PPC For B2B: Seven Proven Tips To Conquering The B2B Landscape

Does PPC advertising work for B2B? YES! PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising gives your company the ability to generate leads and relationships with potential customers in any stage of the sales funnel. Considering, 70 percent of business to business (B2B) buyers use search engines in researching their next purchase (WebFX), PPC, specifically Google ads, presents a unique opportunity.

That being said, PPC campaigns can spend a lot of money fast with little to no return on investment. This is why it is so important to know how to execute properly and cut wasted spend.

Whether you’re a B2B e-commerce company, a SAAS company selling cloud computing software, a metal manufacturer or a commercial roofing company, your prospective clients and customers are searching for what you have to offer. When your prospects are searching, your business needs to show up, hand raised high in the air, yelling “pick me, pick me”. The reality is, if you aren’t, your competitors are.

 “61% of B2B marketers think generating high-quality leads is one of their biggest challenges” – B2B Technology Marketing Community

If you’re one of the 61% of B2B marketers that’s biggest challenge is driving leads, here is your lead generation solution. This is your guide to increasing your B2B lead generation efforts with pay per click marketing.

In this guide, we cover six topics to dominate with PPC marketing

1. Keyword Research
2. Structuring Your Campaign For Success
3. Creating Ad Copy That Sells
4. Utilize All The Ad Extensions Possible
5. Tracking & Measuring ROI
6. Creating Landing Pages That Convert
7. Catch Lost Leads & Prospects With Re-Marketing

1. KEYWORD RESEARCH

For any B2B situation, the initial research for keywords to target and knowing the competitive landscape in PPC is essential. With this research, we can gain insights on how people search for the products or services you offer. Even though you understand your market, the way a B2B prospect searches for products and services is continually evolving and is often different than imagined.

To find keywords to target, let’s start with Google’s keyword planner and good ol Google searches.

1. The Google keyword planner is a free tool from Google that presents keyword ideas, search volume estimates, and competition levels. When looking for keywords to target, you will want to have an excel or word document up to take notes on the keywords you are seeing. At the same time, you should note keywords that you see that will not be valuable to your business. We will use these later for negative keywords. This video will explain further how to use Google’s keyword planner.

2. Just Google it: If you start typing in the Google search bar you will see suggestions based on what other people have searched for that have started with the same search. Once you search, scroll to the bottom, which is where you will find more keyword suggestions.

Alternatively, other free resources such as Uber Suggest, Buzz Sumo, Answer the Public, among others, can help with recommendations on keywords to target.

Now that you have your keywords locked in, we can start thinking about the other side of the equation, negative keywords. Your negative keywords are nearly as important as the keywords you are targeting. It is essential to include a strong negative keyword list at the start of your campaign. Adding negative keywords will help reduce wasted spend and will be an ongoing process as there will be searches that you cannot plan ahead for.

Your negative keywords will be specific to the goals of your PPC campaign. When adding negative keywords there are three categories to keep in mind. These categories will help prioritize unwanted searches your targeted keywords might show up for.

Irrelevant search terms – These are searches that do not relate to your business. This could be references to pop culture and homonyms of your targeted keywords. For example, a voice over company should add negative keywords around the television show “The Voice”. Also, a construction that sells cranes should have negative keywords around or phrases that could point to cranes (bird) versus crane (construction equipment).

Unqualified search terms – These are terms that are related to your business, and could be of use, but are not the goal of the campaign at hand. These are focused around career and learning-based searches. The most common being:

• Jobs
• Careers
• Hiring
• Resume
• Classes
• Courses
• Schools
• Books

Special case terms – These are terms and phrases that are high in the funnel and typically not the searches we want to spend advertising dollars on in a pay per click model. The following examples should be reviewed on a case by case situation.

• Case study
• Guides
• White paper
• Blog
• Information
• Reviews

Again, these will not apply to every B2B company, it depends on the companies goals and budget. Never the less a strong negative keyword list will help mitigate spending your budget on unqualified search traffic and ultimately lower your cost per lead.

Now that you have your keywords in place, we can create an account structure built for success.

