According to MediaPost, Google commands 73% of the paid search market. That means you can expect your Google Adwords lead generation campaigns to face plenty of competition.
Google Ads offers a great opportunity to generate qualified leads for anyone who knows what they're doing.
To help you to that end, here's what we'll cover in this article:
- What a Google Adwords lead generation campaign is
- Why use pay-per-click advertising and whether or not it's right for your business
- Google Ads fundamentals
- 6 campaign types
- Planning, launching, managing, and testing your ad campaign
What Is a Google Adwords Lead Generation Campaign?
A Google Adwords lead campaign is a type of internet advertising campaign designed to generate high-quality, relevant leads.
For example, a visitor may click on an ad. They are then redirected to a website landing page. Once on the company's site, the visitor is prompted to provide their contact information in return for a free trial, quote, consultation, or content. To get the visitors to arrive on the landing page, an ad.
Because the ad targeted the particular visitor that clicked, based on parameters set by the person running the campaign, we can refer to the visitor as a lead.
Why Use Pay-per-Click (PPC) Ads?
PPC advertising is popular among marketers because of how fast it generates results, compared to say, SEO blog content.
Through search history and audience type, PPC advertising targets clients who are ready to buy.
The catch is that you need to know how to discover those ready-to-buy customers when you're setting up your ad campaign.
Why Use Google Adwords?
Google can guess what consumers are looking for even before they realize it.
67% of all high commercial intent keywords are directed to a sponsored ad.
People prefer organic search results while they are in the learning phase of the purchasing process.
When they're ready to buy, on the other hand, they click adverts.
How Do Google Ads Work?
Google Ads uses a PPC mechanism, which utilizes the Google Ads Auction.
In the auction, advertisers target a certain term on Google and place bids on it. The bid, or "maximum bid," is the most you're willing to pay for an ad.
Google compares your query to all advertisers bidding on the same keyword for the chosen location.
Based on the advertisers' ad rank, a real-time auction is held (quality score). Advertisers with the highest ad rank appear first.
What Is the Google Network?
There is a means to advertise (campaign type) for every piece of "real estate" controlled by Google (search engines, email, applications, YouTube, etc.). For every product or service owned by Google, there is an advertising network that allows people to view and engage with it.
Should Your Business Use Google Ads?
Creating, launching, and optimizing campaigns takes time and money. At the very least, you should be prepared to spend $1,000-$1,500 every month.
Google Ads are especially helpful for small-to-medium-sized businesses just starting out.
Google Ads Fundamentals
Before you begin tinkering with your new ad campaign, here are 4 Google Ads
fundamentals to help you make sense of the platform.
- Keywords
- Conversions
- Flywheel
- Offers
1. Keywords
Keywords are used by advertisers to organize, categorize, and construct their adverts. They might range from product and service descriptions to brand names and user-searched inquiries.
To find out what people are looking for, you can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner, Answer the Public, and social media platforms such as Reddit and Quora.
Empathize with your audience's pain points as you research. Consider signs of purpose while selecting keywords.
For example, if you are an airline, your service is more than simply flights; it's taking people where they need to go in a timely, affordable, and comfortable way.
2. Conversions
Conversion Tracking is a Google Ads service that records a website visitor's behavior.
Google's whole machine learning system is based on conversions to determine what works.
If you don't inform Google what you consider a conversion, it won't be able to target more individuals who are likely to convert.
3. Flywheel
It's common to make assumptions about what will and will not work in the beginning.
However, it's critical to put those assumptions to the test after you've established them.
The Google Ads Flywheel is the name for an established marketing model applied to Google Ads. It helps you analyze and optimize your entire campaign based on customer behavior. It consists of 4 stages:
- Activation - attracting customers
- Adoption - retaining the customers
- Adoration - increasing customer satisfaction
- Advocacy - branding through customers
4. Offers
Everything you show your visitor should be an offer.
Every stage of your conversion process is an opportunity to move the audience to the next step.
To ensure your offer is appealing, make it relevant to the user's search. Above all, deliver value.
6 Types of Google Adwords Lead Generation Campaigns
In this section, we'll cover 6 Google Ads campaign types along with a recommended percentage of your marketing ad budget.
- General - 25%
- Competitor - 10%
- Brand - 10%
- Remarketing - 10%
- Maximum Performance - 20%
- DSA - 25%
Before we get into what the different ad campaigns are best used for, there's one more topic to get out of the way: ad groups.
Ad Groups
If you are launching a general campaign for your brand or delivering a product or service, it is critical to understand how to strategically break up your ad groups. All ad groups share a budget, and each ad group's budget should be the same as the general campaign's budget.
1. General
After you've decided which keywords to create your campaigns on, it's time to choose a campaign type.
Over the long term, the big money-makers are typically general campaigns. These ads target search phrases that indicate positive intent.
Take special note of Google's recommendations at the bottom of search results. You can use those to create a separate campaign to guarantee an Ad Group remains active.
2. Competitor
Competitor campaigns are intended to reach people who are looking for alternatives to your offering. They can be more or less expensive than your branded and general efforts.
Because they are not searching for your product, don't offer to pay additional money to Google to put you at the top of the search results.
