Businesses looking to increase the number of leads that they get from their website should know that running PPC advertising using Google Ads can be a very powerful way to get an immediate injection of leads.
People searching on Google are looking for an answer to a specific question. If you can put your ads in front of the right people and answer their query, then you should benefit from profitable leads.
In the right hands, Google Ads can be a very profitable advertising tool. However, in the wrong hands, it is possible to burn through thousands of pounds and not get any leads at all. If you need help with our PPC advertising, then you can get in touch with a PPC agency, or a PPC consultant in your local area.
It is important to be aware of the basics of Google Ads advertising to achieve a good number of high-quality leads.
In this blog post, we will look at six tips on improving your Google Ads PPC advertising to increase the number, and quality your leads.
Tip 1: Consider Using a PPC landing page
A PPC landing page is a standalone page that is designed to be used to obtain leads from people searching for the answer to a specific query.
PPC specific landing can be a very powerful way to increase the conversion rate of your PPC ads and bring your cost per lead down.
This is because unlike your website, a PPC landing page isn’t designed to answer all the queries that someone browsing your website may have.
For example, a PPC landing page doesn’t need to contain links to your careers page or link to all of your services. It only needs to focus on answering one specific query and get the user to make an enquiry.
When creating a PPC landing page, think about the kind of problems that your business solves and build a landing page for each of those services.
For example, if you offer skip hire services, then you’re probably aware that people looking for ‘hire a skip’ want the business to be relatively close to them.
People are not going to hire a skip from London when they live in Leeds, for example. In this case, you could create a landing page for each of the towns and cities that you want to target.
Each landing page would talk about the fact that your business offers skip hire to the specific town or location. You would need to create a campaign targeting each location and then use the appropriate landing page for each campaign.
There isn’t one formula when it comes to creating a good PPC landing page. However, here are some pointers on designing a good PPC landing page:
- The content is geared toward answering one specific query.
- A strong, contextual image is used on the top of the page.
- A headline is used above the fold that contains a strong benefit or a call to action.
- A sub-headline is used under the main headline.
- A clear contact form appearing above the fold alongside your headline and sub-headline.
- Ensuring the form doesn’t ask for more information than is necessary.
- Include the features and benefits of your business.
- Make sure trust signals like testimonials, trust symbols, and social proof are clearly visible.
Tip 2: Work on your Quality Score
The amount that you pay for a click depends on the maximum bid that you set and the Quality Score of your keyword. Therefore, if you want to achieve a higher position on the page and obtain more traffic, you need to either bid more or improve your Quality Scores.
If your cost per lead has reached a point where you can no longer increase your bids, then you need to look at improving your Quality Scores to get a better position on the page.
There are many factors to consider when it comes increasing your Quality Scores. Let’s start off with the factors that are used to calculate your Quality Scores.
Quality Scores are calculated using the below three metrics:
- Expected Clickthrough rate – The likelihood that your ad will be clicked when it shows.
- Landing page experience – How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad.
- Ad text relevance – How closely the contents of your ad match the keyword.
To find your Quality Score metrics, you can add extra columns into Google Ads. You can do this by clicking on ‘Columns’, ‘Modify Columns’ and then finding the relevant Quality Scores metrics from the list that appears.
Once you have found your Quality Score metrics, you should have the below three metrics:
Each Quality Score metric receives a score of either ‘Below Average’, ‘Average’, or ‘Above Average’.
A good place to start when it comes to improving your Quality Scores is to look at the keywords with the highest impressions where one Quality Score metric is showing a score of ‘Below Average’.
You can now focus on what needs to be done to improve the score of that specific metric for the specific keyword.
Improving your keyword Quality Scores can be a complex process. However, here are some pointers on where to start when it comes to improving each Quality Score metric:
- ‘Below Average’ Expected clickthrough rate – Work on improving the clickthrough rate of your specific keyword.
- ‘Below Average’ Ad Relevance – Look at adding the keyword into your ad copy whilst maintaining the quality of the ad.
