PPCChat | PPC for Lead Gen – What’s Working & What’s Not | 23rd August 2022

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Welcome Happy Readers! During this week’s PPCChat session, PPCers expressed their views regarding led gen in PPC, which advertising platforms they are using for led gen PPC, what industries they are currently advertising, and more. Hosted by Julie F Bacchini, here is the complete screencap of the discussion

Q1: If you are doing PPC for lead generation (lead gen) for what industry or industries are you currently advertising?

Currently largest industry is property management. @KurtHenninger

I currently do in-house PPC for a SaaS. @DianaAlinaAldea

Education and what I’ll put under the umbrella of “business services” are my lead gen clients right now. @NeptuneMoon

Not much at all. We track rebate forms like lead gen, but it’s not used in the same way a lead would be put into a crm and acted on. @JuliaVyse

In the past I’ve used it for travel. @JuliaVyse

I’m currently doing lead gen work in healthcare, finance, construction, B2B software, landscaping and commercial furniture. Just realized I’m all over the place. @HarrisonJHepp

Yes, medical is my biggest one, but also travel, auto, and property. @lchasse

Currently managing clients across a pretty wide range of industries, including financial services, construction, real estate, and commercial food & beverage. @adclarke10

A little bit of everything. Medical, cars, conferences. @selley2134

Technology Industry providing business tech services and solutions like application development, security, intelligent automation, etc. We are now diving into ‘Account-Based Marketing’ and need to generate leads based on ABM strategy. @arminafareed

Currently, technology and B2B manufactured goods. @heyglenns

SaaS (Software as as Service), a flooring company, and a solicitor. But mainly SaaS! @marketingsoph

We do Lead-Gen for a bunch of verticals: therapy, assisted living, rehab, insurance, mold remediation, etc. There isn’t much convo about Lead-Gen on Twitter, love this topic! @MenachemAni

Small Business Financing – Our system connects small business owners with lenders and banks without having to pull credit in the initial process. Love the ride and can’t believe how complex lead gen is. @sonofgorkhali

(sorry I’m late) I am presently doing lead gen for fortune 25, 100, 500, and 1,000 companies to help them find qualified candidates for any and all job openings they have. @JeremyKrantz

Q2: Which advertising platform(s) are you currently using for you lead gen PPC? Does it vary at all by industry?

Omni of course! Mainly Google, Microsoft, Meta properties, and lots of awareness media. @JuliaVyse

Good ole G Ads, Microsoft Ads, I’ll throw in YouTube as well, even though it’s part of the G Ads platform. @KurtHenninger

LinkedIn is a platform that’s common to all but 1 of our clients. In past, there’s also been a bit of Twitter, Quora for leadgen. @heyglenns

Mainly using Google Ads, with some Microsoft Advertising and LinkedIn Ads mixed in as well. Doesn’t vary as much by industry (always down to test a new platform), but mostly depends on if the client has enough budget & it’s in our scope of work. @adclarke10

I am heavily in Google Ads with some Mircosoft Ads at the moment. Always working to expand. Been talking LinkedIn, Twitter and Quora for a while, but getting green light is SLOW right now. @NeptuneMoon

Google Search and LinkedIn. @arminafareed

I do advertising on Google Ads, where most of the budget is spent, followed by LinkedIn, Instagram, Bing, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, and Capterra. In the recent past, we also used to advertise on Quora and Reddit, but due to low performance we decided to pause ads. @DianaAlinaAldea

Currently, most of my lead gen is on Google Ads. However, I have some on LinkedIn and FB/IG too. It does vary by industry. I’ve found finance, healthcare and similar industries work on LinkedIn, but construction, B2C and others don’t. @HarrisonJHepp

Google Ads with a hit of Microsoft Ads. In terms of non-paid, there’s a lot of push for SEO & Content as well @AmaliaEFowler

Omni 4 Life! There is no one channel really anymore. We try and test them all and put the $$ where we see the best returns. LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are the big ones though. @lchasse

Generally do not do other platforms with my clients. Especially not Meta with the budgets / industries I work with. @AmaliaEFowler

A2: Varies by industry but have campaigns on Google, bing, youtube, LinkedIn, facebook. @selley2134

For SaaS clients it is usually both Google & Microsoft, with SaaS specific platforms such as Capterra and G2 added to the mix too. @em_victress also covers LinkedIn for a lot of our SaaS clients too. @marketingsoph

Mostly Google + Microsoft Search with Facebook layered on top of it. Been testing Performance Max here as well. @MenachemAni

For our non SaaS clients they mainly stick to Google Ads and Facebook. @marketingsoph

Our max spend is with Google, but we are spread out on almost all channels. @MenachemAni

Really runs the gamut — primarily Google Search and LinkedIn, but I’ve had a ton of success recently with Meta Lead Forms (go figure) in the healthcare + recruiting space. @DigitalSamIAm

Q3: Which platforms are having the most success for your lead gen PPC efforts currently? Is this different from where you have found success in the past?

