Financial security means a lot of different things to people.
But it all comes down to quality of life.
For my parents, quality of life was feeling
that they were going to be okay once they retired.
So they asked for my help to find a financial advisor.
So after like the 18th interview, I realized this was really hard.
And if I was coming from Wall Street and struggling
to find that advisor for them,
there's probably millions of other families
that were struggling with the same pain point.
And hence, Zoe Financial is trying to solve for that pain point.
My name is Andrés Garcia-Amaya,
founder and CEO of Zoe Financial.
The curation of the financial advisors that get into our network
is really important.
The question we ask ourselves is,
would you send your parents to this financial advisor?
And if it is not a clear yes,
then that advisor does not belong in our network.
Google has not only been able to deliver
quality as we were a very young company,
but it's been able to scale with us
and actually improve conversion as we go.
So in the first half of 2021,
things were not playing out exactly as planned.
We were focused on converting users to leads
rather than seeing the whole customer journey.
We use the data that we're receiving on our side
and providing it back to Google
so that they could then find more users
like the ones that were actually buying the service.
So once we identified who the client was,
we changed our bidding strategy.
We switched to Target ROAS,
which ultimately switched the equation
from being cost effective
to finding people
that wanted to buy the service
and ultimately became more profitable for us.
As a result, by the end of 2021,
we surpassed 200% year over year growth
while being more cost effective
than we did prior to change the strategy.
So the beauty of partnering with Google
is that we're going to be able to help millions of people
accelerate their wealth in the years to come.
Thanks for joining us for our Generate Leads Summit today.
I’m Sara Wolf,
Head of our Lead Generation business here at Google.
There’s no question that we’re in a time of economic uncertainty.
The good news is that, as marketers,
there are steps you can take now
to ensure you’re delivering reliable results
while driving long-term growth.
It all comes down to getting measurement right
and optimizing your strategy
for what really matters most for your business.
The most sophisticated advertisers
who are focused on lead generation
understand what happens across
the entire user journey,
from the first click to the actual purchase
and they know how much
each step is worth to their business.
By passing this knowledge back to Google Ads,
they make their strategy more profitable.
We see that on average,
importing this first-party data into Google ads
drives a 20% lift in incremental revenue.
This process starts with what we call
the lead-to-sale journey,
the foundation to increasing lead quality
and driving bottom line sales
and that’s our focus for today.
First, we’ll outline the steps
to turn your lead gen strategy
into a profit-driver for your business
with our four-step formula
Then, we’ll show you an example of
how a lead gen business maps
the lead-to-sale journey in real time
so you can apply it to your own business.
From there,
we’ll break into personalized breakout groups
with Google product leads,
where you’ll get to ask questions directly
and hear from industry peers.
So let’s jump right in.
I oversee about 2500 customers,
whose main objective is to drive high-quality leads,
without sacrificing volume.
As I meet with customers, I often hear
their chief objective is to be “as efficient as possible”.
Sound familiar?
This is based on a metric we all know well:
Target CPA –
aka the cost you’re willing to pay to acquire a customer.
What if we could shift your business strategy
from a focus of pure efficiency
to profitability?
Unlike an ecommerce business,
the bulk of a lead gen sales cycle –
including the final transaction, happens offline.
In the past,
to compensate for those offline conversion actions
we couldn't measure, we focused on what we could,
like lead volume, or we controlled for ad spend.
Effectively, we were making decisions somewhat blindly
and treated all conversions equally.
More than ever, we know how important it is
to reach the right customer at the right time,
and Google Ads can help ensure
we’re always finding your highest-value customers
and growing business profitability.
That’s the mindset shift from marketing as a cost center
to marketing as a profit driver.
And the key?
Your first party data.
It can be your single biggest advantage,
especially in a privacy-safe world.
As consumers, we’re demanding greater control
over how our data is collected and used,
and as marketers, with third party
cookies expected to go away next year,
we have the solution for you to maintain
visibility into your ad performance.
So, how do we get there?
As more marketers have expedited their digitalization,
we’ve documented a recipe for success.
The Google Ads Growth Formula has four steps
to optimize your Ads strategy for quality leads,
bottom line sales.
Let me walk you through the steps.
In step one you map your lead-to-sale journey
and assign conversion values to each stage of the journey
This step is the focus of today’s event.
