CRO Best Practices – Clicks but No Leads: How to Solve the Problem

Are your PPC campaigns getting lots of clicks but no conversions? That’s a common problem – you’re not alone! Believe it or not, but the average conversion rate on the Google Search Network is less than 2%.

Thankfully, your campaigns are not doomed. The good news is that there are plenty of solutions available to remedy the problem of getting no leads.

The bad news is that it takes time, patience, and practice to turn things around. However, if you’re prepared to put in the work, then the issue of no leads is no problem!

Read on to find out where you’re going wrong, and how you can put it right.

Factors that Impact Conversion

If you’re getting no conversions, it can be a frustrating situation to figure out. Your chances of conversion depend on several factors:

The Customer’s Motivations

• Where are your customers?
• What are their pain points?
• What services or products are they considering?

Value Proposition & Incentive

• What value does your product/service offer?
• How does that value relate to the customer’s desires?
• How does your product/service compare to your competitors? What makes yours unique?

Friction & Anxiety

Prospective customers will ask questions like:

• Will this solve my problem?
• How much will it cost in the end, and will I get the benefit?
• What if it doesn’t work out?

As doubts about the value and benefits of your product arise in your prospect’s mind, it impacts the chances of conversion. This is one of the biggest reasons PPC campaigns generate a lot of clicks but no leads, and ultimately, no conversions.

So, what can you do to combat this issue?

13 PPC Solutions When You Have No Leads and No Conversions

There are a plethora of reasons for a marketing funnel failing to deliver a good return on investment (ROI), but all the reasons boil down to the same problem:

There is friction in the funnel. Instead of offering a seamless customer journey, that friction deters users from converting.

Here are 13 aspects you must focus on to create a smoother marketing funnel, which will help you generate more leads:

1. Ad Creative
2. Ad Relevance
3. Landing Page Experience
4. Keyword Selection
5. Negative Keywords
6. Ad Groups
7. Remarketing Strategies
8. Ad Extensions
9. Compelling Offers
10. Pricing
11. Free Shipping
12. Exit Intent
13. Click Fraud

Let’s explore each one.

1. Ad Creative

If your ads generate no leads, the first port of call is your ad creative. The problem may simply be that your ad is not interesting or attractive to your target audience. If they don’t like the look of your ad, they will have doubts about continuing down your funnel.

Think about the following:

• What does your product/service do?
• Who are your potential customers?
• What value can you offer?
• What makes your advertisement different?

Your ad should make a promise to potential customers that you can deliver the solutions they need. This promise should be clear, concise, and compelling so that it drives quality traffic to your landing page.

2. Ad Relevance

Speaking of quality traffic, you can only get that when your ad is genuinely relevant to the people who see your ads. By targeting the wrong audience, you’ll attract clicks, but no leads because the people who click will suddenly realize your offer isn’t for them.

Imagine you sell men’s watches for young men. It makes sense to hone your targeting to millennial men who shop online. If you display ads to older men or women, you may end up with clicks but no leads.

Take these steps to get your audience targeting right:

•  Create audience personas
• Use data from Google Ads and Google Analytics to learn more about site visitors’ behavior
• Track the user’s journey to your website

Over time, you can refine your targeting by age, demographics, interests, and geographic location so that you offer your products/services to the most relevant audience.

3. Landing Page Experience

The click is just the beginning. If your landing page experience isn’t streamlined, then the issue of no leads and no conversions is no surprise.

Think about these factors:

• Context/Alignment – Your landing page should align with your ad – and user intent. If your ad is about menswear, but your landing page shows women’s wear, people will leave.
• User-friendly Interface – People expect smooth and simple websites. A complicated layout that lacks categories, clear information and easy navigation will only frustrate prospects.
• Loading Speed – A slow loading page is a fast track to no conversions.
• Responsiveness – This is the mobile age. Make sure your landing page is flawless across all devices, so people can seamlessly make the omnichannel customer journey from desktop to tablet to smartphone. If your site fails on this point, get it sorted or get used to having no leads.
• Live Chat – With chatbot use on the rise, there is a growing expectation for better customer service. Offering live chat can have a great impact on your conversion rates.

4. Keyword Selection

Have you optimized your landing pages, but still get no conversions from your keywords? This is a tricky one, but it can be cured.

Sometimes, seemingly high-value keywords generate no leads because, while they have great search volume, they lack buying intent. By basing your PPC campaigns and content on keywords that have higher buying intent, you attract traffic that is more likely to convert.

For example, a doctor offering homeopathic treatment for diabetes may get no leads and no conversions if her ads just target the keyword diabetes.  Instead, if she focuses on targeted long-tail keywords, such as diabetes treatment or homeopathic diabetes treatment, the people who click her ads will have higher buying intent.

Keep these tips in mind when selecting keywords:

• Ensure your keywords relate to your ad and landing page
•  Use Google Autocomplete and Answer the Public to discover keywords and phrases that your prospects use to describe your products or services

5. Negative Keywords

If your campaign is getting clicks but no conversions, you should work on improving your negative keywords list. Negative keywords act as filters, ensuring you don’t attract clicks from users who are searching for something else unrelated to your offer.

As you add more terms to your negative keyword list, you exclude unqualified traffic and reduce your wasted spend on irrelevant clicks. This has the added benefit of reducing your average Cost per Click (Avg CPC), and, consequentially, it increases your ROI.

