How to use Google Ads to Generate Qualified Leads
Before you can generate leads, first you need to reach the right audience. Content and SEO are helpful in that regard, but one of the fastest and most effective ways to target potential customers is with pay-per-click Google ads. Here’s a rundown of how to use Google ads to reach your customer base and generate qualified leads.
Generate Qualified Leads through Keywords
The first step is to find the right keywords. What are your potential customers Googling to find your company? What are they Googling to find your competitors? For instance, if you’re selling auto insurance, you might get searches like “lowest car insurance rates,” “best collision coverage,” “RV insurance,” and more. Google Analytics can help you find what search terms people are most commonly using to reach your website.
Once you’ve found the most effective keywords, bid on them through Google Ads. How much are you willing to pay, per person who clicks on your ad? To figure that out, first consider what your conversion rate is: what percentage of people who click the ad are likely to become customers? Then, once they do, what’s the average amount you can expect them to spend? And of course, consider your marketing budget as well, and how much is allotted to Google ads. Factoring all those things in should give you an idea of how much each click is worth.
Quality Score
After you’ve put in your bid, you can create your ad, and people who Google those keywords will see your website front and center in their search results. Except, of course, yours won’t be the ad they see. Your competitors are bidding on the same keywords. So how does Google determine which ads to display first? How much you bid is one factor, but aside from that, they give each ad a Quality Score.
One of the things that made Google successful in the first place and continues to keep it the most popular search engine today, is its commitment to quality. The priority is ensuring that when users search for something, they get the most relevant and up-to-date information available. This applies to ads as well as to regular search results.
Therefore, the job of the Quality Score is to determine how relevant a particular ad is to the user’s search. There are a number of factors that go into this decision, but the main one is the click-through rate. Say you’ve bid on your “lowest auto insurance rates ad” that we talked about earlier. A potential customer Googles it and see your ad and two others. Whichever one they click on shows Google that, of the three, that’s the ad that’s most relevant to that search term. The quality score goes up, and they’ll display that ad more prominently and more often.
Creating high-quality, effective Google ads can be a tricky proposition. But at Conversion Marketing, we can help you. We’ll help you figure out the most effective keywords to target prospects for your company and industry and show you how to bid for maximum ROI to generate qualified leads. And we’ll help you raise your quality score to get more eyes on your ads and ultimately more people to your site.
