Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 6 - Lead Gen

If the goal of your Google Ads is to generate leads for your business, you're going to want to pay extra close attention to this episode.

Let's go Inside Google Ads to answer your burning questions about lead gen. 

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales, bringing you more than a decade of Google Ads experience. I worked at Google for six years and now I'm a marketing coach, consultant, teacher, content creator, speaker, author and podcast host. I've worked with more than 10,000 Google Ads accounts, showing business owners and marketers how to make more money from paid ads, and now I'm here to do the same for you every week for free.

The way each episode works is this. I pick three of your burning questions to answer in detail from the hundreds of comments I receive on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads. You can find all those links in the show description, and if you want a chance to get your problem solved in a future episode, drop a comment on any of my social media. Remember, my Inside Google Ads course members get to do this with me live every month on an exclusive one hour call.

And now to our first Google Ads question about Lead Gen. This one came to me via my DMs on Instagram. So I'm not going to say the person's name because it's the name of their business, but it was such a great question I thought, “I have to answer this for everyone on the podcast as well.”

I've been running Google Ads for a renovation company, and we noticed that all of his conversions, people filling out his contact form, are spammers messaging him fake services about marketing and website upgrades. I don't know how to stop the spam from happening because he is primarily being found through the keyword searches we want, like “renovation company near me.” Do you know how we can stop this? 

So what I told this person - and I also asked them to ask in public so I can answer in public as well - this isn't spam. This is Google Search Ads working as intended. Let me explain.

People are searching for keywords that you want to advertise on, like “renovation company near me”. They are then filling out your form. That is a conversion. It is working as intended, as Google intended, not as you intended - I will get to that.

But by definition, this isn't actually spam. Spam is when you get a bunch of leads to your website that aren't even real people. It's just bots and stuff, right? These are real people who search for your keywords, who came and filled out your form.

Now, the reason they filled out your form is because they want you to hire them, not because they're looking to hire you.

Now we're gonna talk about how to fix that problem, but I want to make that clear. If you're looking for solutions to spam, this isn't actually spam, so those solutions wouldn't fix that. To stop it there are a few things we can do. 

First, would be to update your conversion tracking to offline conversion tracking. I mentioned this in the last episode. And any time we're going to talk about lead gen, we have to talk about Offline Conversion Tracking, where you connect your CRM with Google Ads using the GCLID identifier, bear with me here, so that you can let Google Ads know which of your leads actually did become a customer and which did not. 

So, that would stop this, not instantaneously, but after a few weeks that would stop this behavior of form fills by people looking to sell their marketing and website services. You would let Google know via OCT, Offline Conversion Tracking, that nope, you don't get credit for that as a conversion, and that was not actually a conversion. And so, Google would stop optimizing for that kind of person with your ads and start to go after the real people you want to be your customers.

The second thing you could do to help that process along, or on its own, is to add audiences on Targeting mode. We spoke about this in episode two, right, getting specific with your targeting. You can add audiences to your Search campaign on Targeting mode to limit the reach of your Search campaign.

So, maybe an audience like homeowners, for example, because if someone doesn't own a home, they're not going to be hiring for renovation services. And I believe it has, I’d have to double check, but I believe there's even an in-market audience for people who are in the market for renovation services, right?

(Post-production note: There is a Home Renovation audience segment under Life Events, not under In-market segments. I was almost right!)

So, you could add those audiences on Targeting mode because it's unlikely that people trying to sell website services also happen to be in the market for renovation. So that's another thing you could do. 

Lastly, I recommend you check that there are no Automatically Created Assets encouraging this behavior. For example, I was just on a coaching call this week. My client is not in the renovation space, but another home services space, and he noticed he was getting a lot of people calling (because his conversion is a call) to apply for jobs.

He was like, what the heck is going on? And then when he looked at his ad preview, when he looked at his Responsive Search Ad, you know, the preview is on the right, he saw there was a sitelink there to apply for jobs.

And he's like, what the heck? I didn't do that. It turns out he had Automatically Created Assets turned on, because it is turned on by default. So, you're going to want to turn that off in your campaign settings to make sure that nothing like that happens that could be encouraging this behavior you don't want.

To cut back on this, I mean, the big gun solution is Offline Conversion Tracking. If you can't implement that, or even if you can, adding audiences on Targeting mode will really help with that as well. Lastly, no Automatically Created Assets. 

Okay, before we get to our second Google Ads lead gen question, a quick reminder that you can receive the transcript of this episode in your inbox each week. Simply sign up for the Inside Google Ads newsletter on my website. The link for that is in the description below this episode.

