Looking to increase your leads?
Do you find yourself chasing prospects who aren’t a good fit for your business? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
This blog post will provide you with actionable strategies to improve the quality of your sales leads, allowing you to focus your efforts on those who are most likely to convert into paying customers. From refining your campaign targeting to optimising your ad copy and landing pages, we’ll explore a range of strategies to help you attract high-value leads and boost your conversion rates.
Evaluate search term reports
To improve the quality of your leads, you should evaluate your search term report. Identifying keywords or phrases that are driving low-quality traffic. This will provide a detailed view of terms that are triggering your ads. You also need to look out for generic or irrelevant terms which do not relate to your business, product or service.
These will sometimes result from using broad match keywords, so make sure to review your keyword match types if you are noticing a lot of irrelevant search terms in your account. Regular monitoring of your search terms will help ensure that the traffic you are targeting is high intent. For example, users searching with terms containing “free” will typically not be a high-quality lead based on their intent. Therefore, excluding the term “free” will prevent any word or phrase containing that term, reducing low-quality searches from triggering your ads. These adjustments will help you align your ads with users who are interested in your business, which will result in higher-quality leads.
Use audience and demographic groups
Another way to improve the quality of your leads is reviewing your audience and demographic exclusions. This is a useful tool that allows you to filter out certain locations and audience demographics that are unlikely to convert, meaning you can refine your targeting to focus on users who match your ideal customer profile. If your service caters to a specific gender or age group, excluding irrelevant demographics ensures your ad spend is not being wasted on users who do not correspond to this customer profile. For example, if your offering primarily caters to an older audience, excluding a younger age group will help refine your target audience further.
Similarly, location exclusions enable you to avoid targeting areas where your services or products lack demand or where conversion rates have historically performed poorly. For example, a business that only ships to the UK can exclude international locations to prevent clicks from users who will not be able to purchase their product. These exclusions will minimise wasted ad spend and narrow the scope of your ads, resulting in higher-quality leads that are more likely to convert.
In-market audiences consist of users within pre-defined categories that are actively searching for products or services, making them more likely to convert, as they have a stronger purchase intent. Often, there is a category related to your business or product that you can target, thereby increasing the relevance of your leads.
Affinity audiences, on the other hand, refer to users with long-term interests and lifestyles that align with your business. By adding these audiences to your campaigns, you can analyse their engagement without restricting reach, helping you adjust your targeting accordingly.
For example, someone who is looking to purchase a Vauxhall Astra may be searching for “Vauxhall Astra deals” and will fall into an in-market audience. At the same time, an affinity audience user could be someone who is a car enthusiast. For example, they may be searching for “classic car shows”.
Refine your ad copy
Your Google Ads copy is your first opportunity to pre-qualify leads and ensure you’re attracting the right audience. Think of it as a gatekeeper for your business. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the Your Google Ads copy is your first opportunity to pre-qualify leads and ensure you’re attracting the right audience. Think of it as a gatekeeper for your business. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best, use your ad copy to filter out those who aren’t a good fit and attract those who are.
Here is how we would write ad copy that will work as a lead qualification tool:
- Clear messaging: Avoid vague or overly clever language. Be upfront about what you offer and who you serve. Include your keywords to demonstrate the relevance of your ad to the user’s search.
- Highlight your Unique Selling Points (USP): What makes your business stand out? Highlight those unique benefits to attract customers who will value your offer.
- Address pain points: Show potential customers you understand their challenges and have the solutions they need.
- Strategic use of pricing: Don’t shy away from including pricing information in your ads. This can deter price-sensitive leads and attract those who are genuinely interested and within your target budget.
By being specific and transparent in your ad copy, you will likely attract higher-intent traffic, resulting in more qualified leads and a more efficient sales process.
Improve your landing pages
Once a user has clicked on your ad, your landing page needs to seal the deal. It’s not enough to simply drive traffic to your website; you need to optimise that traffic for conversions.
Matching your landing page with your ad copy is crucial, not only because you don’t want to confuse your prospective customers but also because Google will reward you in the form of lower click costs. Your message, call to action, and offer should all be aligned with one another whilst avoiding page distractions and irrelevant content.
If you include your pricing in your ads, we suggest that it is also reflected on your landing page. Similarly, including things like stock and delivery times, in the page content helps with addressing common concerns that show up in the communication stage.
Strike a balance between gathering enough information to qualify leads and keeping forms short and easy to complete. Consider using multi-step forms to gather more detailed information without overwhelming visitors. Your sales team will thank you – hopefully…
Be sure to consult our structured advice on how to make an impact with your landing page.
The following is also a good way to manage your volume of leads:
Less form fields = more enquiries but lower quality
More form fields = less enquiries but higher quality
If you can find that sweet spot you will be in a great position to scale your campaigns whilst maintaining high-quality leads.
Consult your Sales team
After refining your possible audience inputs, such as ad restrictions and exclusions, you can then start to make use of your output data – what leads you are currently generating?
Your CRM system, or database of leads and enquiries, can provide helpful feedback towards improving your lead quality. When a prospective customer is contacted by the sales team, they will have comments on the relevance and quality of the enquiry. If the customer wasn’t a good match for the business (and vice versa), what can be done in your advertising efforts to discourage these enquiries? By virtue of this, you will also improve the percentage of high-quality leads.
An example could be the price of luxury goods (as mentioned in the section above). Customers could be inquiring with little concept of how much it costs, and this may not become apparent until later down the sales funnel, but they immediately drop out at this point. This is when the CRM data comes into its own, as this knowledge can only come from sales-team feedback. The keywords, search terms and ad clicks won’t provide this input.
Another example could be the technical specification of a product or service – such as the size, or the functionality. Maybe it isn’t clear that you can offer a fitting or installation service, or that there is aftermarket care available. Including this messaging could have a strong impact on positively generating leads, as opposed to just qualifying them.
Import offline conversion data
Although much of the above helps exclude poor leads, you can also increase the quantity of qualified leads by utilising offline conversion data. This means feeding lead data back into your advertising platforms to signify a ‘high-quality’ lead. Typically, this is accomplished using a specific value. As a crude example, a lead that resulted in a sale could be given a value of 100, and a lead that was unqualified could be given a value of 0. When you upload this data to platforms such as Google and Bing, the bidding algorithm can start to prioritise ‘high value’ conversions when using the appropriate value-based bidding strategies.
In reality, this process can be more nuanced – not all sales are of equal value. However, the methodology of attributing value to leads allows the advertising platforms to target more users like’ your high-value ones. This emphasises particular keywords and placements automatically, based on how well they have performed.
Learn more about our Google Ads Management services and how we can help you boost your sales and enquiries while keeping your advertising costs down.
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