The paid media blueprint for lead gen success [Webinar]

Struggling with leads that go nowhere? You’re not alone. Many businesses invest heavily in lead generation, but find their efforts often stall when it comes to turning those prospects into paying customers.

In our latest webinar, we wanted to help marketers change that - and capture more quality leads than ever before. Ultimately, we wanted to give marketers a blueprint for lead gen success.

In order to help us do just that, we sat down with Lead Gen Specialist and Founder of KLIQBLE, Violeta Balbae. Violeta has more than 8 years experience running high-performance lead gen campaigns on both the in-house and agency side, across a wide range of industries - from eCommerce to B2B SaaS.

At KLIQBLE, she specializes in crafting data-backed omnichannel strategies that maximize lead conversion rates for clients.

We discussed:

How to simultaneously improve lead volume and lead quality
Tips to adapt your paid search lead gen strategy for Microsoft Ads
The dos and don’ts of competitor keyword bidding for lead gen
How to use humor to make your B2B ad creative stand out Essential prerequisites before attempting to use PMax for lead gen
How to keep retargeting costs down on LinkedIn and Meta
…And much more

Watch the full webinar on-demand here - or if you’re running short on time, get the written key points and takeaways from the session below:

How to improve lead volume and lead quality

When experiencing low lead volume, the very first actionable steps are:

Make sure conversion tracking is correctly set up and optimal
Install tools such as HotJar or Microsoft Clarity to understand why clicks aren’t becoming leads
Start tracking micro conversions (the completion of small steps or secondary actions by a website visitor that indicate that they are going to convert)

Good examples of micro conversions to track include:

Viewing content or guides related to the conversion
Newsletter signups
Viewing multiple relevant pages

If you are getting leads, but the majority were unqualified or invalid, the first actionable steps are:

Add a description to your lead gen form. This makes it easier to identify interested leads
Stay in close contact with sales - they can let you know what people are saying, or why they aren’t moving forward
Audit your landing pages - make sure they’re clear, concise, and easy to understand

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How invalid traffic impacts lead quality

Spam leads can come from a variety of sources, including from people who have zero interest in your product/service. But many spam leads do arise from sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) which mimic human behavior and can be hard to detect, measure, and prevent
This bot activity not only wastes budget via ad clicks onto landing pages, but fake leads can contaminate your CRM - wasting the time and energy of sales teams.
Our data shows the average IVT rate for Google Search campaigns is around 5%, however many campaigns (most notably B2B campaigns) are seeing IVT rates of 10% or more
Violeta saw IVT rates fluctuating between 10-14% whilst working work LearnWorld throughout 2023
After trying Captcha implementation (which was ineffective due to still having to pay for the invalid clicks) she implemented Lunio’s IVT protection to automatically block invalid traffic and spam leads
This allowed her to solely focus on her campaigns, knowing that her ad budget was automatically protected against invalid traffic

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Violeta’s B2B omni-channel lead gen strategy (w/ case study)

Violeta then showcased a case study for her B2B omni-channel strategy, which led to some incredibly impressive results for her clients:

As the slide shows, Violeta started with a very limited account - there was no conversion data, low search volume, and the campaign only addressed sellers - not buyers
This meant no PMax or broad match to begin with

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Violeta was inspired by the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (when you see something new for the first time, then start seeing it absolutely everywhere afterwards)

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Using this principle, she created retargeting campaigns on as many platforms as possible - Display, LinkedIn, Meta, Bing
She even launched a secondary campaign for a prospective audience, that acted as an advisory to the target audience
This resulted in a greater volume of leads coming back and converting at much higher numbers - even 3, 6, or 12 months later
Violeta also moved from a two-step form to a one-step form, which increased lead completion rates from 2.9% to 7.3% (click-mapping tools helped a lot here)
The results across all channels after 6 months speak for themselves:

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Essential prerequisites before attempting to use PMax for lead gen

Generally, PMax performs better for B2C lead gen rather than B2B. B2B campaigns generally require more granular control, targeting, and visibility than PMax can provide
This is especially true if, as a B2B company, you receive searches similar to what a B2C company would receive

If a client is adamant about using PMax for lead gen, it’s important to have a few essential prerequisites in place to get the best results:

Have search working as optimal as possible
Have a high amount of conversion data available
Use high-quality, proven creatives

After starting PMax, keep a close eye on search - especially on brand terms - as PMax can be known to cannibalize search.

