James Dooley: Hi, so I've got Dan Grant here, um, who's a director within Flat Rank and Promo, and today's video is about PPC lead generation so companies that are generating leads via pay-per-click advertising in Google search. So Dan, what's your initial thoughts on um PPC lead generation?
Dan Grant: Yeah, so PPC obviously is something that a lot of companies do use. Uh, we've obviously dabbled in it ourselves in certain segments previously in the past. It's something that can really work very well. Obviously, it's not one of those where you know, you kind of not looking like you're going to get a lot lot of return on investment on it. You can really, you know, get quite a lot of money from doing PPC and doing it the right way. Um, my thing with PPC and what I've always thought though is you, you do have to know what you're doing to actually do the keyword research initially to actually rank for the right, you know, the right things. Uh, you want to actually also ensure that you've got enough budget because some niches obviously require a bit more. And one of the issues I've also found with it as well is you don't really get kind of a guarantee, you know, that you're actually going to convert the lead to begin with. So even though you might be getting this consistent flow of lead in those leads might be low quality. You might not be actually converting on your website on your end. So there's several ways you can trip up with PPC, I think, but you know, by and large, if you do it properly, it can be quite good.
James Dooley: Yeah, how do you, what do you think about it?
James Dooley: Yeah, I mean obviously we used to do quite a lot of um PPC lead generation and we still do it for many, many niches obviously throughout the UK. My my main issue is there's certain things like click fraud so when people are clicking on your, or it can be competitors clicking on your landing page and you're having to pay for every single click that someone does on onto your website, so that's a bit annoying and that frustrates me a little bit with regards to PPC lead generation like the costs involved in it. Like you said, um, there's certain companies that do PPC leads and you've got to pay for um every single lead whether they convert or don't convert. Some companies, um, the better companies that would, if it came through as being the telephone number is 999 and the name is Donald Duck, they'll refund that type of lead in there. But the point is that lead generation companies still had to pay for those clicks. Then you've got certain issues with regards to how good the conversion rate optimization is of the website. So not only do you need to be good at keyword research, you also need to make certain that you're messaging on your website and your contact form and your trust signals is good enough to get people to kind of come from clicking through to the page to actually converting into an inquiry and then maybe a percentage of those inquiries that you generate actually do convert. Um, the better kind of PPC agencies will kind of go after the better converting keywords and know what to go for. But overall, I think it's very high risk myself, um, as a kind of platform to be using Google AdWords as a sole lead generation kind of approach.
Dan Grant: Yeah, um, how do you think that um PPC lead generation kind of compare to know the new model that we've moved to now, that's a a pay on performance. Obviously very risky for us as an agency, but what's your feedback from what the clients have said on the pay per performance lead generation?
James Dooley: Yeah, I think the initial feedback that you get originally before you actually get the client on is it's a bit too good to be true. They look at the model and they say, you know, how can I generate leads to my website and not have, you know, any risk at all involved, not pay for the leads, you know, and only pay when they're converted? A lot of the times, I think these companies are really used to having to pay something up front for the lead, whether it's PPC or whether it's, you know, just paying for the lead normally like you would for a normal lead generation company. They're not used to having this setup, I think, where you're able to just kind of get the leads, you know, completely free, consistent flow of leads, and it's not until they're converted that you actually have to pay for it. So I think that system works really well. It's just kind of explaining that properly to the client that look, there's no catch involved. We generate these leads, um, and the other part to it as well is we've obviously done all the work in the background. We've done the keyword research so we know we're going to rank for the right kind of, you know, phrases for them. Um, it's not going to be a position where they're getting poor quality leads aren't relevant to what they're looking for. And obviously the fact that there's no cost involved at all until they convert, it it is a bit of a no-brainer really in terms of, you know, how that model works. Um, but it's just that initial bit of explaining it to the client, I think, more so than anything.
