Optimising for lead value, not just lead count.

Google's Advertiser liaison, Ginny Marvin, recently posted 5 short videos on value-based bidding for lead generation.

Here are the links to the videos.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKQIjqFHNxI
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y5M24tn_1k
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0iG7fvgZmE
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y15vrhH01d8
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyHekl44pxw

Till now I've thought that value-based bidding was a poor fit for lead generation. But after watching the videos I think it's worth testing.

I've shared my notes and thoughts below. You might find them useful.

One. Value-based bidding optimises for the value of your leads rather than the number of leads. The promise is that you can generate better quality leads, not just more leads.

Two. In one of the videos it referred to advertisers being happy with the results. But there were no specifics about the industry, ad budget or number of leads. I can see a big account getting enough data to make this work but I'd really like to see is how well this scales down.

Three. You should expect some low to mid-value leads in the mix. They're not all going to be high-value.

Four. To set up value-based bidding you need to:-

• Make sure that lead conversion tracking is working.
• Be able to assign meaningful values to leads. (This seems to be the trickiest part, more on it later)
• Balance lead volume and lead value goals.
• Measure lead value and share it with Google through offline conversions.
• Set your Google Ads account to use data-driven attribution.

Five. Pick just one stage of the conversion journey, preferably the one closest to the end, that has at least 15 conversions per month account-wide. (If you're not familiar with the concept of stages of a conversion journey you might find this article useful.)

Six. I was surprised that only 15 conversions per month at the stage you're measuring is enough to make this work. I'd expected it to be a lot more.

Seven. The shorter the conversion delay the better. The conversion delay is the interval between when a lead arrives and when they take the conversion action.

Eight. Setting the value of a lead:-

• You need to have at least 2 possible values of a lead. Neither should be zero.
• You can use proxy values instead of actual money values.
• Lead score could be used as a proxy.
• Expected contract size could also be a proxy. She gave examples of an event florist using headcount as a proxy.

Nine. You can set up automatic adjustments to the lead values based on audience, location and device.

Ten. Upload conversions daily instead of batching them less frequently.

Eleven. Making the switch to conversion-based bidding:-

• Allow the system to collect data for 4 weeks or 3 conversion cycles (whichever is longer).
• Change the bid strategy.
• Allow 2 weeks or 3 conversion cycles for the system to ramp up.
• Evaluate performance over at least 50 conversions, or a full month. Excluding the ramp up period from your evaluation.

Twelve. Setting a ROAS target:-

• If you're looking for growth then lower the target.
• If you're looking for efficiency increase the target.

Thirteen. The bid simulator shows you the likely effect of lead volume at different ROAS targets.

Fourteen. Constraints like max cpc can hinder the system.

Fifteen. Small fluctuations are normal.

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