How to improve lead quality if you don't have enough data for offline conversions

A reader sent me an interesting problem. Their campaign gets about five leads a month, and 70% aren’t qualified. Clicks cost $15–23 each.

They want to optimise for qualified leads using offline conversions, but they don't have the volume. They asked if they should bite the bullet and spend more for a few weeks to get the volume up?

I wouldn’t yet.

There is a risk that the extra spend just buys more of the same unqualified leads.

A lot of people think offline conversions are the fix for poor lead quality: tell Google which leads were good, and let it find more like them.

I'm with them. I've been happy with the results. But it takes more than one or two conversions a month to make it work.

Luckily we there are other ways to improve lead quality that work at lower lead volume. My lead quality framework covers five areas.

For this reader, I’d start with filtering.

Stop unqualified leads before they click

Filtering is a about stopping unqualified leads from

• seeing your ads,
• clicking them
• and contacting you.

Imagine a grass-cutting business that serves a few neighbourhoods. A lead that needs an hour's drive isn't qualified. We want to filter anyone from outside the area out. Preferably before we pay Google for the click.

The first filter is the location targeting.

But that might not be enough. Someone could work inside the targeted area but live outside. Google doesn't offer this kind of granularity.

That's where filtering with ad copy can help. Maybe something like:

Grass cutting in Morningside and Spring Hill.

It's not perfect because some people will still click. But at $20 per click it's worth doing.

And you can apply the same kind of filter on the landing page to keep people out of the area from contacting you. This does two useful things:

• It stops you wasting time talking to people you can't help.
• It stops Google learning that people outside the area become leads.

You pick a filter to match the problem

If our grass-cutter was getting unqualified leads from out of the area, the filters I've described would help.

But, these wouldn't help if leads were unqualified because of something else:

• Looking for a service the business doesn’t offer.
• Spam.
• Job seekers.
• Individuals contacting a business that only serves companies.

So that's where we start. But before you can choose the right filter(s), you need to know exactly why the leads aren't qualified. “70% unqualified” isn’t specific enough to be useful.

If my thinking resonates with you I'd like to give you a copy of my book Profitable Google Ads. You can get it at https://pete-bowen.com/book.

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