In my 20 years or so as the owner of an agency I’d say that we’ve received about ZERO meaningful leads whenever we’ve used Google Ads. They can be a cheap form of marketing however for localized brand building to some extent however.
That said, much depends on your audience and the nature of their search criteria, as well as your service offering. Almost anyone searching for website design on the Goog will likely be cheap, a competitor, or some sort of DIY, working from Mom’s basement kind of person.
I’d agree with Kyle above with regards to exact match and to the idea of offering something of value vs hoping someone is looking for a website next week.
Knowing the audience you are wanting to attract and where they are in the buying cycle is critical to getting both the right people at the right time and lowering your cost and the time/resources required for client acquisition.
With my new agency we are going very narrow in a few select markets, starting local and widening our catchment area as we see traction. We only take on 1 client in an industry within a specific geographic radius so the selectivity of our targets is by design.
We get, and have always gotten more business from direct cold calling than any online advertising. 80% of our work comes from client referrals which almost all started from existing relationships, which came from picking up the phone and having a conversation.
We’ve also found Google Maps to be highly productive on the cold call front. Find an area with your target customers and hit a bunch hard and fast like special opps. Nobody does cold calls any longer so it’s pretty easy to find work.
Have fun!