- ‘Below Average’ Landing page experience – Think whether the landing page answers the query that the person searching for the specific keyword would have.
Tip 3: Experiment with Dynamic Text Replacement
Dynamic Text Replacement can be used to tailor the messaging on your landing pages to closer match what the user has searched for.
Matching the words that the user has searched for should lead to a higher conversion rate. In addition to improving the conversion rate of your keyword, it should improve the Quality Score of your keyword.
This is because adding in the keywords into your landing pages should improve the landing page experience of the specific keyword that has been added into the landing page.
For example, suppose you’re looking to increase leads for your cosmetic surgery clinic. In that case, you could set the dynamic text replacement feature to include a zero percent finance message on your landing page if the user’s search contains text related to finance.
If the user’s search contains ‘UK’, then you could set the dynamic text placement feature to talk about the fact that your clinic is in the UK on your landing page.
If you’re looking to implement Dynamic text replacement on your landing page, there are a handful of options available to you depending on the content management system that you’re using.
If you’re using WordPress, then you can try installing the WP Dynamic Keywords Injector plugin. If you have Unbounce, then start by looking at their Dynamic text replacement information page.
Your dynamic text replacement implementation will differ depending on the content management system that you are using. However, the basic procedure is to set the text that will be dynamic and then give it a name. You can then change the text by changing the text in your URL.
Tip 4: Run a display remarketing campaign
A remarketing campaign is a very powerful way to put people who have shown interest in your website but not converted back into your lead funnel.
Remarketing (or sometimes called retargeting) is when you re-engage with people who visited your website with display advertisements whilst they are browsing the Internet.
Remarketing keeps your business in front of the user’s mind and increases the chances that they will remember your business when they are finally ready to make a purchase.
Remarketing can be set up on Google’s display network, which means your ads can show on over two million sites.
You can run a remarketing campaign on YouTube, where 68 per cent of users watch a video to help them make a purchase decision.
Or, you can create an RLSA campaign which means you can tailor your ads on the search network for people who already visited your site and are still searching for one of your keywords.
To get started on your remarketing campaign, you will first need to create an audience to target. Based on how much volume your website gets and tour exact strategy, there are a number of audience lists that you can target.
Here are a few examples of audience lists that you could create and target with your remarketing efforts.
- All website visitors
- All non-converters
- Cart abandoners
- Spent longer than x seconds or minutes on your site
- Browsed more than x pages on your site
- Blog readers
- Visited the contact us page but did not make contact
Tip 5: Look at your search terms report
The search terms report is one of the most useful reports within Google Ads. It shows advertisers what searches their ads appeared for.
It can be especially useful for advertisers who are running non-exact match keywords.
To access the search terms report, click on ‘Keywords’ and then on ‘Search Terms’.
Here are just a few ways that advertisers can use the search terms report to improve their PPC performance and increase leads.
Block out irrelevant traffic
We are starting off with the most obvious use of the search terms report. Look for search terms or words that are irrelevant to your business.
For example, if you’re offering upmarket, premium-priced services, then you may want to block out searches that contain the word ‘cheap’.
This is because these people are not likely to complete a lead. Even if they do get in touch with you, they’re unlikely to make a purchase from you because they’re looking for cheaper services.
Poor performing keyword themes that could benefit from a more targeted landing page
Look for keyword themes coming from your non-exact match keywords that have a poor conversion rate.
Once you’ve identified a keyword theme with a poor conversion rate, you can start to think about why it has a poor conversion rate and what you need to do to improve it.
Perhaps the landing page that you’re using for the keyword theme is not answering the searcher’s query. If this is the case, then you can look at adding in some content on the page that will answer their query, or you can create a new landing page for that search term.
If you create a new landing page for the poor performing keyword theme, then you will need to add the keyword theme in a new ad group so that you can direct all the traffic coming from it to the new landing page.
