The success of a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is dependent on understanding your customers inside and outside. You can reduce the cost of your advertising if you know your customer. Can you predict their search queries? What are their habits? Is their geographical location important for converting? Do they have similar behaviors, like shopping online at a certain time of day? Knowing these implications and details to apply that knowledge to your Google Ads campaigns will support you in reducing your advertising costs overall and your cost-per-lead. This blog post will explore the smart tips that will help to lower cost-per-lead on Google Ads.
What is Cost-Per-Lead?
The cost per lead is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) metric that tells you how much expense is for you to generate a conversion from your advertisement(s). A conversion encompasses the desired user action prompted by your ad, be it scheduling an appointment, downloading a guide, submitting a contact form, completing a purchase, or any other specified outcome. Consequently, cost per lead is alternatively referred to as cost per action or conversion. The price per lead serves as just one among several crucial performance indicators employed by marketing teams to assess the efficiency of their advertising expenditure.
Tips To Lower Cost-Per-Lead On Google Ads
Lowering the cost-per-lead on Google Ads requires a strategic approach and continuous optimization. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula for reducing your cost per lead across all accounts. The key lies in boosting conversions or cutting expenses to achieve these goals. Implementing these tactics in your Google Ads campaigns can reduce your lead acquisition cost and increase your marketing return on investment:
- Refine Your Keyword Strategy
- Leverage Ad Assets
- Manage Your Bids
- Use Negative Keywords
- Improve Your Quality Score
- Use Ad Extensions
1- Refine Your Keyword Strategy
Improving your keyword strategy is key to lowering your cost per lead (CPL) in Google Ads. Improving the efficiency of your campaign and attaining more leads at a reduced cost can be achieved. Recognizing high-intent keywords involves choosing words highly likely to result in a conversion. Concentrating on these keywords enables you to target users genuinely interested in your offering to increase the likelihood of conversion. Overall, refining your keyword strategy can help improve your website traffic’s caliber and generate increased leads at a reduced expense.
Read Also: White Label Google Ads For Digital Marketing Agencies
2- Leverage Ad Assets
Ad assets (formerly referred to as ad extensions) are a potent tool to increase the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns while reducing your cost per lead (CPL). Leveraging ad assets like callouts, site links, and call extensions can improve ad visibility and streamline user engagement with your desired actions. Sitelinks present additional links beneath your primary ad, enabling users to navigate to specific pages on your website. Callouts consist of concise snippets of text beneath your ad to spotlight key features or benefits of your product or service. Meanwhile, call extensions facilitate direct calls to your business from the ad, simplifying connecting with potential leads.
3- Manage Your Bids
As Google operates on a bidding system, it’s crucial to manage your spending wisely by avoiding unnecessary expenses caused by haphazard bid adjustments. Google provides options to tailor bids according to various factors such as device, demographics, audience, networks, and time of day. By excluding underperforming segments or adjusting bids for elements with poor conversion rates, you can optimize your campaign’s effectiveness. For campaigns experiencing budget limitations, strategic approaches are necessary. For high-value campaigns, consider increasing the budget, although be mindful that a significant budget increase may not necessarily improve your Cost Per Lead (CPL) proportionately.
4- Use Negative Keywords
When reviewing your search queries, you’ll likely come across searches that need to be more relevant to your products or services and shouldn’t trigger your ads. By monitoring this activity, you can identify potential negative keywords to decrease your CPL. Negative keywords are those you want to exclude from your search queries, typically from sources unlikely to convert. For instance, if your company offers family law consultations, you might designate “free” as a negative keyword to filter out searches seeking free legal advice. You can search for negative keywords using tools like Google Keyword Planner or the Search Query Report.
5- Improve Your Quality Score
Search engines incentivize advertisers who craft intelligent and pertinent ad campaigns by reducing the cost per click. This implies that ads tailored to specific audiences and deemed relevant will incur lower expenses compared to those with poorer quality scores. In fact, a high-quality score can potentially slash your PPC expenditure by up to 50%. Your quality score hinges on three key metrics:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Ad relevance
- Landing page experience
Thus, investing time and resources into enhancing your CTR, conducting A/B testing on landing pages, and optimizing website load times can positively influence your quality score, consequently reducing your cost per lead (CPL). For more in-depth insights on boosting your quality score, refer to our blog titled “Best Ways to Improve Google Quality Score.
Read Also: 10 Tips To Improve ROI From Google Ads
6- Use Ad Extensions
Google Ads extensions typically enhance your ad’s click-through rate (CTR) by expanding its content and providing extra details on the search engine results page. These extensions include call buttons, website links, location info, phone numbers, and other elements. It’s important to note that extensions may not display for every search query, but having a higher quality score increases the chances of them appearing to potential customers. Additionally, there’s no extra cost associated with using extensions, making them a valuable bonus. Here are various types of extensions available for use in your Google Ads campaigns:
- Callout Extension
- Lead From Extensions
- Sitelink Extensions
- App Extensions
Final Verdict
Optimizing cost-per-lead (CPL) on Google Ads demands a strategic approach and continuous refinement. By refining keyword strategies, leveraging ad assets, managing bids wisely, utilizing negative keywords, improving quality scores, and employing ad extensions, businesses can effectively lower CPL while maximizing return on investment. These smart tips not only reduce lead acquisition costs but also enhance campaign effectiveness, ultimately driving greater success in digital marketing efforts on Google Ads. This will not only manage expenses but also increase the quantity of leads you obtain, resulting in a more successful campaign overall.
