Tried-and-tested PPC strategies to attract more (qualified) leads into your pipeline
Here you’ll learn:
- Why quality is more important than quantity for PPC lead generation
- How to generate high-quality leads
- Ways to adjust your campaign for lead generation
- Tips for cutting PPC marketing costs
When it comes to PPC lead generation, the more you invest in your paid search campaigns, the more leads you’re likely to see. The tricky part is that, in PPC lead generation, quantity isn’t equal to quality.
The good news? With the right approach, you can achieve your lead generation goals, attract the right kinds of leads, and enjoy a healthy campaign ROI. Read on to find out how.
Look closely at how your target audience is searching for what you have to offer. (Image via Rawpixel)
PPC leads: quality vs. quantity
“Over the past month, we’ve generated 15,000 leads.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? But if only 100 of them convert, then you’ve got thousands of leads with very low ROI to show for it.
Leads with a high conversion potential are harder to obtain. To get them, you’ve got to avoid those who:
- Window-shop without an intent to buy
- Click to get a free gift in exchange for contact information (and share fake details)
- Are bored and click for fun
- Think they’ll be getting something else due to poor ad copy
Meanwhile, even a low-quality lead can gain potential with a well-structured PPC campaign. Let’s look into the most important tips to help you tweak your approach.
1. Create customized landing pages
Your PPC ads are only as effective as the pages they lead to. Each ad should take the potential client to a landing page that provides exactly what your ad promised.
For example, a “Get a free e-book” call to action (CTA) should lead directly to a page where the user can download the content (with or without filling out a short form). If they have to make additional clicks, these people are likely to leave the website, upping your bounce rate.
Google may even punish you for leading clients to a different page from what you promised in the ad. Search engines consider this practice deceptive and may lower your Quality Score, increasing the ad price.
2. Practice target audience segmentation
If you set up your PPC campaigns to target each product or service separately, you may not be getting as many high-quality leads as possible. Look closely at how your target audience is searching for what you have to offer.
From there, you can divide your offering into as many groups as possible. Instead of segmenting by products, you have the option of segmenting by:
- Industry
- Sub-categories
- Features
- Benefits
- Geographic locations
For example, you provide managed IT services in LA:
- Industry: Managed IT services
- Sub-category: Managed security, managed cloud infrastructure, managed SaaS, managed communication services
- Features: antivirus software maintenance, hardware management, disaster recovery plan, software inventory management, quick response IT assistance
- Benefit: high-quality IT services, quick response managed IT, low-cost managed IT services
- Geographical location: Managed IT services in LA, remote managed IT services in LA
When you segment the audience according to the above plan, you may have an easier time setting up the campaign, using the right keywords, writing ad copy, and creating specific landing pages.
3. Fine-tune your ad copy
The quality of your PPC campaign hinges on the effectiveness of your ad copy. Along with writing catchy, clear sentences and an actionable CTA, it’s crucial to keep the user’s intent top of mind.
Which stage of the buyer’s journey is your targeted audience in? For example, if they’re at the awareness stage, leading them to product-oriented pages might not do much good. You have to create ad copy aimed at getting their attention through an offer they’ll find valuable.
When writing the text itself, these are some elements to keep in mind:
- Always address the potential client directly (use “you” and “your”)
- Leverage emotional triggers
- Use exact numbers (feature statistics, show product’s price, advertise a sale)
- Make use of the entire space offered by Google Ads — don’t leave any blank spaces
- Show what makes your offer unique
And, of course, A/B test your ad design to see which one resonates most.
There are five main keyword types you can explore for your PPC campaign. (Image via Rawpixel)
4. Focus on your “money” keywords
Keywords are the pillars of your PPC campaign. So, after segmenting your audience, you can dive into the keyword search.
Tools like SpyFu and UberSuggest exist to help you gather a list of relevant keywords while keeping the competition’s efforts in mind. You can arrange your keywords using SEMrush’s PPC Keyword Tool.
The keyword types to explore for your PPC campaign include:
- Brand keywords — include brand names
- High-intent keywords — specific keywords for buyers at the bottom of the funnel
- Low-intent keywords — to help expand your reach and increase brand awareness
- Long-tail keywords — low-cost and low-competition keywords
- Competitive keywords — high-volume keywords used by many companies in your industry
Make sure to create a list of negative keywords too. You can filter them out by using the Search Term Report and determining which keywords are generating irrelevant clicks. By putting them on the negative keyword list, you can improve the quality of your leads while cutting campaign costs. (Win-win!)
5. Track your campaign
Your PPC campaign needs regular tweaking to ensure it’s as optimized as possible. Track your efforts to keep a pulse on what needs changing. You can get an idea of what works and what doesn’t by following the key PPC marketing KPIs:
- Impressions — how many times your ads appeared in search results
- Clicks — how many times users clicked your ad
- Click-through rate (CTR) — the percentage of users who clicked the ad (Clicks divided by Impressions)
- Average position — a position in which your ads appeared on the search engine results page
- Conversions — how many leads who clicked the ad followed the CTA within a certain window of time
- Quality Score — an indicator of your ad, keyword, and landing page relevance to the user
- Cost per conversion — how much you spend to obtain a new client
- Bounce rate — people who clicked but left without following the CTA
By linking your Google Ads account to Google Analytics, you can obtain valuable insight into your lead generation efforts.
The takeaway
Your PPC campaign should be geared toward generating high-quality leads. With the right approach to ad design, keyword search, analytics, and segmentation, you can achieve the desired conversions and enjoy an impressive ROI.
PPC lead generation may seem straightforward until you dig deeper into its nuances. Need help figuring them out? That’s what we’re here for.