High volume traffic that could be split out and given its own ad copy
Look for keyword themes coming from your non-exact match keywords that have a lot of volume. These keyword themes can be added into a new ad group and given their own more tailored ad copy.
By splitting out high volume traffic, you can tailor the amount that you bid on those keywords. If the keyword theme performs well, then you can be more aggressive with your bids.
If it does not perform as well as everything else that is coming from that keyword, then you can reduce the bids on the new keyword theme.
Search terms that have a poor clickthrough rate
Look for keyword themes that have a poor clickthrough rate and ask yourself why they may have a poor clickthrough rate.
It may be because the intent of the user searching for the keyword theme is not relevant to your business.
Search the search term on Google and see what kind of searches come up. If the other listings that appear are not relevant to your business, then this is an indication that you shouldn’t be bidding on that search term and can block it out.
Alternatively, when adding the search term into Google, you may find that the competitor’s ads are much better than yours.
In this case, you can think about splitting out the search term into its ad group and writing a more tailored ad that is likely to increase your clickthrough rate for that keyword.
Tip 6: Use an attribution model
By default, Google Ads assigns the last-click attribution model. This means that if multiple PPC keywords were clicked before a lead was generated, then Google Ads will give all the credit to the last click.
The problem with the last-click attribution model approach is that it doesn’t value upper funnel keywords that are helping to generate the interest.
It gives all the credit to the bottom funnel keywords. If you start pausing the upper funnel keywords as it doesn’t look like they’re bringing in any value, then this could have a knock-on effect where you lower funnel keywords stop performing as well.
Google Ads offers advertisers the option to choose from the following six attribution models.
Last click
The default attribution model. It gives all the credit to the last Google Ads click before a lead occurred.
First click
The opposite of the Last click attribution model. The first click attribution model gives all the credit to the first Google Ads click before a lead occurred.
Position based
More credit is given to the first and the last click. This attribution model gives forty per cent of the credit to the first Google Ads, forty per cent of the credit to the last Google Ads click and shares the remaining twenty per cent of the credit to all the other Google Ads clicks before a conversion occurred.
Linear
The Linear attribution model gives the same amount of credit to all Google Ads clicks that happened before a conversion occurred.
Time decay
If your business is highly time-critical, then this may be the attribution model for you. The time decay attribution model gives some credit to all Google Ads clicks before a conversion occurred.
However, it gives more credit to more recent Google Ads clicks, and incrementally less credit to the less recent Google Ads clicks.
Data-driven
The data-driven attribution model uses Google’s machine learning capabilities to decide on how much credit to give to each Google Ads clicks before a conversion occurred.
It looks at the historical performance of a keyword to determine how much credit it should get for a conversion. The data-driven attribution model can only be used by advertisers that get enough conversion in a month. Google doesn’t give the exact number of conversions required to use the Data driven attribution model.
How to change your attribution model
Changing your attribution model within Google Ads is quite easy to do.
To do this, click on ‘Tools’ on the top right and then on ‘Conversions’. Select the appropriate conversion action and click on ‘Edit Settings’.
From here, you should be able to change your attribution model. If the data-driven attribution model isn’t clickable (like in the example below), then that means your account doesn’t have enough conversion data to be able to use it.
The exact attribution that you choose will depend on your business niche and what you’re trying to achieve with Google Ads advertising.
If you’re running more upper-funnel, branding campaigns, then you may want to use the position-based attribution model.
If you know that users don’t research a lot before converting, then you may want to use an attribution model that gives more weight to the last click, like the time decay attribution model.
Whichever attribution model you choose, we would recommend that you select a multi-touchpoint attribution model.
This means you would choose an attribution model that gives some credit to all Google Ads clicked that occurred before a conversion. We would recommend not using the first click or the last click attribution models.
Wrapping up
The six tips identified in this will go a long way to help businesses to increase their leads with PPC advertising. However, if you’re looking to go further with your PPC advertising and increase your leads further, then feel free to get in touch. Based in Yorkshire, I offer PPC consulting in Wakefield and the wider Yorkshire area.