Have you ever heard the expression “Tire-kicking”? Its something we all do when we are shopping around for things we’re interested in. We use this natural sense of weariness before committing to something. The same mentality can be applied to our target audience’s behavior when finding our Google Ads.
Lead Gen and Google Ad Rank

Lead generation is one of the main goals of online advertising.  It is the potential lead to a sale or other desired outcome, what all businesses strive for. So if were all after lead gen, why wouldn’t we want to have the top ad on a SERP? After all, we would be the first hit anyone see’s, meaning we’ll received the most traffic to our sites. The fact that having the top ad rank will almost guarantee the most traffic for that keyword is undeniable, but this best serves us if we are aiming to brand our product or service, not for generating quality leads.

So back to the point of tire kicking – let’s pretend we bid on the keyword that’s going to be undoubtedly expensive, like “insurance”. Sure we can pay top dollar for top rank, but if someone is searching for keyword like insurance, they will for sure be shopping around.

Making the Conversion

In the case of insurance, we need to account for our natural behavior to tire kick. This is where we can use strategic ad positioning to truly yield a maximum ROI. By doing the research and determining what is the perfect position where shoppers become buyers, we can turn leads into conversions.

When it comes to expensive keywords, we have to use the tire kicker mentality if we are to maximize our ROI. Although it may result in less traffic to our sites, using our ad dollars strategically could generate higher conversions in our campaigns.

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Jon Kaspszak

Jon is an avid digital marketer and works in software marketing. You can find him on LinkedIn. He would love to hear from you!