How to generate more and better leads through PPC

Ask any group of marketing professionals what they think of lead generation Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and you are likely to get mixed reviews. This is particularly true when businesses think about how to generate more and better leads through PPC.

Many marketers sing the praises of the tool, allowing them to ensure the steady flow of high value traffic towards their website and ultimately building up their sales funnel. Yet some find it to be an overly expensive and overall a poor return on investment for their marketing budget.

But what is the real difference between these two types of marketer?

Arguably some external factors such as industry and type of business has an impact on the success of PPC campaigns. But more prevalent is the marketers ability to convert paid clicks into high volume, quality leads for their business.

In this article we take a look at how businesses can generate more and better leads through the use of PPC.

Targeting the right people

Who do you sell to?

It is a relatively simple question and with more and more data at our fingertips we are able to gather larger amounts information on who our customers are. Using this data can help you significantly improve your PPC campaigns by gaining you better quality leads.

Using the correct audience targeting allows you to only pay to access those who are most likely to have a legitimate interest in purchasing from you. This both increases your chances of clicks and of those clicks becoming worthwhile leads for your business.

Platforms such as Google AdWords allows you to target based on audience such as demographics, relative intent or those searching for products and services like yours. It also lets you target based on content, such as showing display ads on multiple sites showing content focusing on certain topics.

Remarketing is also a very powerful way to target those who are more likely to convert into legitimate leads for your business. This works by uploads a piece of code onto your website called a pixel. This pixel captures information about visitors to your site allowing you to advertise directly to them on other sites across the internet. This means you can then advertise to those who have already visited your site and shown interest in your offering.

Lead by example

When it comes to successful Pay Per Click campaigns, the click is really just the beginning in building quality leads.

Take for example that your campaigns is pushing 5,000 clicks through to your website every day. This might seem fantastic until you realise that 99.9% of those visitors simply leave the site without taking any further action. With this in mind you may start to see PPC as a severe waste of resource.

Of course, targeting the right audience as we have highlighted above will go a long way to ensuring only those who are likely to convert will follow the link. However, gearing the page on which they land will also have a huge impact on your ability to convert clicks into leads.

Rather than simply linking to a product or service page, building a bespoke landing page for your PPC campaigns allows you to tailor what information the visitor will find. The content of these pages should both engage and educate visitors. They can also be used as an opportunity to nullify any blockers to purchase.

Most importantly, if you want to generate leads, your landing page should include a powerful reason as to why the visitor should provide their details in the lead form. This may be a special deal or some sort of exclusive access. The value you are providing and what they need to do in order to receive should be made very clear.

Lead with competitive edge

Similar to how your landing page should focus on why leads should complete a form, your advert should highlight exactly why they should click.

Just because you paid to get your ad in front of a potential customer, doesn’t mean they will feel compelled to actually click it. Including a compelling statement in your ad such as ‘free postage’ or ‘70% off’ will drive a desire to follow the link provided.

Boost quality

When running ads through the Google AdWords platform each ad will be attributed a Quality Score. This score directly impacts how much you pay per click and determines your bidding power.

When you look at this practically, the better your quality score, the less each click costs you. In turn this means a higher score means more clicks for the same budget. Increasing this number allows you to increase your chances of converting them into quality leads.

Although no one (but Google) knows how the quality score is calculated, there are some popular theories. These include that a higher score is achieved by making your ads relevant to your audience as well as to the content which they link through to.

Therefore by aligning your targeting, messaging and landing page content all increase in importance.

Channel optimisation

In marketing, channel optimisation it is all about gearing your marketing efforts toward generating the most growth and/or the best return on investment. PPC advertising gives you an unprecedented insight into its value, allowing you to allocate the optimum budget towards its execution.

This is particularly relevant to those that function within the ecommerce space, where you can make a direct comparison of PPC marketing spend to profits made. This allows you to ensure you are never spending more on marketing than you are making back in profit.

Even those with more traditional sales methods such as a shop front can upload data in order to connect ad spend to real world sales.

Test and edit

Your PPC success is influenced by a huge number of external factors such as market conditions, competition and traffic. That is why the continued success of lead generation through PPC is a continuous journey rather than a final destination.

Although your campaign may be working with great success in the first instance, over time these external factors may change and cause it to dip. By closely monitoring activity you can catch these dips and make edits to your campaign in order to increase its success.

It is clear that generating more and better leads should be the key focus for businesses using PPC campaigns. We have explored a number of strategies, tips, tricks and tactics which contribute to PPC lead generation success. Implementing these tips will turn blind paid advertising into super optimised and goal focused campaigns, ultimately leading to increased and easily measurable return on investment. For more advanced techniques on B2B lead generation have a listen to our previous video: Advanced Techniques on How to Optimise your PPC Campaigns for B2B.