Advertising

Pay Per Lead vs. Pay Per Click

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Written by Josh Prizer

Monday, 09 June 2008

by JoshPrizer

If you feel like you are spinning your wheels with the same poor quality leads from your lead generation service, you're not alone. In the past few years we've heard from more and more of our clients that the quality leads they used to get from their lead gen services are becoming worse and worse. More people are shifting their budgets to pay per click search where the quality remains strong.

Many lead gen firms use pay per click (PPC) search to attract their leads. Once they have a lead, they will ship it out to a variety of vendors, charging each the same fee. If you are seeing your leads get more saturated, it might be time for you to go right to the source instead of letting the middle men do that for you.

Jumping into Pay Per Click isn't just a matter of setting up a website and contact information. You can certainly get results doing that -- we see it all the time. But to truly compete and drive your cost per lead down, you need some sophistication.

When you launch a paid search campaign, you need to realize that everything in your pipeline, from what keywords to appear on, what ads to run, where to send them, how to get them to take action, etc. -- all of that can be managed and optimized. Let's examine two of these areas.

The first place to begin is with your pay per click ad copy. It's fairly easy to place an ad and launch it. However, the pay per click engines are putting more emphasis than ever on "Quality" algorithms. If you are unable to make the daily effort to test your ad copy, you are going to fall behind those that do. A good PPC management company will run daily split tests for their clients. This is who you are up against more and more these days -- experts who double and triple the click through rates of their clients' ads.

So, why is this key? Pretty simple. Double and triple that relevant traffic and you can double and triple your leads. If you are not working on this, trust me, your competition is. It's worth the time and expense.

But as I mentioned, everything in your pipeline can be optimized. Let's take a look at where you are sending these people who click on ads. Do you have a contact form or just an email address? Is your phone number visible or in your footer? Are you offering an incentive for people to take action? There's a lot to tweak and test.

If you can optimize your landing pages over time, you can now take that traffic and double or triple your lead conversions. We've seen it time and time again. So, put in the effort, it is worth the time.

Making the jump to PPC search may not be in your company's core competency. If not, then outsource to a PPC management company. Their experts can mine massive keyword lists, pull keywords from your competitors, conduct the necessary and vital daily split tests, and give you insight into better landing pages.

Ditching those weak, watered-down leads and going right to the source can help your business boost its results dramatically.

About the Author:

Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and AdWords Expert for Zero Company Performance Marketing, a ppc management company. Check out his website to discover more details on improving your PPC advertising accounts and performance.

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