The rest of the formula depends on mapping
the lead-to-sale journey in the right way.
In step two you import your first-party data,
set up the right measurement, and bid to value.
Once you have the right foundation in place,
you’re ready to start fueling the funnel.
And finally,
you continue optimizing and testing new strategies.
Combining these ingredients together
will drive more revenue and profitability for your business.
So, let’s dive in.
Step one. Set objectives.
You know a final sale is worth more
to your business than a lead.
Let’s make sure your strategy reflects that.
Mapping your lead-to-sale journey will
help you identify which customer actions, beyond the lead,
are effectively driving more sales for your business.
Let’s look at an example. If you’re a university,
every student needs to go through a few stages.
First, they request information,
then the student completes the application,
and finally the student enrolls.
If you work backwards from the actual enrollment value
and consider your conversion rates through each stage,
you can figure out the dollar value for each conversion action.
These are the conversion values that you’ll use in Google Ads
and bid against in step two.
In the next sessions,
we’ll showcase best practices to help you
map your own lead-to-sale in the right way
and identify the conversion actions
that are most valuable to your business.
Let’s look at how we’re going to bid
towards the most valuable actions.
Step two is all about getting ready.
Your first-party data is key to this step.
You know your customer best
and that knowledge is critical to driving
incremental ROI for your business.
But not only that, your first-party data
can help you future-proof your advertising
as privacy regulations rollout.
As more browsers continue to restrict third-party cookies,
it’s important that your measurement strategy is watertight.
To achieve that, your team will need to implement
Google’s global site tag on every page of your website.
This, coupled with other privacy-safe measurement strategies
like Enhanced Conversions, will allow you to capture
the full value of your online conversions.
Our team will guide you in implementing these strategies.
Mapping your lead-to-sale journey helps you identify
all the customer actions that drive sales.
Implementing privacy-safe measurement helps you capture
how much your online conversions are worth.
Now it’s time for the critical piece of them all.
Importing your offline conversions and their values –
aka your key differentiators.
With Offline Conversion Import, or OCI,
you're able to connect your CRM into Google Ads
and then input the conversion values from the lead-to-sale journey.
OCI is privacy-safe and uses your hashed data,
and then matches the online actions with the offline data that you imported.
This allows Google Ads to provide insight
on the clicks, queries, and audience types
that ultimately lead to your valuable sales.
Now it’s time to gain insights with Automation.
Google’s automation solution can
process millions of signals in a millisecond
to calculate a probable lead and an optimal bid.
But like any algorithm,
it’s only as strong as the data you feed it.
The first-party data you’ve integrated informs Google Ads
on what your ideal customer looks like.
Using value-based bidding, or target Return On Ad Spend,
lets you optimize towards the VALUE of the sale,
not just the sale itself.
Wouldn’t you be willing to pay more for a lead
if you knew they would ultimately be more valuable to you?
We see that clients who do this,
move from marketing as a cost-center
to marketing as a profit driver
see a 14% increase in conversion value.
This shift in approach will help you:
Start optimizing towards higher value sales
and Stop spending on poor-quality leads
Step three. Take action
Now that you have a strong foundation in place,
you can build on this to scale.
Start testing value based bidding
and evaluate the impact on profitability.
From there, you have some growth levers
like the use of broad match and Dynamic Search Ads
and/or the use of Video and Discovery to fuel your high quality leads funnel.
And last but not least, it's time to evaluate your strategy
and find more opportunities for growth.
Now that you’re using automation,
your team can move away from manual tasks
to focusing on more strategic ones.
Refine your strategy, test new ones, run experiments,
and continue to look for opportunities for growth.
This is the future of lead gen.
We encourage you to keep up,
so you can stay ahead of the curve.
Hello, I’m Rodrigo De Moraes, an Account Executive here at Google,
and I help businesses grow by improving their lead generation strategy.
At this point, you’re familiar with the Google's Ads Growth Formula,
and how it helps you find your highest-value customers
to grow your business profitably.
In this section, we’ll dive deeper
into mapping the “lead-to-sale” journey.
Identifying each customer action
from the moment they click on your ad,
until they become a paying customer.
Most advertisers know the value of a final sale.
Yet, the most sophisticated marketers know the value of
every single step in the customer journey,
and they use this data to inform their digital marketing strategy.
