How do I get more leads from Google Ads?

Targeting comes first, budget second. Once your targeting is good and your cost per lead is as low as it can get, a bigger budget brings in more leads. Here's how.

A conversion is the action you want someone to take, such as a phone call or a form submission. Conversion tracking tells Google when that happens, so it can learn which searches, keywords and people lead to enquiries.

Without it, Google is working blind. Make sure it's tracking the right signals: real enquiries, such as calls and form submissions, not page views, with each enquiry counted once.

If your enquiries are expensive, you can go a step further and add smaller engagement conversions, so Google learns what works sooner.

A match type controls how closely a search has to match your keyword. Exact match is the strictest. (It still covers close variations that mean the same thing.)

We only use exact match, and for budgets under about $100K a month we'd never use anything else. If you know how to do keyword research, exact match is all you need. Use phrase or broad match and you're swimming against the tide: you'll be adding negative keywords constantly and never catching up.

Choose keywords that nearly everyone typing them would want what you sell. If you run workplace first aid courses, "first aid training courses for businesses" beats "first aid training courses", because most people searching the second one aren't buying for a business.

Then check where your budget is going. Most of it should be on these high-converting keywords, not scattered across loosely related searches.

Your search terms report shows what people actually typed before clicking your ad. Look at it regularly and make sure the searches are relevant. If they're not, add them as negative keywords, which tell Google never to show your ad for those searches.

Your ad has two jobs: to make the right people click, and to deter everyone else from clicking. Put the service in headline 1 and a call to action in headline 2, such as "Get Your Quote Now". People who only wanted information won't click, and you won't pay for them.

If you're a beginner, start with only your most specific keywords. The exception is manual bidding. If you set your own bids, you can start with a range of keywords, from very specific to broader, and bid more on the specific ones and less on the broader ones. That way you only win the broad searches when they're cheap.

Otherwise, widen gradually. If your relevant keywords are showing, doing well and bringing in leads, you can start adding slightly broader ones. For example, you could move from "first aid training courses for businesses" to "first aid training courses". It's a simple step, but it's a big jump in specificity, and it shows how you go broader: one step at a time, not all at once.

Watch each new keyword. If it isn't producing enquiries, bid it down rather than removing it, and pause it if it still isn't doing well.

If your campaign isn't spending its budget, there are two common causes. No article can diagnose every case, but these are the first two to check.

You've gone too narrow. Either your keywords are too specific or your locations cover too small an area. If you can serve a wider area, widen it. If you can't, go to broader keywords, meaning ones with wider meanings.

It used to spend and has slowly stopped. If a campaign has been running a long time and has spent before, the likely culprit is a target CPA (the cost per enquiry you've told Google you want). Google has tested your keywords, found it can't hit that figure, and spends less and less. If you keep the same keywords and the same target, nothing will change, because it has already tested them.

You can wake it up in one of two ways:

• Switch to Maximise clicks.
• Keep conversion-based bidding but remove the target CPA figure.

Whichever you pick, make sure your keywords are the ones most likely to convert, or bid down on the weaker ones. Otherwise you'll waste a lot of money.

If you're running ads yourself for a service business, stick to Google Search campaigns. Those show your ad to people who are actively typing what you sell. Other campaign types, such as Display, Performance Max and Demand Gen, show ads in more places and are harder to control, and they're easier to waste money on.

The best way to bid is manually. You set the bid on each keyword yourself, based on how likely it is to turn into a lead: the more specific the keyword, the higher the bid. It matters most when your keywords differ a lot in how likely they are to convert, because you can pay more for the ones that do and less for the rest.

If that's too advanced, the simpler option is Maximise clicks. Google spends your budget to get as many clicks as it can. It has no idea which clicks become leads, so only use it with exact match keywords where you're confident that nearly everyone searching is likely to convert. You can also set a maximum cost-per-click limit on this strategy, which stops it overpaying.

If a keyword isn't doing well, bid it down. If it's really not working, pause it, or move it into its own campaign on Maximise clicks with a really low maximum bid.

Track your enquiries with the right signals. Use exact match keywords and spend most of your budget on them. Check your search terms and block the irrelevant ones. Write ads that attract the right people. Widen slowly. And stay on Google Search.