Generating high-quality leads at scale is a big part of LP’s business. That’s why Google named us their Lead Generation Premier Partner of the Year! As the number one agency for generating new business leads, we’re sharing some of our secrets and breaking down expert tips to crush your lead generation strategy. Get ready to take notes as you dive into our quick guide to capturing more leads for your business.
A Question of Quality
One big issue for lead generation is lead quality. Historically, the approach was two pronged: (1) narrow in and focus on high-quality leads, and (2) use directional measures to see if you’re accomplishing your goals. Traditional methods like form fills are good ways to collect leads, but determining their relevance and quality is important. For example, say a financial services provider asks its customers to fill out a contact form. They’re likely to be more interested in customers seeking financial consulting for their business than individuals looking for payday loans. From the advertiser’s perspective, both actions look the same—in each case a form is filled out—but lead generation requires the elimination of low-relevance form fills to glean high-quality leads. While this was standard practice for years, it had its disadvantages. Narrowing targeting to ensure relevancy meant elimination of the long tail, and loss of potentially good volume. Fortunately, Google has developed new products to address these limitations.
Put Measurements in Place
Starting in February 2022, Google offered a tool called offline conversion tracking (OCT)—also known as offline conversion import (OCI). OCT/OCI matches emails, Google Click IDs (GCLIDs), and other information from their advertising platform to a client’s back end system. This is a future-proof, privacy-safe way to leverage first-party data in a world with rapidly deprecating cookies and trackability. It grants a clearer look at every facet of the clients’ customer relationship management (CRM) software. When a salesperson creates a lead in the CRM system, the information passes through OCT/OCI and is made available to the ads platform. This marks the value for each form, marked as zero-, low-, or high-quality leads, letting us know which ones to pursue.
Lead Gen = Ecommerce
Once you have the above measurements in place, you can draw on your revenue data. In a way, it lets you treat lead generation like ecommerce. Imagine an ecommerce store where you sell several separate pieces at different prices. Seeing which items were purchased and for what amount helps you gauge which items to promote and at what prices. You can treat lead generation the same way by recording the number of individual leads and adjusting your approach accordingly.
Expand the Long Tail
Google’s addition of the Low Search Volume (LSV) status eliminated advertisers’ ability to effectively target specific queries for lead generation clients. Once LSV was put in place, the only option was broad match keywords.
The downside of this, however, was that broad match would open up advertisers to mostly irrelevant queries loosely related to the keyword. The net impact of this meant longtail was never profitable, and ultimately had to be cut completely.
Now, with OCI in place, smart bidding can leverage those same broad match keywords but filter through their massive eligibility to focus on queries and users that deliver revenue to the business. This completely unlocks new and previously unreachable volume.
Use Common Sense
Automation is great, but never set it and forget it. Periodically check for breakdowns, whether the data matches up or goes missing, and the like. Check your end of the month financials to ensure it all makes sense, and change up strategy as needed.
It’s an exciting time for lead generation and we hope these expert tips to crush your lead generation strategy help set your business up for success! Google will continue to push the boundaries of their products to deliver better quality leads at higher volumes to advertisers in the coming year. The easiest way to stay on top of new Google innovations is to partner with an ecommerce PPC consultant like Logical Position. We’re not only Google Award winners, we’ve established a great working relationship with them and often have first access to beta products. Contact us for a consultation on ecommerce PPC services and more today!