Learn More: Effective Use of Negative Keywords in Google Ads Campaigns

6. Ad Groups

In affiliate marketing, many people make the mistake of adding too many keywords into a single ad group. As a result, when users search for something specific, like a ‘woman’s black dress,’ they may end up on a related landing page for ‘women’s dresses.’

It’s a smart move to group top-performing keywords together, but only if you create specific ads and landing pages for each keyword group.

Alternatively, you can try either of these:

• A single keyword ad group (SKAG) to channel targeted traffic towards a single solution.
• A single theme ad group (STAG) if you have multiple keywords with common meanings and shared an interest.
• A single product ad group (SPAG) if you have multiple products under one brand and you have different brands as well.
• Match Type mirroring, each ad group having only terms of one match type.
• Alpha grouping by narrow keyword theme that delivers quality traffic.
• Beta Groups that use broad match keywords which will be related search terms.

7. Remarketing Strategies

Remarketing is an excellent tactic to target previous customers and site visitors with an ad tailored to their interests. Done right, it is an effective solution when you are getting no conversions.

Here are some factors to think about with remarketing:

• Target Audience – We recommend you use the “Google Ads optimized list” to reach website visitors, app users, and other audience sources.
• Similar audiences – Targeting ‘Similar Audiences’ enables you to serve ads to people that have shared characteristics with the people on your existing remarketing lists.
• Auto-targeting – By default, Display Network campaigns use conservative auto-targeting, which shows your ads to audiences similar to your current target audience. With aggressive auto-targeting, you can extend your reach.
• Dynamic remarketing – The Google Ads product suggestion engine can create ad layouts that are optimized for your previous site visitors, depending on which products and services they viewed.
• Efficient Price – You can use Google’s auction for free, taking advantage of the automated, real-time bidding to create high-performing remarketing campaigns.

8. Ad Extensions

According to Google, Ad extensions can increase click through rate (CTR) by 10%, and call extensions can boost conversions by 10%. Before you go gung-ho with extensions, make sure they:

• Are relevant
• Add value to the user
• Enhance the user experience

For instance, you might use an extension to add your business address and contact number when you are targeting a local audience.

You can include a lot with other extension formats, such as:

• A Map
• Product images, titles, and prices
• Link to specific site pages
• Click-to-call phone numbers
• Business’ seller ratings

9. Compelling Offers

Quite often, you get no leads and no conversions because your offer isn’t good enough. You must stand out from the competition.

Here are a few tips:

• If you have a similar product to your competitor, frame it in a unique way.
• Use product splintering to engage more leads by offering specific aspects of your product or service at a lower cost.
• Try cross-selling and personalized product recommendations to nurture leads, and encourage repeat business.

10. Pricing

Here’s something not everyone knows:

Pricing is psychological.

Clever marketers know this – better yet, they know how to leverage it. Here are several psychological pricing techniques that can help you improve your conversion rates:

• Instead of rounding up your prices, set them with a ‘9’ at the end (i.e., $9.99)
• Ensure your prices only have a few syllables when read
• Use product bundling
• Use Flash Sales to convey an exclusive and urgent nature to your promotions
• Offer discounts to attract more customers
• Run BOGOF promotions (Buy one, get one free). People love free stuff!

11. Free Shipping

One surefire way of killing your hopes of conversion is to charge a lot for shipping. Nowadays, with the prevalence of drop shippers and e-commerce brands, people don’t feel the need to pay high shipping rates.

This is another psychological strategy, as you can get away with slightly higher product prices if you offer free shipping.

12. Exit Intent

Sometimes, a timely offer can be all that’s needed to convince someone to become a customer. In online marketing, you can use exit-intent pop-ups to make dynamic offers just before your site visitor leaves your website.

Exit-intent pop-ups have several great benefits:

• You can split-test several exit pop-ups to identify which one works best
• You can trigger them to activate after several seconds, or when the user clicks or scrolls
• You can add custom creatives to your pop-ups, like a GIF or video
• You can target specific audience segments, including returning visitors, or people in a particular location
• You have 100% control over how often a user sees your pop-up, whether it’s once a day, once a week, etc.

This tactical approach targets users who have been on your site for a while without taking action and the goal of these pop-ups is to persuade them to convert.

13. Click Fraud

Google is a sophisticated system, and it continues to get smarter. However, some unscrupulous individuals attempt to play the system through a black-hat technique known as click fraud.

Advertisers can use click fraud to sabotage their competitor’s PPC campaign, using fraudulent clicks to drive up their costs. Another method is when ad publishers click on their own ads to generate higher revenues.

If you suspect you might be getting some invalid clicks, you can consider the following factors:

• IP address – Be wary of multiple hits from the same IP address, or a lot of clicks from a location where you don’t offer your products or services.
• Click timestamp – Check when the action was made to see if the clicks are in the typical timeframe you expect to receive them.
• Action timestamp – This is linked to the click timestamp so that you can check the time difference.
• User-agent – This lets you determine whether someone on a specific IP is the same user.

While Google is good at identifying click fraud, you should report any suspicious activity as this will help you refine your traffic, making sure you only get genuine, valid clicks.

Wrap Up

So, there you have the vital aspects of your PPC campaign that you should inspect when you have clicks but no leads.

Take your time to go through your campaign and assess each area. With careful consideration and ongoing optimization, it won’t be long before you get more leads – and more conversions.

Learn More: Essential CRO Knowledge for PPC Managers: Part I