A Meaningful Conversion
Google Ads is very goal-oriented. Tell it what success looks like, and it will work hard to find more of it. The problem is that many businesses accidentally teach Google the wrong lesson.
While auditing a new client’s account, we discovered that every phone call was being counted as a conversion, even calls that lasted only a few seconds. When we asked the client what actually constituted a quality conversion, conversations with prospects that are likely to convert lasted at least four minutes.
That may not sound like a big deal, but it has enormous implications. If Google is rewarded for generating 20-second phone calls, it will find more people who make 20-second phone calls. Unfortunately, those aren’t people who are likely to become customers.
Instead of optimizing for real sales opportunities, the campaign begins optimizing for activity.
Teaching Google What Matters
We’ve seen the same principle play out with another client: a CPR training company that provides on-site training for organizations. They don’t offer regular classes for individuals. Their ideal customer is a business looking to train employees on site.
When we started working together, nearly half of their “conversions” were individuals looking for a class. The previous agency had told them this was simply the cost of doing business on Google Ads. And that makes sense if you are just sending them to your website.
The problem was that Google couldn’t tell the difference between a valuable lead and an irrelevant one. Both were being counted as conversions. So we built a landing page that helped sort prospects.
When visitors clicked “Get a Quote,” they were presented with two options:
- On-Site Class
- Class for an Individual
People interested in on-site training were directed to the standard lead form and counted as conversions when they completed it. Individuals looking for classes were directed to a different page showing the limited classes available to them. Even if they completed that form, they were not counted as conversions.
This allowed Google to learn something it had never been taught before:
An organization training request is valuable. An individual class inquiry is not.
Better Leads Beat More Leads
The result was dramatic: over the course of six months, the percentage of conversions coming from individuals dropped from 50% to less than 10%. While the cost per lead increased slightly, the cost per marketing-qualified lead (MQL) dropped significantly.
We stopped optimizing for more conversions and started optimizing for meaningful conversions. Today, 90% of their leads are the type of leads they actually want.
What Are You Teaching Google?
One of the first questions we ask new clients is:
“How do you know when a lead is a good lead?”
The answer is rarely as simple as a form submission or a phone call. If your campaigns are optimized around leads that don’t correlate with revenue, Google will faithfully deliver more of them.
The real opportunity is to identify the actions that signal genuine buying intent and train Google to find more people like those prospects. In Google Ads, you don’t get more of what you want, you get more of what you measure.
What do you want more of?
