Improving Lead Quality Using CRM Keyword Tracking

A common misconception I hear in the PPC Industry is that “lead quality is out of our hands”. Now there is no disagreement that you can procure 100% perfect leads, but the following optimisations can certainly improve your paid search accounts.

Applicable with most common CRM’s including Salesforce, Creatio and NetSuite, is the ability to track the campaign, ad group and keyword triggered when the user successfully submitted a lead.

The Setup

In the keyword final URL section, you can add UTM parameters to define the above qualitative data. This sounds intimidating but there is a timesaving tool that makes this process a breeze.

Simply enter the designated data and copy the link provided by the URL builder. I personally define the source as PPC, the campaign as your selected ads campaign and the term is the keyword in use.

Below is an example for tracking a keyword for ourselves of a paid media campaign.

https://embryo.com/ppc-manchester/?utm_source=PPC&utm_medium=Manchester&utm_term=PPC Agency Manchester

This would then report the keyword driving the successful enquiry as ‘PPC Agency Manchester’.

The Benefit

Now you’re probably asking, how will this allow me to improve my lead quality?

With this data implemented into your account, you will now be able to breakdown your keyword performance on a more granular level, allowing you to not only see the lead generation in your ads account but which keywords are resulting in the most converted leads.

You may identify terms with above-average cost-per-leads, but they are converting into conversions 50% of the time. This will allow you to go one step deeper into the PPC account and have keyword based return on investment data in a lead generation account.

Furthermore, you can have the other end of the scale, a keyword generating a large number of leads, however, the quality is unpredictable and results in very poor conversion rates. You can then react to this data and optimise the account to push terms generating more conversions.

The Effect

Allowing for this additional insight into your optimisation is like opening up a small heaven gate (queue the scene from the film This Is the End).

You will be able to more accurately identify the ‘hero terms’ in your PPC account and grow your performance on a more granular level. You will then be able to push higher volumes of leads to the performing keywords in your account.

This meaning, the terms driving a higher conversion rate or lead quality, you can push and drive more traffic to, which in turn can improve the accounts overall lead quality.

If you’re wondering, yes that is the backstreet boys.

Setbacks

This may seem like a daunting task if you have hundreds or thousands of keywords. However, there is a workaround using a bulk generator sheet I have created –

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13srjFO8SFH8pWzasR4y7qAin48oFtkY9a4bnFHkbEfM/edit?usp=sharing

Simply enter your own data and the sheet will bulk create your UTM parameters quickly, saving you a headache and a lot of time.

Also, I cannot emphasise this enough, check the links work! Do not make anything live with a broken UTM parameter. Otherwise, you will send users to a 404 page and do the reverse effect of this optimisation and implode your account.

Believe me, I made this mistake myself a while ago.

Summary

There is no reason not to track your keywords at a CRM level, you will improve your account insights and also be able to push the most important metric for any business, return on investment.

This can be great for insights on your existing account and also testing, introducing new keywords that are tagged you will be able to instantly analyse the effect had.

The passing comment that “the lead quality is out of our hands once we have generated a lead” is a pet peeve of mine and hopefully, with this method, you also will reap the benefits of optimising your lead quality.