In this video we go over digital marketing leads quality, and the differences between an organic lead, search leads, Facebook leads and more. Then, how to determine if your digital marketing efforts are leading to actual business results.

Transcript

In this video, I'm going to go over where to get the highest quality leads with digital marketing. Stick around.

Hey Ryan Whiteside, Director of Digital Marketing at Two Wheels Marketing. One of the discussions we sometimes have with clients relates to quality of leads.

Often what happens when someone works with us, particularly a small local business, is they see an immediate uptick in leads.

Maybe they’re used to getting 3-4 leads come through the website, and now they’re getting 10-15.

Business usually picks up as well, but the lead quality from the 10-15 isn’t as high as the 3-4 that they’re used to.

So what gives?

Cold Vs Warm Traffic

Taking our local business again as an example, the 3-4 leads they were getting before working with us… many of those often came from someone Googling their name, coming to the site, and contacting them.

Perhaps their friend or neighbor recommended them, so they were already sold on our client’s business. This is what I call a warm lead, because they’ve had some previous knowledge or interaction.

This type of lead is great. You’ll take these kind of leads all day if you’re a business.

However, when it comes to growing your business… that’s often where a digital marketing agency comes in.

Depending on the business, we’ll often start by running Google Ads, so they start showing up on searches related to their business. For example, if they’re a home remodeler in Columbus, bidding on “home remodeler Columbus”, kitchen remodeling Columbus, and a whole host of other keywords.

Another place we may start is on Facebook Ads.

With digital marketing, the goal is to find qualified customers wherever they are online, and often that's on Facebook.

Here we’ll run ads to two different types of people: cold prospects and warm prospects.

With cold prospects, they’ve often never heard of our client before, or at least hasn’t been to our client’s website in a very long time, if it all.

The other audience is a warm prospect. Here they may have visited the website recently, but for whatever reason, they decided not to call, submit a contact form, or buy.

Finally, we may run ads on other platforms, like Microsoft, Google Display Network, Snapchat, or TikTok. We also may do some SEO, which is optimizing their site so they’re more likely to rank in search results for the listings you don’t have to pay for directly.

Now here’s where things get interesting, and the second thing I want to discuss.

Lead Source Quality

So are all leads created equal? Meaning is a lead that comes from a Google Search just as good as a Facebook lead? If a lead that saw a banner ad on a news website just as good as someone who did a search for your business on Bing.com?

From our experience, the answer is usually no.

Taking our columbus home remodeler for example, if for the same cost, we got 100 leads from someone on Google searching for “columbus home remodeler” and 100 leads from someone casually checking their Facebook account, we’d take the Google searches all day long.

The reason is the nature of the customer. Someone who does a Google search for “columbus home remodeler” is pre-qualifying themselves as someone that’s highly interested in home remodeling services. After all, it’s rare you would do that search, go to a home remodeling website, and fill out your information if you weren’t seriously considering getting home remodeling services.

Compare that to someone who goes on Facebook, is checking out what their friends or family are up to, then suddenly see an ad for a home remodeler. Then they click the ad, like what they see, and submit their information.

Yes, both leads ultimately did the same thing. However, with a Google search they actively had the intent of seeking out a home remodeler. And with Facebook, they had no intention at the time, but it was in the back of their mind to upgrade their downstairs bathroom someday, and the ad on Facebook reminded them of that.

Think about purchases you’ve made in your lifetime. Sometimes you’ve bought things that you were highly motivated and interested. Other times, you were on the fence, not really sure if it was something you wanted or needed.

It’s the same with leads. Yes, they both filled out a form, but some people are motivated to act now. And others are just inquiring about the possibility of one day maybe purchasing something.

Now, does this seem you should put all of your budget for Facebook into Google Ads? Absolutely not.

For one, leads on Facebook are often cheaper. So yeah, you the leads may be lesser quality, but if you’re getting 10 times as many for the budget, you may get real customers at a lower cost.

Second, you can reach a wider part of your potential customers on Facebook.

Someone that needs their teeth cleaned may not think to do a Google search for nearby dentists, but that Facebook ad they saw was just the push they needed to schedule an appointment.

But getting back to lead quality, if you just think about where the customer is in their purchasing decision, you’ll get any idea on how quality of a lead they are.

So Microsoft/Bing ads are similar to Google, because they’re actively seeking for a solution.

And Snapchat and TikTok are similar to Facebook, because they’re just seeking entertainment when your ad catches their eye.

Banner ads on the Display Network probably fall somewhere in the middle based on how you’re targeting them, which brings me to my final point…

Targeting and Offer Lead Quality

With all of these platforms, you can get more qualified leads by changing your targeting.

Take Google Ads for example. If you’re a dentist and you’re bidding on keywords like “dentist near me” or “dentist columbus Ohio”, those are probably pretty good leads.

But if you bid on a keyword like “medicaid dentist” when you don’t accept that type of insurance, yeah you may get some leads, but they aren’t going to be quality leads.

On Facebook, someone who has visited your site previously that you run a remarketing ad to is probably a good lead because they’ve expressed interest multiple times in your business.

And someone who calls you from an ad are more likely to be customers than someone who gives up their email to get a coupon. The former is much more committed to taking action now.

Conclusion

When it comes to lead quality online, all leads are not created equal.

But if you want to reach your total addressable market online, you’re marketing is going to have to reach some people that aren’t immediately ready to buy.

In a perfect world, you’d not only track where leads are coming from and how much it cost to get them, but also how many of them became customers. The closer you can tie marketing spend to revenue, the better.

Now, that’s not always easy. But at Two Wheels Marketing, we’re happy to work with a clients CRM, or help them get set up on one, so there’s transparency on both sides on where buyers are coming from.

If you’d like to chat with one of our experts, book a call and we’ll see if it may be a good fit working together.