our businesses may differ hugely with how someone else perceives a business and their services. So its important to do the research on what’s being searched for, utilising tools such as the ‘keyword planner’ in Google ads, as numerous other 3rd party tools (some free and some not) to find what people are looking for. Then tailor your advertising messages to appeal to those searches or questions.
Goals and Conversions
Part of the set up on any website is to ideally put into place Google Analytics (GA4) to track what people are doing on your site and how they got there. GA4 now terms actions taken on a website as ‘events’, so whether that’s visiting a web page or as we’re looking at here, filling in a contact or lead form. We need to be able to define what it is about that action that people takes that makes it an even. Usually with a lead for there’s some kind of confirmation of submission or some other kind of result that can be tracked. Identifying that helps to measure that ‘event’ but also means we can tailor advertising costs and bidding on relevant keywords that generate more of those events to happen.
Within Google Ads its possible to have ‘Primary Conversions’, so the act of a lead form submission and also ‘Secondary Conversions, the secondary ones can be observed and help lead the learning of the advertising campaign as some secondary actions, like a visit to a ‘Contact Us’ page could then lead to a lead form submission.
How to measure effectiveness
The first step is to start keeping track of your conversions with the Conversion Tracking tools within Google Ads. Once this is all set up, and importantly, enough data, important metrics, including number of conversions, cost per conversion and conversion rate, as well as keyword conversion data and data on landing pages becomes available.
Data Is Key
For new advertisers there is going to be an initial period of learning and trying to get as many people to the site and hopefully in turn getting leads from those visits. This is where optimisation of keywords and phrases has to be taken into account, as well as bidding costs and budgets.
Depending on how competitive your market is the cost of bidding on a keyword could be as little as a couple of pence to even in excess of £10 per click. It can depend on how valuable that client or search intent is to you but also your competition and anyone else who may be bidding on those keywords.
Either way you have to give campaigns time for Google to optimise and also then if you need to make changes, for those changes to take effect.
Time Frames and Budgeting
Certainly for new campaigns the recommendation would be to budget for at least 3 months of advertising. Whilst highly likely there will be results before this point for key optimisations and longer term growth you’d need as much detail as possible. Campaigns can be affected by seasonality, world events or just simply that people are or aren’t looking for as specific service or requirement at that time. Being able to average out data makes it much easier to take decisions of scaling and optimisation.
Budget needs to realistic, spending £1 or £2 a day isn’t likely to work well. At a minimum £10 per day gives some reasonable options and of course the cost of management if you’re not taking on the campaign management yourself. Management costs can be from £300 +VAT upwards depending on the advertising spend, complexity of the campaigns and required monitoring, data analysis and optimisation.
Final Thoughts On Lead Generation
Google Ads can certainly offer a cost effective route to advertising to your target clients and audience, complementing an active sales team and as part of your marketing mix. Making an action that you see as a result, as easy as possible to make will help. So if it’s a contact form, make sure you get the essential information but also don’t make it too lengthily. Think about incentives to taking an action, is there some kind of discount or promotion that can be offered, if not immediately but upon working with your new lead.
Contact us to discuss how we could assist with your business’s Google Ads Lead Generation and Management needs, or maybe you just need some consultancy on what you’re doing and the next steps. click here to fill in a contact form and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible or feel free to call 07710 181812.