Lead quality

One of the most common things I hear is:

The leads from Google Ads are junk.

The problem is that "poor lead quality" isn't a diagnosis. It's a symptom of an underlying problem. When someone says that the leads are junk they might mean:

• Spam.
• Job seekers.
• Consumers contacting a business that only serves other businesses.
• People outside your service area.
• People with unrealistic budgets.
• People looking for a different business.
• Genuine enquiries that never answer the phone when you call them back.
• Leads that were interested initially but disappear before becoming customers.

Every one of these problems has a different cause. And if you don't know why a lead is poor quality, you can't fix it.

How to Improve Google Ads Lead Quality

Improving lead quality is usually a process rather than a single change. I use the IFFFFF framework that looks at the whole journey from the first click on an advert through to the final sale. Here it is.

• Instrument the business. Before you can improve anything, you need evidence. Track every lead from the first click on the advert through to the final outcome. Without good instrumentation you're flying blind.

• Find out why leads aren't qualified. Don't just mark a lead as "poor quality." Find out exactly why it wasn't a good lead. That gives you something you can improve.

• Filter the wrong people out. Google Ads gives you several ways to filter who sees your adverts. Targeting, keywords, audiences, ad copy and landing pages all help attract the right people while discouraging the wrong ones.

• Faster first contact. What looks like poor lead quality is often a slow response. Hello, everyone. Many good leads become bad leads simply because another business got back to them first.

• Follow up consistently. If your business sends quotes or estimates, following up consistently will usually increase the number of sales without spending more on advertising.

• Feedback to Google. One of the fastest ways to improve lead quality is to tell Google which leads actually became qualified leads. Over time, Google's bidding algorithms learn what a good lead looks like and become better at finding similar people.