3. Brand
Brand campaigns help you do the following:
- Establish authority
- Safeguard the brand
- Control the sales story
- Track conversion routes
- Improve data collection
4. Remarketing
Remarketing efforts are an excellent approach to boosting brand authority, shortening the sales cycle, and increasing conversions.
When done successfully, they may reduce lead costs by 50%.
5. Performance Max
You have the option to let Google scan your site, and turn your favicon into your logo. Make sure your headlines are professional and effective at capturing your visitors' attention.
You'll be able to tell Google who you think your advertising should target in your audience signal.
An audience signal denotes a profile to which you want Google to show your adverts. Custom segments, interests and detailed demographics, and user data are all ways to define and categorize audience signals.
6. DSA
When someone searches for a keyword that is closely related to a commonly used phrase or title, your site will appear in the search results using Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).
If you don't want Google to crawl a certain page, copy its URL and enter it into Google Ads for Lead Generation. Add your store's theme here if you have one.
Planning a Google Ads Campaign for Your Business
It takes time to adequately optimize and position a campaign for scalability. You'll need a certain amount of monthly ad spend to collect reliable data for future testing and optimization.
The first three months of your campaigns will be the most expensive and challenging. The more saturated your market, the more difficult it will be to earn from Google Ads.
With Performance Max, you'll have a campaign with greater reach and better potential to learn from your site. SEO and excellent content are more vital than ever.
Additionally, your campaign's success is dependent on your unique selling proposition.
And remember, selling to an established customer is six times less expensive than selling to a new one.
Setting Up Your Google Account
Google will ask you what your major advertising goals are during setup so you can plan your campaign around them.
If you choose any of Google's aims for a quick setup, you'll get a scaled-down version of Google Ads.
Consider a templated campaign rather than a personalized campaign.
Also, Google Ads has very little functionality until you've created a campaign and linked your account to Google Tag Manager.
Creating a Google Tag Manager Account
Google Tag Manager is a free piece of software from Google that allows you to implement tracking on your website using a snippet of code.
This means you may track user behaviors on your website and assess the performance of your ads.
Because each website is unique, the steps may differ based on the platform you're using. However, it's basically the same across all online apps, so don't be concerned if it's new to you.
Optimizing Your Website
Some ad capabilities, such as responsive search advertising, allow you to do A/B testing directly from the Ad dashboard.
Alternatively, you may run two campaigns concurrently and manually disable the one that isn't producing results.
Google Discovery Ads and Lead Forms
Using Lead Forms in Discovery Ads campaigns allows advertisers to more easily acquire consumers with the right interests (matching with their target audiences).
Discovery Ads
Google Discovery Ads are graphic advertisements that appear in the Google Discovery Feed.
These advertisements may be found on the Google App or Google.com homepage, YouTube's home feed, and even Gmail.
Google Discovery advertisements can also be seen on YouTube's Home feed and in Gmail's Promotions Tab.
The key advantage of these advertising is their rich and highly relevant information for each user, which stands out without being overbearing.
Lead Forms
Lead form extensions are an excellent approach to converting your Google Ad into a lead generation form.
Ask up to ten questions and collect leads directly from search results.
Google does not promise that extensions will appear for every ad, so don't rely too much on them.
Keyword Targeting
Many B2B marketers begin by focusing on their primary keywords, such as their brand name.
Instead of focusing on your company's primary keywords, seek longer-tail keywords that imply significant buyer intent.
SEMRush's Keyword Magic Tool, for example, can help you develop and execute a successful keyword strategy.
Conversion Rate Tracking
Examine your ad performance through the dashboard to evaluate what's working and what's not. This will help you determine how to improve your current bidding.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are keywords that stop your ads from appearing for certain search queries.
For example, if you sold swimming pools and you added "liquidity" as a negative keyword, that would tell Google Ads to not show your ad for any searches containing the unrelated investing term "liquidity", such as: "liquidity pools".
Launching Your Google Adwords Campaign
Select Campaigns, then go to All Campaigns. This will display all of the campaign tags we created:
- General Campaign
- Remarketing Campaign
- Brand Campaign
- Competitor Campaign, etc.
Next, select Enable from the circular dropdown menu. That's it. Your campaign is now live!
Managing Your Google Adwords Campaign
There are a few key metrics to pay attention to when it comes to your Google ads, such as budget, relevance, and ad quality.
When a user takes a defined action that advances them towards a sale, that’s considered a conversion. This can occur on a specified landing page, your website, or the search engine results page (SERP).
A high click-through rate (CTR) means that a lot of people are seeing the ad, clicking it, and converting. Your CTR is a percentage based on the number of clicks and impressions.
If you don't have a solid buyer persona drawn up, you won't be able to understand the intent of your audience. You need to get inside the head of your ideal customer to know what makes them click on your ads.
A/B Split Testing Your Google Adwords Campaign
The secret of successful marketers is that of running tests to improve your quality score and lower cost-per-click.
A/B testing landing pages improve conversion rates by more than 500%. Also, testing simple changes like adding extensions to your ads can improve your CTR dramatically.
Conclusion
Google Adwords lead generation campaigns are time-consuming to put together and manage, especially at the start. With the right moves and guidance, your lead generation campaign will not only bring in the desired leads but allow your company to scale.
If you have any questions in mind when it comes to getting leads, drop them in the comments below and we'll get back to you.
For a more in-depth discussion about generating highly qualified leads, you can schedule a free call with us here.
