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AdWords Strategies For Lead Generation

When the goal of your AdWords campaign is to generate leads, there are some very important strategies and settings to consider. Here are the top things you need to know when using AdWords for lead generation.

CALL TO ACTION

The call to action in your AdWords ads is an important element of your lead generation success. It’s important not to jump the gun too soon. What I mean by this is if you are selling accounting services, your ad shouldn’t say “Become Our Client Today!” – this is like proposing to someone on Match.com before you even meet them. You need to nurture the relationship a bit. A less desperate call to action might be “Get A Free Tax Deduction Review.” From there, you can lead them down the path to becoming a client.

Your AdWords campaign should not try to generate sales (almost impossible). Rather, it should try to generate leads (much easier).

LANDING PAGE

Your landing page is the most important part of your lead generation campaign. An AdWords ad with a good call to action will get traffic to your site, but your landing page is what does all the heavy lifting. It’s so important that we don’t work with clients unless their landing pages are up to par.

A tool I’ve been using lately that I think is awesome for landing pages is ClickFunnels. You can try it free for 14 days here.

There are tons of elements that make up a good landing page. For AdWords purposes, here are a few of the more important ones:

Contact information should be prominently displayed. Are you trying to get prospects to call you? Do you want them to fill out a form for a free estimate? Whatever the goal is, this should be a main focus of your page.

Navigation links should be visible. A popular landing page format is one that gives your prospect no other option but to submit their name and email (commonly called a “squeeze page”). While these kinds of pages might work well in some instances, Google doesn’t like them. Google has built an empire by feeding their customers relevant and trustworthy information. In order to keep them happy and keep your ads running, your landing page must be seen as relevant and trustworthy. This means you need to give visitors the option to navigate freely to other parts of your website.

The page should load quickly. Nobody likes a slow-loading page (including Google). Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to see how fast your website loads, and learn how to improve its speed.

CONVERSION TRACKING

The conversion tracking features in AdWords will allow you to identify specific keywords that are driving your conversions vs. keywords that are draining your budget. In many cases, the keywords costing you the most money without generating leads are not the ones you would expect.

AdWords lets you track form submissions, calls from your ads, and calls from your website. Once these tracking features are set up, you will be able to see numerous data points surrounding your leads: Keyword, geographic location, time of day, day of week, ad clicked on, mobile vs. desktop, type of lead, and more.

It’s not always easy to set up your conversion tracking – particularly website call conversions. Move through this obstacle. Figure it out. The insights you’ll gain from the data will be invaluable to your business.

NEGATIVE KEYWORDS

A good negative keyword list will save you serious money. I recently saw a campaign for an aquarium cleaning service, and over 75% of their budget was going towards the keyword “nyc aquariums” (people looking for aquariums to tour in NYC). Examples like this are not uncommon. It’s important to thoroughly research negative keywords for your campaign before spending a dollar on your ads. Then, keep a close eye on your search terms and add more negative keywords based on what you see. A negative keyword list can never be 100% complete, so you should be identifying and adding new negative keywords on a frequent basis.

BECOME A CLIENT

Become an AdLeg client and we’ll take care of these details for you (along with the countless other details behind running a successful AdWords campaign). Click here to learn more!

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS

Utilize all available ad extensions.
Know your lifetime customer value.
Group your keywords into appropriate ad groups.