As a Premier Google Partner, EverConnect was invited to attend Google’s Think Lead Gen conference, part of their "Think with Google" series, which focuses on sharing data-driven insights and strategies to help businesses succeed online. This event is tailored for marketers and business owners looking to improve their lead generation efforts using Google’s powerful digital tools. The lead generation space, especially in the home services vertical, is evolving rapidly as factors like fluctuations in demand, competition, and regulatory changes impact the industry, so we made it a priority to hear directly from one of the most influential players in the space.
Here are the top three themes we took away from the conference:
1. Quality Over Quantity
This was the overarching theme of the conference. In fact, Anders Mortensen, Google’s Head of Lead Gen, opened with, “…Today we’re going to tell you to get fewer leads…” immediately setting the tone for the day that we would be shifting the conversation to quality. It’s crucial to track and assign value to each step in your customer journey, from the initial lead to the final sale. This helps businesses align their marketing efforts with key objectives, focusing on driving high-value conversions rather than just lead volume. As pressure from competition, decreased demand, and the third-party aggregator space transforms, the cost per lead is not going down any time soon. Therefore, it's more important than ever to know which leads are converting into sales.
2. Leveraging First-Party Data
This point complements point #1 - While understanding the sales-level impact of your media investment is important, integrating both online and offline first-party data back into your media campaigns provides a comprehensive view of the customer journey. This integration strengthens your ability to optimize campaigns to drive more sales instead of just raw leads. Google continues to invest in tools like Google Ads Data Manger to make these integrations easier.
3. Maximizing AI for Lead Generation
You can’t attend a Google conference without discussing AI. We often take for granted how long we’ve been leveraging AI in our media channels because it hasn't been as shiny as some of the newer, more visible developments (e.g., conversational AI, Gemini, etc.). Google AI tools, such as broad match, Performance Max, and Smart Bidding, have been around for years to enhance campaign reach and conversion rates by connecting with high-value prospects. AI ties together points one and two by helping to find more customers and drive sales. It’s also worth mentioning something we heard consistently throughout the day from advertisers in the lead gen space: non-search products like Performance Max and Demand Generation are effective in both filling the funnel and maximizing low-funnel opportunities. Again, it all comes back to the data being fed in.
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