Time for our second question about lead gen, a commenter facing a different issue. Bex asked me on TikTok, what should we look out for when our ads are showing similar numbers, but the quality of our leads have reduced?

Right, so our ads are still showing, we're still getting the same CTR, similar CPC, etc., but the actual leads coming through are of lower quality than they used to be.

For this, I turn to my Troubleshooting 3: Targeting, ads, and landing page. 

Those are not the only places the problem could be, they're just some of your most likely culprits. So, let's tackle the Troubleshooting 3, one by one. 

First, the landing page. Have there been any changes at all to your landing page, the page of your website that people go to from the ad, or website changes overall? Did you just move to a new system and possibly your conversion tracking got messed up? Did you change your layout, your colors, anything that could be affecting this? Okay, that's a very common culprit. So first of all, any landing page or website changes. 

Secondly, we're going to assume your ads haven’t changed, but of course, if you've actually changed your ad assets, headlines, descriptions, images, sitelinks, callouts, etc., whatever it might be, that could impact this. As we saw with the last question, check to see if those Automatically Created Assets are turned on or not.

And third, targeting. Assuming you haven't changed your targeting. Of course, changing your targeting could change your quality, but assuming you haven't, have there been any changes in competition? Check your action insights for any new entrants. 

A few other things you could check related to targeting, of course, are your search terms. Match types don't work how they used to: exact is no longer exact, phrase is no longer phrase. So, it's possible you've made no changes to your keywords, but the actual search terms you're getting, the user queries you're showing on, have completely changed.

I've seen this in multiple coaching calls now. It is so frustrating for my clients when they are like, what the heck is going on? And it turns out they haven't made any changes. I sure haven't made any changes. Google Match Types have changed. So that's another place. You have got to look at your search terms. Are they really different than they were before? 

So, those are the three main places to check. The Troubleshooting 3: Targeting, ads, landing page. 

And one more recommendation I'll give to Bex. I know I sound like a broken record. I should have an OCT button on my desk next to me. But if you can, use Offline Conversion Tracking for lead gen to help keep that lead quality up and make sure Google Ads does not take credit for driving poor quality leads.

If you've learned something valuable in this episode, and it's safe for you to do so, please take a moment to give this podcast a five-star rating, a thumbs up, whatever your podcast app lets you do, I really appreciate it.

One final question for today about lead gen. Sahib on Instagram asks, my experience says that leads collected through the lead form extension sometimes have low-quality leads, because you can't ask as many qualifying questions because of limited customization available. What are your thoughts on that? 

What are my thoughts on that? Well, my thoughts on the lead form asset, as it's now called, are…it’s okay.

Really convincing there, right? I don't use it so much. This was actually a response to a video or post where I talked about it.

It's there to use, so I like to talk about it. I don't personally use it much. Why? Because I don't get much volume from it. It's not the same as Meta Ads where you can run a lead form campaign type and people fill out the lead within the ad and convert. Like, that's a real, set campaign type that's kind of natural to the Meta Ads experience. 

But the lead form asset in Google Ads is just an add-on to another campaign type. I don't think users are used to seeing them, or know how to use them, or know what the icon means.

So, even when I was working at Google with these multi-million dollar advertisers who would have lead form assets, even they didn't get a ton of volume through them.

Now, to the other part of the question about the issue : why is the lead quality low? You can ask quite a few questions, it doesn't hurt, but again, I don't really rely on these so much. I have found better success with lead gen clients driving people to a landing page with a fully optimized form.

So, is the lead form asset worth testing? Absolutely.

By its nature, do I find that it drives low-quality leads? No, not necessarily.

But my personal preference, and the thing I guide my clients to do is, sure, have it, it doesn't hurt, but for the most part, people are going to go to your landing page, so make sure that that lead form is fully optimized.

So, how can you stop getting spam or poor quality leads from Google Ads? Don't run Display Ads, for one, and use Offline Conversion Tracking.

If you're taking nothing else away from this episode, it will be worth your time to either become an expert or higher an expert to implement Offline Conversion Tracking, OCT, also called OCI, for your account.

By the way, did you know that I offer Google Ads account audits? If you're concerned about issues in your Google Ads account and you'd like a professional once over, then follow the link in the episode description to purchase the Google Ads account audit.

I've seen thousands of Google Ads accounts and I'd love to give you your customer scorecard and let you know exactly how you can improve campaign performance. All the info you need about that is on my website, which of course is linked in the episode description. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next week Inside Google Ads.

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