Depending on your definition of success, Google Search if we are looking at lead quality & volume. Although I’ve found across the board with TargetCPA these days my CPCs are becoming almost unmanageable, so I’ve gone back to max clicks on occasion. @AmaliaEFowler

Aside from our in-house tool that does programmatic-based job advertising, Google Ads has been the 2nd best performer for us following by MSFT Ads. @JeremyKrantz

Success has a very different definition for us. Our success may not be a success for our platforms and may not translate to success for our users. We have positive reviews & experiences when people come from Search and targeted LAL social / display audience. @sonofgorkhali

Google, Bing & Linkedin (depends on ad type – lead ads have been good recently) typically do the best in terms of CPA but Google always has the upper hand in terms of volume. Facebook has been terrible recently. @selley2134

Search is definitely it for us – but again, awareness media will get people searching. Outside of Google and Microsoft, Twitter does quite well for B2B leads, and Instagram did very well in terms of travel leads. @JuliaVyse

Google has always been the best converter, but Microsoft has been quickly gaining much more traction over the past 6-8 months. I’m glad to see this shift for our clients, as the conversions are typically much cheaper and have a higher lead to sale rate. @marketingsoph

Google Ads as it’s the quickest and most efficient to scale with multi-location lead generation. @KurtHenninger

Google Ads has consistently been the top-performer for several years now. Microsoft has done well too, especially in terms of CPA because it’s generally less expensive than Google. LinkedIn is a mixed bag (but remarketing has been best). @adclarke10

Very tough one as it seems to vary quite a bit. With the right creative, it really can be any platform. Google still has the “best” though if you are looking for volume + quality of leads. The other platforms just cannot scale like Google can today. @lchasse

A lot of my clients offer emergency services so part of the game is getting people to know who they want to call in an emergency, before the emergency, while capturing others during their emergent search.  @AmaliaEFowler

Most of the success I am seeing in lead gen right now is on Google Ads. The other platforms work well here and there, but most don’t hold up against Google Ads. @HarrisonJHepp

Google Ads has been a bit all over the place for the lead gen accounts I work on over the past year. It has the most volume, so it ends up being the top source of PPC leads. Microsoft, when it hits, is great too. @NeptuneMoon

I see the most success (referring to leads generated, and cost/lead) on Google Ads, more specifically on Display & Discovery Remarketing, Search, even on Performance Max, and the least on Video. @DianaAlinaAldea

Worth mentioning here that search (Google & Microsoft) are capturing demand -people only see search ads when they essentially ask for them. Other networks, not same dynamic. So criteria should be different in terms of “success”. @NeptuneMoon

Next best performing channel for our SaaS is Instagram. In the past remarketing on this platform rocked for us. Now we barely see the same performance. But we good performance, though on various static ads and on Reels, with interest-related targeting. @DianaAlinaAldea

LinkedIn also performs great for us, especially on retargeting and for gathering leads. On the 4th and 5th places are Bing and, surprisingly, or not Pinterest. @DianaAlinaAldea

Always been Google Search when compared to LinkedIn but this does not mean Google Ads does a good job for B2B advertisers! LinkedIn needs to up its game by positioning the platform as a problem-solver for b2b pain points than just hiring & recruiting. @arminafareed

Q4: What is your biggest challenge in lead gen PPC right now? Has it changed in the last 6 to 12 months?

One acronym: CPC. @AmaliaEFowler

Conversion volume. These hugely smart algorithms cannot deal with less than 30 a month. that’s nOT hOw LeAdS work. @JuliaVyse

The biggest change is the constant lack of transparency in any and all automated bidding / features (hello RSA, I’m looking at you) It feels like we advertisers have less and less control and fewer & fewer insights into what is happening and why things are happening. @JeremyKrantz

Conversion volume. These hugely smart algorithms cannot deal with less than 30 a month. that’s nOT hOw LeAdS work! @JuliaVyse

Automation and machine learning STRUGGLES with low conversion volume campaigns/accounts. It just does.  @NeptuneMoon

Not a challenge as it is a constant pull and push. That is the nature of the job, but sometimes people do not have the patience to let the time decay mature the lead is frustrating as hell. @sonofgorkhali

For SaaS I’d say it’s the increase in competition. Whilst it’s to be expected as the industry continues to grow (rapidly), clients who have been advertising for a while struggle be okay with the increase in CPC & CPA @marketingsoph

CPCs. They are up or seem to be up on every platform. So clients are paying more for every lead. @selley2134

Automation and targeting. As audiences are going away slowly, targeting is becoming more dependent on the algo which is not as good for lead gen as it is for ecom. @lchasse

More & more automation, with less & less insight. Ad copy analysis in particular is a tough change with ETAs being sunset. The expansion of close variant keyword matching is another big one. @adclarke10

Trying to balance performance and automation is a huge challenge right now. Especially on smaller budgets automation can really take off on an account and hurt performance. Manual bidding is tough as well though. @HarrisonJHepp

Q5: Have you tried anything new lately or are you wanting to try anything new for your lead gen PPC accounts?

We plan on testing DV360 and Spotify in the next quarter. @DianaAlinaAldea

Performance Max is the main one – we’re seeing good results for a B2C lead gen client so I’m intrigued about testing it in other accounts now (including B2B). Also leaning into more campaign/ad group consolidation to account for the changes in matching. @adclarke10

We’ve also seen good results on Spotify for an ecommerce client, so I would love to be able to test podcast targeting for B2B and lead gen. @adclarke10

I’d love to do some type of video advertising for my lead gen clients. Am not holding my breath though! I’d be happy if they get onto/back onto other platforms besides just search at this point. @NeptuneMoon

We’re coaxing them, one by one, to try short videos. @heyglenns

Not testing anything major at the moment because there have been so many changes in Google. Considering running some PMax tests for lead gen, but have heard a lot of bad stories there! @HarrisonJHepp

Quora Expansion – Worried about quality from this expansion. @sonofgorkhali

Trying to get my clients to look more into demand generation via Video campaigns and ad opportunities on specific sites that their target audience use. @marketingsoph

PPCChat Participants

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