Using Google Ads for lead generation doesn’t have to be a shot in the dark!

If you have a business, you know it’s hard to find customers. You can’t afford to miss out on any lead generation opportunities—especially service companies, which offer more than just a simple product for shoppers to buy. Google Ads is a powerful way for every service, from plumbing to landscaping, to get your message out there and reach more potential customers!

Contrary to what you might believe, lead generation isn’t just for lead-hungry salespeople or telemarketers; a focus on leads can be an effective marketing strategy for any business owner who wants to get more customers on Google Ads.

But how do you generate leads? Today’s blog will teach you everything you need to know about lead generation on Google Ads, based on our experience as digital marketers.

What lead generation is and why it’s important

Lead generation is the process of finding and attracting potential customers. It’s a critical part of any business, as it’s the way you find new customers and increase your customer base. Lead generation is crucial because it allows you to target the right people with the right message, and it’s an essential part of any successful marketing campaign.

Lead generation is significant for service-based industries, where there’s more involved in the sale than for e-commerce businesses. Service-based industries, such as roofing companies, face a lengthy conversion process and stiff competition from other local companies, making a solid Google Ads strategy important.

The lead generation process begins with the advertisement your customer sees.

For example, a roofer could put out fliers or direct mailings, but there’s a good chance these ads end up with people who don’t need their services. So instead, a targeted Google Ads campaign can show roofing ads to people searching for roofing services in the company’s local area—a more targeted way of spending ad dollars!

Lead generation for services

The lead generation process starts with lead qualification: targeting your lead sources to get quality leads. Google Ads makes this easy since you can target potential customers based on the keywords they use in their search.

Google Ads uses conversions when determining the worth of advertising. For e-commerce clients, these conversions are the sales of a product from the ads.

On the other hand, service-based companies have a range of prices for what they offer. For example, water damage restoration can be worth a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. Since the sale could be a wide range, advertisers must keep traffic quality as their top priority—a precision rifle instead of a shotgun.

Setting up ad groups on Google Ads

One of the most important things you can do when creating a lead generation strategy is organize your campaigns. Google Ads gives you the ability to set up campaigns by individual keywords and topics so that your lead generation efforts are as effective as possible.

The critical thing to remember: each ad group points to a particular service page.

For example, say we’re running lead generation ads for a disaster restoration company. They want leads for four services: mold damage, water damage, storm damage, and fire damage. So there are four corresponding pages, one for each service.

How many ad groups? Four! And all of the keywords in the ad group are geared towards people searching for a particular service. In this way, we can run lead generation ads and ensure the right people see these ads.

What about location targeting?

Most service companies want their lead generation efforts focused on their immediate area. For example, generating a roofing lead in San Diego doesn’t do any good if the company is located in Dallas.

Well, Google makes this easy. You can set up your campaign to show to people within a predetermined radius, with the business in the center of the circle. Doing this ensures that only the people in your vicinity see the ads for the service.

A good starting point is twenty to thirty miles around the business. In our experience, this is a good enough distance to generate enough traffic for successful ads and not too much driving for employees. Then, depending on the volume, you could investigate expanding or contracting the radius.

Algorithmic Global: lead generation experts

Lead generation is an essential aspect of lead qualification. Qualifying leads means ensuring that the potential customer is highly likely to turn into a paying customer by targeting them with ads on Google Ads.

Lead generation for service-based companies can be done in many ways, but using targeted keywords and location settings are two key factors to look at when creating your lead generation campaign.

If you’re struggling with lead conversion rates or want more information about how we work here at Algorithmic Global, feel free to reach out via our contact page! We’d love to hear from you and discuss our services further.