Looking to use PPC campaigns to generate new leads? Or do you want to improve your existing PPC lead generation campaigns? Learn 8 powerful PPC tips now.

In order to grow your business, you need to create a steady stream of leads to sell your products and services to.

PPC lead generation is one of the most effective ways to do that. It’s so effective that Google earned an incredible $24.1 billion in the third quarter of 2018. Yes, you read that correctly, in three months, Google earned that much on ad revenue alone.

PPC ads work, but not everyone is seeing a great ROI from their ads. If your PPC ads can use a refresh, keep reading to find out tips to improve your lead generation.

1. Know Your Audience

How well do you know your audience? You may know their gender, income, and where they live. Do you know what motivates them to start searching for your product or service, to begin with?

Here’s an example. You’re an e-commerce store that sells running shoes. There is a huge range of running shoes. Your customer may want a specific pair of shoes such as minimalist shoes for working out at the gym or shoes for plantar fasciitis.

They have a problem that they’re trying to solve, whether it's to have a better workout or reduce foot pain. You need to know these things because you have to position your entire campaign around solving that one problem your customer has.

2. Have a Clear Purpose

Your customers take a journey before they make a purchase from your business. They need to get to know you and you need to build trust and authority with them.

Your PPC lead generation campaign has to have a clear purpose. That purpose also has to fit within the larger customer journey.

In the case of a shoe store, the purpose of the lead generation could be to sell more shoes for plantar fasciitis. In the customer journey, they’ll learn of your store through PPC lead generation strategies, and they’ll click through to your landing page.

At that point, they may or may not become a lead. If they do, then you can use an automated email campaign to welcome them to your company and tell them how you can help them.

3. Choose the Best PPC Keywords

The key to a successful PPC lead generation campaign is the keywords. Ideally, your keywords are relevant to the target market and the purpose of your ad campaign.

They also should have a little competition with moderate to high search volume. This part will require a lot of creativity and research to get it right.

You might want to start off with different keywords and test to see which ones perform the best. You also want keywords that will fit into your budget, too.

Read this to learn more about choosing the right PPC keywords for your campaigns.

4. Great Ad Copy

It’s time to review and write your ad copy. You have a few small lines to make the best impression and get someone to click.

Advertising legend David Ogilvy said that “you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar” when you write your headline. What he meant was that 80% of people are going to look at the headline and decide to keep reading or click through.

Your headline needs to grab people right away and the rest of the ad has to say what you have to offer and why people should consider your company for the problem they’re trying to solve.

5. A Solid Landing Page

When your lead generation campaign gets a person to click on it, you don’t want them to wind up on the home page of your website.

That leaves them hanging for more information and you’ll lose the prospect altogether. Instead, what you want to do is create a landing page that is relevant to the problem they’re trying to solve.

If someone is looking for shoes for plantar fasciitis, create a landing page that explains how they can treat plantar fasciitis with your shoes. You can then have them download a white paper that gives them tips to deal with plantar fasciitis.

Your landing page also needs to have a great headline, relevant body text, and a very specific call to action.

6. Test and Test More    

No ad campaign is completely amazing without testing to improve it. You can test different pieces of your campaign and then see which generates more clicks or leads.

For example, you can test out a couple of headlines against each other. Then, test the body copy to see which terms or keywords are more effective.

You can also test elements of your landing page, too. This is something you want to do if you find that you’re getting a lot of clicks, but no conversions.

7. Use Ad Retargeting

There will be a percentage of people who click on your ads but don’t become a lead. Rather than lose that click forever, you can create a retargeting campaign to keep your brand in front of those potential leads.

You can install a tracking cookie on your landing page and when someone visits your site, they will be retargeted with other ads as they visit sites within Google’s ad network.

8. Use URL Tracking

Tracking the effectiveness of your campaign is everything. One of the best ways to do that is through UTM tracking parameters in your URLs.

That allows to you create a trackable URL that tells you the source of that traffic, whether that’s a keyword or campaign.

Use PPC Lead Generation to Add Revenue to Your Business

There are many ways to use advertising to generate leads. PPC lead generation is still among the most cost-effective methods, especially when you fine-tune your ad campaigns.

You need to be clear as to who your target audience is and map out the journey they will take to become a lead and eventually a customer.

Your ad campaign from start to finish has to be compelling, too. The ad copy and landing page must have the same message for users to maximize your ad placement. Of course, testing never stops to make improvements to your PPC lead generation campaigns.

That’s what it takes to build an effective ad campaign that will drive leads and sales to your business. Would you like to know more digital marketing tips? Check out our SEO blog for articles to help your blog grow.