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How to maximize the impact of Google Display retargeting campaigns

Marketing efficiency ratio (MER) is an important metric to measure the impact of certain channels (e.g. Display retargeting) that would otherwise be hard to attribute revenue towards.
Creatives are key - experiment and A/B test creatives thoroughly, keep in mind that short-form videos are becoming increasingly popular (even for B2B)
Retarget leads, not just visitors or prospects - being the most visible product/solution influences the whole buying journey

The do’s and don’ts of competitor keyword bidding for lead gen

Competitor keyword bidding is a somewhat controversial topic that is most common in SaaS or ultra-competitive industries.

Pros:

It’s an impactful strategy, especially for smaller or ‘underdog’ brands, as they can piggyback off established brands and gain visibility much faster
Competitor keyword bidding can often lead to lower CPCs, but this is highly dependent on the industry

Cons:

You become a target - bigger brands will spot you and target you
You can’t use brand names in your ad copy if they’re trademarked
Depending on the industry, you might see lower conversion rates or lead quality scores

Best practices:

If the brand is quite large or well-known, check forums such as Reddit to see what people are complaining about. This will give you a good idea of keywords to bid on, and when used to optimize ad copy you can specifically target pain points to tempt customers to you
Ensure your landing pages are fully optimized. Use dedicated landing pages that call out competitors directly
Don’t introduce smaller competitors, as that just creates brand awareness for them
Don’t target competitors you don’t have a clear advantage over

These examples from Mouseflow and Monday.com show us how it should be done:

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How to use humor to make B2B ad creatives stand out

A recent LinkedIn study revealed that business decision makers are often underwhelmed by the B2B ads they typically see.

Specifically, it showed that B2B ads regularly fall short when it comes to humor, emotional appeal, and character connection.

This means B2B marketers who can leverage humor and emotional appeal can gain a huge advantage over their competitors just by appealing to the humans behind the business, rather than just the business.

Josh Krakauer showcased some of the best humorous B2B ads in a LinkedIn post - one to help you find inspiration for your campaigns. The Joseph Hill ad library is also incredibly useful to help spark ideas.

Tips to adapt your paid search lead gen strategy for Microsoft Ads

While there is an option to import your Google Ads account structure into Microsoft Ads, it’s virtually never worth doing. Instead:

Start small and grow from there
Focus on the top performing keywords
Have patience - Microsoft Ads needs more time for the bidding strategy to come online, and it can be inconsistent (especially to begin with)

How to keep retargeting costs down on LinkedIn and Meta

Keeping retargeting costs down can be tricky. Fortunately, Violeta gave us some tips to help keep costs low on Meta and LinkedIn:

Keep in mind that Meta works better for targeting one single decision maker
LinkedIn generally performs better when multiple decision makers are involved - tailor your approach to this!
Attention spans are lower than ever, and time is limited. Remain conscious of this when setting up your retargeting campaigns
Experiment with creatives - you can never optimize creatives too much
Use ALL the data you can get your hands on - leads, pre-qualified leads, even customer lists

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For more in-depth discussion or context on any of the above points, make sure to watch the webinar in full - it was full-to-the-brim of interesting points and usable takeaways to help marketers optimize their lead gen efforts.

Violeta also answered questions from live attendees at the end - definitely worth a watch, as she covered some important topics voted for by the live audience.

Last but not least, we wanted to extend a huge thank you to Violeta for being such a great guest and bringing so much value to the table. Make sure to follow Violeta on LinkedIn for more paid media tips, tricks, and insights.

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