Dan Grant: Yeah, for sure. I mean, obviously we use um pay-per-click advertising um for certain niches as part of the lead generation of what we do. Um, on the like, pay on performance or pay on conversion type lead gen now that we've moved towards, I think the main reason why as a company we've moved towards that is that we became very frustrated when we was doing um pay-per-click advertising on their website, that their website wasn't built for conversion. Um, and the leads it was generating at times they wasn't converting them because they're the wrong type of leads. And obviously we want to try to use so many different platforms like Facebook ads and SEO as well as PPC to find what might be the best platform for them for conversion. And at the end of the day, a business owner only should really care about one thing, and that's return on investment. Not how much is it per click, how much is it per impression, how much is it per lead. Realistically, the the sole purpose should, because you can get different types of quality of leads, so I could go and generate a lot of, if you're a boiler installation company, a lot of boiler repair and a lot of boiler servicing type leads. If they want boiler installation, they cost that little bit more money. So they need to understand that just paying per lead or paying per click can be very, very dangerous and risky for them. Um, and us risking that for them, it's it's allowed us to do what we're good at, which is generate leads. Um, the clients, the onboarding of the clients is a lot easier, like you said. It's a no-brainer for the company to do the pay per performance over a pay per lead and uh PPC lead generation. Um, and yeah, hopefully moving forward we can keep scaling out in certain markets. One thing I would say is that we are very selective with who we work with. Obviously, if the company um aren't good at conversion, that's going to affect us. We could generate some decent PPC leads or, on even though it is on a pay per performance, but if they don't convert them, we don't get paid. So we've got to make certain that they've got a sales team or at least someone that's going to get back in touch with each inquiry that we generate very quickly. Um, so do you find that quite a few clients that initially was asking for um PPC leads? Do you find that it's actually tricky to try to get them to convert to a pay per performance because, like you said, it's, it's, they sometimes feel it's too good to be true?
James Dooley: Yeah, I think it's that, and then also as you mentioned there, I think some people will have their ways and be setting it a little bit. They might have done PPC for, you know, eight years or so in in total and go to a PPC agency, and once they've had results from that, they might not have realized that they could have got better results elsewhere. Sometimes it's just kind of the way in business sometimes, I think people get kind of stuck in their ways and and don't want to try different things, especially, you know, if things seem a bit too good to be true with the leads. Um, and the other part of that too, as well, which I was going to mention, is if if a company is going through a PPC agency to do their PPC, a lot of the times they're going to be paying a markup for that agency to actually carry out. So if they're not doing it themselves, they're going to be paying, you know, above what they should be paying to actually have that kind of work carried out. So I I think with all of that kind of taken into account, you know, to be able to remove that cost and remove that kind of stress and just have the leads coming for free, um, it can kind of, you know, literally transform businesses as we've seen in the past with certain companies that have been struggling in the past and then we've sent them the leads over for a year or two and we've seen the big changes with it. So that's kind of what it's all about. But obviously, like you said, it's, it's an onus is on us really to make sure that the client is good enough to deal with the leads that they're actually managing the leads properly. They're giving us a report every month to say, you know, this is what we have done and haven't done, and there's just that kind of transparency between us and the client. Because if we're going to send them for free, then obviously we kind of want that in return really. And obviously want to build up that trust over time. So yeah, I think overall it can be a bit challenging to convert certain clients that maybe kind of stuck in their ways. But once they get that kind of perspective and understanding of what we do and you know how the leads work, it usually is quite simple from their onward.
Dan Grant: Yeah, for sure. So uh, viewers watching this video, let me know your thoughts. Let me know um in the comments um is PPC leads the best converting leads that you're getting at present? How does PPC leads kind of compare against Facebook ad leads or organic SEO? Are you using a current lead generation company at present? Are the PPC leads converting for you? Is it a good return on investment? Just let us know in in the um in the comment section. And if you are interested in our pay per performance setup, there's a link in the description. Check it out and see how that compares with current PPC lead generation.
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