Before We Started
This
particular client is in the recruiting industry, but that’s not really
important. This case study is relevant for every business that needs to
improve the quality of their leads from Google Ads.
When
we first reviewed our client’s account, we discovered they were
basically flying blind. They had only two types of conversion tracking
installed and one was not set up correctly:
1. There was one Webform conversion, which
was tracking both requests for services, as well as newsletter sign
ups. This is a problem because there is a big difference between a lead
requesting services versus a website visitor requesting the free email
newsletter. The latter is obviously less valuable and you wouldn’t want
to optimize the ads by treating those distinct conversions equally.
2. There was one Ad Calls conversion, which
was tracking phone calls from the number displayed in the ad. There’s
nothing wrong here and I was happy to see this was already set up.
Let
me summarize what this means because I realize it may not look like a
problem unless you’re experienced managing Google Ads campaigns.
With
only the 2 conversions listed above, we have the following problems:
1. We don’t know which keywords/ads are
driving leads vs. just driving newsletter subscriptions.
2. We don’t know how many phone calls, from
the number listed on the website, the ad campaign is generating.
3. We don’t have a feedback loop from the
sales team to label qualified vs. unqualified leads from the ad
campaign. This is commonly missing and can be a game changer when it
comes to improving ad performance. We’ll talk more about this soon.
The
solution to the first two problems is simple. First, we set up a
dedicated conversion for leads and a separate conversion for newsletter
subscriptions. Second, we installed Website Call conversion tracking so
we could track when prospects called the number on the website.
The
solution to the 3rd problem wasn’t so simple, and it’s the focus of
this article…
The First & Most Critical Step to Improve Lead Quality
As
you probably guessed, the first step we took was to improve the
conversion tracking in Google Ads. There’s simply no way to improve the
lead quality if we don’t know which keywords/ads are driving the
qualified leads and which are driving the unqualified leads.
Intuitively
that makes sense, but it’s not 100% clear how to put this into
practice. There’s no tool available that will tell you which keywords
drive qualified vs. unqualified leads. So it’s not possible to research
your way out of this problem. You’re going to have to test different
keywords and ads and see which work best.
So
how do you determine what works best?
Sure,
conversion tracking is the answer, but unless 100% of your sales are
from e-commerce, then conversion pixels alone won’t solve this problem.
A conversion pixel will only tell you when a phone call is generated or
when you get a request for services via an online form. What we need
here is a way to get qualitative feedback from the sales team and then
feed that information back into Google Ads.
Sounds
a bit far fetched, but that’s actually exactly what we set up for our
client using Google’s Import Conversion process.
Here’s
what how it works…
How to Create a Lead Quality Feedback Loop in Google Ads
Before
I go any further, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of
communication between the Google Ads management team and the sales
team. This will never work if the two teams don’t communicate
effectively.
Also,
there is a bit of coding work that will need to be done on the website
in order to make this work. I’m not going to go into the nitty gritty
details of coding in this article because you’ll likely want to hand
off that work to a developer. To learn more and to review the required
code, click here.
Once
the code is working on your website, then here’s an overview of how the
feedback loop works:
1. Prospect clicks on your Google ad. Once
the ad is clicked Google assigns a unique ID, called a Google Click ID,
or GCLID.
2. Prospect lands on your website. The code
mentioned above stores the GCLID in a browser cookie to be used when
needed.
3. Prospect fills out a form to request
services. The code mentioned above retrieves the GCLID from the browser
cookie and adds the ID as a hidden form field. Therefore, the GCLID
will be sent through the form along with the other information that is
filled in by the prospect.
4. Your sales team receives the prospect
information, along with the GCLID. This information is likely stored in
your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool like Salesforce or
Infusionsoft.
5. Your sales team follows up and either
determines the prospect is qualified or unqualified.
6. Your sales team follows up with the
qualified prospects and some convert to sales.
7. At this point, you now have a list of
prospects with unique GCLIDs that are unqualified, as well as a list of
GCLIDs that converted to sales.
8. These lists can be imported back into
Google Ads and Google will match the GCLIDs to the keywords/ads that
the prospect originally clicked on.
See
how that works? Now the team managing the Google Ads campaigns will
know exactly which keywords/ads drove unqualified leads and which drove
sales. You can even import the revenue generated from the sales to
calculate your ROI within the Google Ads platform.
Again,
communication is critical for this to work and in my experience,
communication can be the biggest hurdle to setting this up.
The Results
In
this particular example, we just finished installing the code required
to track the GCLIDs so we don’t have too much data yet (to see a
similar case study with more data, click here).
However, we’re off to a good start.
The
day after we went live with the tracking code we received our first
lead that had a GCLID and we confirmed with the sales team that the
lead was qualified. Therefore, we were able to import the GCLID back
into Google Ads to determine exactly which keyword/ad drove this lead.
It’s
going to take time, but eventually, we will have hard data on exactly
what’s working to drive qualified leads and what’s wasting the sales
team’s time by driving unqualified leads. This data is invaluable and
will give our client a huge competitive advantage in the months to
come.
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