Producing leads through PPC campaigns can be tough, and generating high-quality leads is even tougher. In e-commerce, anyone with the means to purchase can do so directly on the site. Every dollar holds the same value, and revenue is easily tracked and attributed back to the initial ad click. Lead generation is a whole other ball game.

Even the word “bewusstseinslage” can’t make lead generation sound easy. Lead generation allows anyone to convert at the initial stage, regardless of their buying power. This necessitates strategies to target quality leads and deter unqualified users from our forms. Before we dive into strategies, remember this:

High-Quality Leads Often Mean Fewer Leads

If boosting lead quality were simple, you wouldn’t be reading this! Unfortunately, there are always trade-offs. When you focus on improving lead quality, a decrease in the overall number of leads is almost unavoidable. Ideally, as the total lead count drops, the number of high-quality leads rises. This indicates a shift from easily obtainable, lower-quality leads to more valuable, higher-quality ones. When working on lead quality, anticipate these changes in your KPIs:

• Overall lead volume will go down
• High-quality lead volume should go up
• Cost per lead typically increases
• Cost per high-quality lead should decrease
• Click-through rate usually declines If you’re comfortable with these potential outcomes, let’s proceed.

Measuring Lead Quality: A Quick Look

While there are various ways to measure lead quality, a simple and effective metric is the conversion rate from lead to customer. A high conversion rate indicates that a significant portion of your leads are converting into customers, signifying high quality. Conversely, a low lead-to-customer conversion rate suggests that you’re attracting the wrong leads, even if there are many. With expectations set, let’s explore the details. Here are five strategies I’ve personally used to enhance B2B lead quality, applicable to any lead generation campaign.

1. Be More Selective with Keywords

Keywords are the foundation of any search campaign. They determine your target audience, ad copy, landing pages, and more. When aiming to improve lead quality, start by revisiting your keywords.

Long Tail vs. Short Tail

How many words are your keywords made up of? Generally, shorter keywords offer less insight into user intent. If your keywords are mostly one or two words long, can you add modifiers to make them more specific? The key to attracting quality leads is to identify users who are clear about their needs, and long-tail keywords are more effective in targeting them. For instance, someone searching for “life insurance policies” is arguably more qualified than someone searching for “insurance policies.” They’ve specified their insurance needs, increasing their likelihood of buying. Can you make your current keywords more specific? Are there modifiers like the example above that can add intent to your keywords?

Match Types

Similar to keyword length, match types significantly impact lead quality. Exact and phrase match offer greater control, so if most leads come from broad match terms, it could be problematic.

Address poor matches with these strategies:

• Regularly review search queries and add negative keywords, or
• Limit the use of broader match types. Both have pros and cons. The first requires ongoing optimization, while the second might restrict volume. Choose the approach that suits you, but be open to adjustments over time.

2. Use Qualifying Language in Ads

While we always strive for appealing ad copy that boosts CTR and conversions, our focus shifts when prioritizing quality. When lead qualification is key, we need to deter unqualified users from clicking our ads, but do it strategically. Just because someone isn’t ready to convert now doesn’t mean they never will be. Sticking with the life insurance example, while we want to appear in searches for “life insurance policies,” suppose we’re also aiming for clients with multiple bundled policies. Instead of focusing solely on life insurance, our copy could highlight the bundle deal.

Users uninterested in bundles will likely choose other ads focusing solely on life insurance. Another unqualified click avoided!

3. Tailor Landing Pages to Ideal Customers

Once a user passes the keyword and ad copy filters, what’s next? Landing page copy is another tool for qualification. It should resonate with our ideal customers. While life insurance is widely applicable, we might prefer younger, healthier individuals. So, our copy and imagery should reflect that target demographic.

The same applies to a B2B SaaS provider that benefits from larger accounts. Even if your solution works for all business sizes, your copy should target “Businesses with 50+ Employees” or your specific criteria. You could even use a header like, “Best suited for companies who…” followed by bullet points outlining your target customer. Whether you’re subtle or direct, ensure your landing page contributes to user qualification.

4. Optimize Your Forms

A longer form is a surefire way to deter casual browsers. It’s the highest price anyone can pay to a lead generation company. If low-quality leads are filling your forms, consider requesting more information. When using Facebook ads for lead generation, we saw a boost in lead quality by increasing the number of form fields from the first to the second form below.

However, avoid adding irrelevant questions. Ensure they make sense within the form’s context. Ask yourself: What additional information would your sales team appreciate when following up? Annual revenue? Employee count? Income level? In the example above, adding fields for industry, job title, and company name allowed our sales teams to personalize their approach by researching leads beforehand. This resulted in a win-win: a prepared sales team and a lead who felt heard. Besides the number of fields, the information you request is also crucial. There’s a difference between “email address” and “work email address.” Similar to refining “insurance” to “life insurance,” be specific about the information you need.

5. Use Back-End Data for Optimization

This strategy is often overlooked. If you’re using PPC for lead generation, you likely have a sales or marketing management system to organize those leads. This system is a treasure trove of optimization insights. PPC campaigns allow us to tag URLs, enabling keyword-level tracking within our campaigns. First challenge: Ensure your marketing automation captures this information. Second challenge: Regularly extract and utilize this data to optimize your campaigns! This data is invaluable for budget allocation, keyword selection, and other adjustments. Let’s illustrate with an example. Imagine two Google Ads campaigns with these stats:

Clearly, Campaign A outperforms Campaign B in conversion performance. Based on this, a 25% budget increase would naturally go to Campaign A. However, that’s not the whole picture. We want high-quality leads. Data from our CRM, when matched to campaigns, could reveal this:

The game has changed. Despite the difference in overall lead performance, both generated the same number of qualified leads, making Campaign B more efficient. Now, the budget increase is directed to Campaign B.

Prioritize Quality over Quantity

Improving lead quality requires accepting that you’ll have to turn some people away. You’ll actively discourage form submissions, but ultimately, it benefits your business. Try these strategies and share your results in the comments below!