Paid advertising: Tips to boost qualified leads and reduce costs

While many companies believe broader advertising coverage will increase revenue, this often leads to poor quality of leads. A year ago, our agency fell into this trap and, as a result, got very few qualified contacts at a much higher cost than usual.

After switching our focus to quality and running thought-out ad campaigns, we reduced advertising costs by 38% and increased conversions into appointments by 16%, more than five times the industry average. We also managed to close four times more deals since June and reach a 15% average month-to-month growth of the new deals coming from pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Here are some strategies and techniques that helped us achieve these impressive results.

7 strategic ad optimization steps to follow

Optimizing your advertising campaigns requires a strategic approach considering factors like seasonality, budget allocation, keyword analysis and performance monitoring. By implementing these strategies, you can get better ad results and maximize your advertising ROI.

Before we start, let’s agree that tracking how many qualified appointments you get from PPC advertising and how much they cost you rather than the number of leads is better. At least, this is what works for us.

Step 1: Benefit from seasonality 

Take advantage of fluctuating competition by increasing your budget during off-peak seasons or crises. When competitors drop out, you’ll have a chance to bid much cheaper and more aggressively.

During high-traffic times, you can try paid social advertising. For example, we diversified channels and increased bids to stay in the auction during peak periods. Thanks to a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to running ads on social media platforms, paid social became our most cost-effective acquisition channel.

Step 2: Leave more budget at the end of the month

Cost-per-click (CPC) reduces at the end of the month, as most competitors run out of money and leave the auction. Setting aside a bit more budget for the month’s end, you can capitalize on this reduced competition and gain more impressions and clicks at a more favorable cost.

Taking advantage of this insight, we ramped up our PPC marketing efforts after the 25th of each month, resulting in an extra 50 deals virtually at no extra cost.

Step 3: Analyze keywords from organic search

While keyword research is essential for any PPC campaign, analyzing the keywords people use to find your website organically can be less obvious. But by doing so, you can see a direct reflection of user intent and preferences.

What’s more, you can use those insights to get fresh ideas for refining the targeting of your paid search ads. This targeted approach can lead to improved ad relevance, increased click-through rates and enhanced conversion rates.

Step 4: Create separate landing pages for each advertising campaign

Making people click on your ad is one part of a job. Another one is to keep them hooked when they come to your site. Depending on what they see there, they’ll either convert or drop.

By creating separate landing pages tailored to each campaign, you can ensure your ads align with the page content. Which, in turn, increases the chances of getting more demo requests or appointments.

For example, we have different pages about our services for those coming from PPC ads. Additionally, we track user journeys and adjust messaging on the most popular pages like pricing, case studies and so on.

Step 5: Monitor your ad performance

Flexibility and instant reaction to changes are crucial for optimizing PPC advertising campaigns. Regularly analyzing campaign performance can identify successful strategies and improvement areas.

For a while, we struggled to measure the efficiency of our ads, as we have a lengthy sales cycle. To understand what works best, we implemented a dedicated leads qualification and scoring system specifically for leads generated through advertising. Our business development representatives (BDRs) review those leads and provide daily feedback on their quality. 

Thus, this system allows us to assess the quality of leads and identify campaigns that align with our ideal customer profile nearly instantly.

Step 6: Use only business emails in all forms

By requiring business emails, you can increase the likelihood that the leads you generate are from qualified businesses. This can help you avoid wasting time and resources on leads that will hardly convert into customers.

With business emails, you can also improve communication with your leads. People tend to check their work emails more regularly than personal ones. Thus, your chances of getting seen increase.

Step 7: Capture leads with specific lead magnets for each social network

A lead magnet is an offer that you give to people in exchange for their contact information. You should provide valuable and relevant info to make your potential customers proceed. 

It’s also important to mind the context your leads are coming from. You should place different lead magnets on different social media platforms. Here are some examples.

LinkedIn:

• Top-performing LinkedIn outreach templates for [industry].
• LinkedIn profile guides for [industry] [role].
• Leads tracking spreadsheet for sales teams.

Facebook:

• Free webinars or workshops on industry-specific topics.
• Downloadable checklists or guides on practical topics.
• Exclusive access to online communities or groups.

Dig deeper: Why we care about search marketing

Technical setup tips: How to configure your ad accounts

Now that you know how to improve your ad campaign performance on a strategic level, let’s talk a bit about the technical configuration of your ad accounts.

Mind multiple devices

Sometimes, ads can perform better on one type of device than on another. Luckily, in Google Ads, you can set bid adjustments. This means you can completely disable ad displays, for example, on tablets and smartphones and show them only on a desktop.

Let’s say your conversion rate is twice as low on mobile devices as on PCs or laptops. Then, a general bidding strategy won’t work for you, as you’ll have to pay the average bid. Instead, it’s worth splitting campaigns into mobile and desktop and setting bids for each device separately.

Here’s another example: your conversion rate on mobile devices could be four times worse, and there could be 10 times fewer conversions than on desktop devices. In this case, you will hardly get any revenue from mobile. Therefore, it’s better to simply disable mobile bidding and focus on desktop.

Monitor CPA by day and geographic location

By closely monitoring cost-per-acquisition (CPA) trends across different days and geographic locations, you can identify repeating patterns and optimize their campaigns accordingly.

For instance, analyzing historical data can reveal days with higher conversion costs and lower conversion volumes. By excluding these days from the display schedule, you can effectively reduce their overall customer acquisition cost (CAC). In our case, these were weekends we wasted money on.

Also, turning off expensive geolocations can save your budget. As an option, you can create a separate campaign for them with a separate budget and settings.

Review, update and group keywords

Regularly clean search terms, add irrelevant keywords to your negative keyword list and divide keywords into groups. You can use the single theme ad groups (STAG) system that provides a structured approach to keyword organization, ensuring that ad groups focus on a single, well-defined theme.

This focused approach enhances targeting relevance, improving ad performance and increasing conversion rates. Regularly reviewing, updating and grouping keywords using the STAG system ensures that campaigns align with search intent and user behavior.

Optimize ad groups by conversion rate

If you notice that a particular group of keywords is yielding a low conversion rate, formulate hypotheses on improving their performance.

Consider creating separate landing pages directly addressing the user’s intent or explore moving these keywords to a different campaign altogether. By continuously optimizing your ad groups based on conversion rates, you can enhance the overall effectiveness of your campaigns.

Regularly run experiments

Sometimes, you may not be sure which bidding strategy to choose — target CPA, which focuses on sales volume, or target ROAS, which aims at more revenue. When you have doubts, run an experiment in Google, splitting traffic 50/50.

Likewise, if you’re afraid to launch a broad match keyword, you can also run experiments. Thus you’ll be able to see the performance of this matching type in action. The risk of wasting money on a strategy that doesn’t work is also lower, as only 50% of the traffic won’t bring the desired results.

Breaking down success: Strategies for cost-effective advertising 

Take a comprehensive approach to improving conversion rate and CPC. Don’t focus purely on technical settings — strategic steps matter. Don’t avoid expensive CPCs, but rather pay attention to CR. Because if the CPC is $20, but the conversion rate is 15%, your conversion will cost you $120. This is significantly lower than the conversion cost from a keyword with a CPC of $5 and a CR of 3%, which would be $175. 

Finally, there are no bad marketing channels. Some just don’t suit your business needs. Others need more skills and effort on your side. So, when mastering paid ads, don’t chase purely lowering CPA or CAC. While reducing these metrics is great, it’s also important not to sacrifice your ability to acquire new customers and grow your business.

Dig deeper: Are you on the wrong platform? Paid search vs. paid social

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