Lead Generation from Clutch, GoodFirms, and Designrush for IT companies with the help of Google Ads

How to get a lead in a highly-competitive niche for $2-9? 

The customer: one of the biggest product design and branding agencies in Ukraine. They work with social businesses, specialize in digital products, brand strategy and communications. Their clients are businesses that work with financial, logistical, healthcare, educational, and entertainment digital solutions. They are in the top four design agencies according to Clutch.

The niche: digital product design and branding.

The task: to generate leads in conditions of a limited budget and a high cost-per-click.

Potential issues: it is hard to forecast if this kind of advertising will work. Which audiences should we target? Which ones to restrict? Are we risking to drain the budget without achieving any results?

Project period: August — October 2022

Clutch is a global platform that unites businesses and encourages collaboration between companies around the globe. Verified customer feedback is an integral part of the platform's work. Clutch analysts use feedback to identify market leaders and create unbiased ratings.

Clutch uses its own framework, Leader Matrix, which helps evaluate each company both in terms of its expertise and the ability to deliver results that meet customer expectations.

According to a recent study, 65% of Clutch visitors get on their website from Google and Bing.

But in practice, most of the directories that drive targeted traffic do not bring a lot of target leads. The average conversion rate is 1-4%.

How to find quality placements for additional lead generation in the IT sector?

From our practical experience, here are some reliable placements:

  • goodfirms.co 
  • clutch.co 
  • itfirms.co 
  • businessofapps.com
  • extract.co 
  • thinkmobiles.com
  • upcity.com 
  • appfutura.com

… and some promising market newbies:

  • skilled.co
  • wadline.com
  • greatagencies.com 
  • topappfirms.com

Case description

  • Search campaign. We launched a search advertising campaign targeted at the USA, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain, which was marked by intense competition and high customer acquisition costs.

At the same time, we were running a remarketing media campaign focused on former site visitors, with an average conversion cost of about $12.

  1. Clutch audience for remarketing. Having consulted the client, we decided to look for additional ways to attract customers via remarketing targeting.

The company has dynamic professional accounts on Clutch and other placements, and these pages are visited by loyal, interested customers. As an experiment, we decided to try to work with them.

In Google Analytics, we created an audience of the company’s Clutch account visitors from the countries targeted by the client, and restricted visitors from Ukraine

  • Audience of visitors over the last 90 days:

Using the same principle, we created audiences of visitors for Designrush, Goodfirms, and Manifest. Membership duration was set for the last 90 days.

We launched a separate remarketing media campaign in the Google Ads account, with Maximize Clicks as the starting bidding strategy and a maximum CPC bid limit of $2.

  • we produced engaging creative and offers:

Results after the campaign’s machine learning (the first 14 days):

  • the average cost per lead from Clutch was $9.87
  • the cost per conversion from the rest of the audience was $19.13

We decided to focus on the Clutch audience and continue experimenting with it.

At the end of the experimental period, we formed a Look-a-like audience from Clutch.

Results after the first 14 days of work:

  • 19 conversions from potential leads for $2.17

Conclusions and recommendations

Clutch and other placements are an efficient way to attract new leads and encourage visitors to take a meaningful action on your website. A well-thought-out advertising campaign and audience segmentation allow you to direct a new flow of targeted traffic to the website at a relatively low advertising budget and cost-per-clicks.

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