PPC advertising–or paid ads–are a fantastic tool for generating conversions, leads and sales. They require a company to pay some amount of money in return for incoming revenue. When done right, PPC advertising is like hiring a salesperson who works for you 24/7.
Paid ad campaigns are all about getting in front of the customer in a “buying moment.” For example, Jennifer needs a specific solution for her business, and doesn’t know where to start. She goes online and searches for someone who can solve her problem. During her search, she sees an ad for a company that seems able to help, so she checks them out. Their site looks good, and the information speaks to her need–so she reaches out. This is the constant work that paid ad campaigns do for a business.
Though a lot of different tactics are used for digital lead generation, at the end of the day, digital ads and SEO make up the majority of initial lead generation and conversions. For the sake of this discussion, let’s look specifically at the benefit of PPC or digital ads as they relate to lead generation.
Paid Ads Have to Start Someplace
Below is a simple snapshot of a small service company’s Google Ads conversions in Google Analytics over the last few months. The blue lines represent 2020 and the orange lines represent 2019. The major difference? This company is utilizing PPC for lead generation in 2020. In 2019, they were not.
This particular business is paying about $1,500 a month for their PPC advertising. This includes the cost of the ads and our ppc management services. The services they sell generate between $4,000 and $30,000 at 50% margins. To see the exact cost of sale, the total cost of acquisition would need to be tracked all the way through the funnel–in this case, the total cost is less than 5%. Also of note are the “assisted conversions”. In other words, where PPC had a hand in a conversion for another channel.
Tighten Up Your PPC Game
This next example is interesting: it compares the same time period over two different years, for a company has multiple locations and a national presence. The blue line represents 2020 and the orange line represents 2019. Like many industries, COVID-19 all but completely shut down many of this company’s service areas in Q2 of 2020. But as you can see, conversions are actually up slightly over 2019. Continuous improvement is a core focus of our team, and even with the downturn, the improvements made to their PPC strategy year over year are making a difference. There’s certainly a chance the sales cycle might last a little longer as areas wait to open up, but their sales pipeline is still intact and ready to go when the work can actually get done.
The leads and conversions illustrated above will generate millions of dollars in revenue. How do we know? We track conversions, always. To put things in perspective, like many of our new customers, this company didn’t even have a digital strategy just a few years ago.
ROI for Paid Ads
One of the biggest benefits that isn’t often considered when factoring ROI from digital advertising is the revenue a company will generate over the lifetime of the client partnerships they acquire. For companies that serve their customers well, the most insignificant of projects or product purchases can be the one crack that’s needed to open up years’ worth of opportunity and revenue.
In the years we’ve been managing PPC accounts here in Portland, I’ve not met with a company that couldn’t benefit from implementing a PPC strategy, or couldn’t significantly improve a program they have in place, no matter the size of the account. There’s a reason the “Silicon Valley Model” of lead generation is so dependent on PPC, and why companies that embrace this strategy continue to grow.
If you’re curious about how your business could benefit from an enhanced PPC strategy, get in touch with our team to set up a complementary PPC consultation.