By mapping the lead-to-sale journey,
marketers can connect their first-party data directly into Google Ads
and pair it with Google’s automation solutions
to bid towards the highest-value customers.
Advertisers that are bidding towards value,
optimizing for Return On Ad Spend,
are seeing a 15% higher conversion value.
The lead-to-sale journey is the foundation
for unlocking maximum growth,
and we’re excited to get you there.
It’s a simple process.
First, you define your primary business objective.
Then, you map the user journey,
that is, every online and offline touchpoint
that occurs between the ad click and the actual sale.
Finally, you import the conversion values
and use automated bidding to optimize
for most valuable conversion actions.
It all starts with defining your business objective.
Businesses have different goals and unique sales cycles.
The first question to ask is
what does your business want to achieve?
Usually it’s revenue or profitability.
Let’s go back to the university example that Sara walked you through.
Imagine they offer both bachelor’s and master’s degrees,
yet their main business objective this year
is to maximize revenue from masters’ programs
at or above 200% Return On Ad Spend.
Now that we understand their north star,
we can work together to set up the ads strategy
to achieve that ultimate revenue goal.
Keep your business objective in mind
as you go through the lead-to-sale exercise.
Now we dive into the lead-to-sale journey.
What happens after a user clicks on your ad?
In the university example,
their ad takes customers to the landing page,
where they can call, chat, or submit a lead form.
One way to optimize towards high-quality users
is to assign values to each stage you outline.
Think of which action is more valuable to your business.
In this case, calls are the most valuable.
What drives these differences in value? Conversion rates.
Prospects who call the university are more likely to become students
than those who chat or fill in a form.
Back to the journey. What happens after stage one?
Are you tracking what happens after the form fill?
In this example, the journey continues offline
when a potential student starts an application.
From here, there’s a standard flow.
The potential student starts an application,
submits the application, and then enrolls in the program.
Think about how long it takes someone
to go from one stage of the journey to another.
People usually take around 1-3 days
to complete the application after they contact the university.
Once this happens, the school reviews the application
before accepting the student.
Picture your own business.
If you have an internal approval process,
how long does it take to complete the sale?
Is there drop off?
There’s a 14-day delay between
the student completing their applications to when they actually enroll,
with a 25% conversion rate between those two stages.
The entire lead-to-sale journey for this university is just about 17 days.
Once you’ve mapped your own lead-to-sale journey
and identified the conversion values,
you can start importing this information into Google Ads.
This will help you differentiate your most valuable users
and optimize towards them.
In the university example, it would help them to get
more of the masters students they’re after.
How is this done?
Pass those values into Google Ads
through an offline conversion import.
Your Google account manager
will walk you through the implementation process.
It’s important to identify if you already have a CRM in place.
Your CRM already includes most of the data we’ve talked about.
Conversion rates, conversion volumes.
There are different offline conversion import setups
according to your CRM system,
and your Google team will help you identify
which of those will work best for you.
Once you’re importing your first-party data,
use value-based bidding to optimize for what matters to your business.
How do you choose the right conversion action to bid against?
Optimize towards a conversion action
that is closely aligned with your business objective.
We recommend you choose
the deepest conversion action in the lead-to-sale journey
that has more than 15 account-level conversions
in the past 28 days.
Avoid selecting multiple conversion actions
unless they are in the same stage of the funnel.
Work with your Google account manager
to align on the best conversion based on volume and time.
Now that you know how to map the lead-to-sale journey,
let’s lay out your next steps.
First, you’ll need your team to align
on your primary business objectives.
Map your user journey and assign conversion values.
Your Google account manager will guide you through.
And secure your web developer and CRM administrator
to let them oversee the data integration.
Second, you’ll need time.
Once your first-party data is imported into Google Ads,
value-based bidding needs a couple of conversion cycles
to observe, test, learn and iterate towards optimal performance.
In our university example,
it took 17 days for a lead to become a sale
we would recommend they let the system learn
for 3 conversion cycles.
Third and most important,
you’ll need commitment to prioritization.
We know there’s a lot going on, but you can feel confident
that mapping your lead-to-sale journey to integrate and activate your data
will help you achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
So, to summarize what we’ve talked about today.
The Google Ads Growth Formula, at its core,
is a simple but powerful idea.
Pair your first-party data with Google’s automation.
This will set the foundation to start consistently generating