2. STRUCTURING YOUR CAMPAIGN FOR SUCCESS

The structure of your campaign is like a house in that, you need a great structure, foundation, and design for long term success. The structure of your campaign(s) is going to play a big part in the success of your PPC efforts. The structure will affect your quality score, which affects your cost per click, which affects your cost per lead and, ultimately, your cost per acquisition.

In this example, a B2B company wants to target the following ten keywords

1. Small business loans
2. Business line of credit
3. Loans for small businesses
4. Business loans for restaurants
5. Business credit line options
6. Best small business loans
7. Small business loans near me
8. Commercial mortgage loans
9. Loans for commercial property
10. Commercial real estate loans

These ten keywords should be split into buckets or ad groups based on their relevance to each other and the desired outcome. Each ad group is going to have different ad copy speaking to those grouped keyword and will be directed to their perspective landing pages.

The reason for this is it should help raise your quality score, which ultimately helps lower your cost per lead, meaning higher revenue margins. With a sound account structure, it’s time to create ad copy that sticks out through the competition and sells!

3. WRITING AD COPY THAT SELLS

“On average, B2B influencers do 12 searches before visiting a specific brand’s site” (Think with Google)

In B2B, the competition is high, a lot of research is performed, cost per clicks vary, and often competing with venture-backed companies with a lot of advertising dollars to spend on getting ‘free’ users. This is why your ad copy needs to stick out like Shaquille O’Neal, anywhere.  

Shaq sticks out anywhere, your ad copy needs to do the same.

As a marketer, I buy and use B2B products. Being so, when I do research I want to get to the point, I want to know what the product does, and how it can help me. B2B buyers are busy, your keywords and ad copy should help the buyer get to the question or concern they are thinking about, quickly. To stick out, you need to speak to the buyer’s pain points, guided with clear next steps and explain why you are the company they need.

Google expanded text ads allow marketers three headlines and two descriptions for ad copy. Headline one should include relevant and popular keywords you’re targeting that are relevant to the searcher. Headline two should be your call to action (schedule your demo, schedule your free estimate, etc.). Headline three could be your brand name, brand tagline or another supporting statement as to why the searcher should pick you. In your description text, you should include why your customers do business with you and end with another CTA.

4. UTILIZE ALL THE AD EXTENSIONS POSSIBLE

Speaking of ad copy, Google provides advertisers ad extensions that can help your ads take over the SERP (Search Engine Results Page), increase your accounts click-through rate (CTR), and ultimately reduce cost per acquisition. In short, utilizing ad extensions gets you more leads.

There are a number of ad extension options, but for B2B companies, the ones that will increase your Google ads ROI are the following.

Sitelink Extensions: Utilize sitelink extensions by sharing other links on your website. This could be used to showcase your blog posts, your testimonial page, product page, about us, FAQ page, anything that is helpful for the searcher is good to add.

Callout Extensions: The callout extension allows for short 25 character descriptions that are added after your description lines. These could be used to entice the searcher to take action or present additional information that makes your company stick out. Some common and effective call-outs being, Award-winning firm, Top Rated by X trusted industry experts, Free Trials Available, Google certified partner, AWS partner etc.

Structured Snippets: This extension can be used to share specific characteristics of your company. When adding structured snippets there are several headlines or topics to choose from. For B2B, the headlines you use will depend on your business. You can find the full list of headlines here. The headlines most commonly used by B2B companies are highlights, services, and brands.

Call Extension: The call extension allows someone that sees your ad to call from their mobile device without having to go to your website. This is not essential for all B2B companies, but if you want calls during office hours, this is the way to do it.

Lead Form Extensions: This extension is used as a lead form right from your text ad copy. The lead form extension is a great way to get more leads from the busy B2B executive as their information (if signed in) will auto-populate making the form very quick to fill out and submit.

All of the extensions explained above may not show up with your text ads every time. The key is to have all the options possible, so you can deploy all the tools in your toolbox when applicable.

With your ads and ad extensions in place, our focus shifts to where your prospects go after they click on your ads, your landing page.

5. CREATING LANDING PAGES THAT CONVERT

In B2B marketing, landing pages are more important than Ironman is to the Avengers. It is what your prospective customers go to after clicking on your ad. If it does not invite them to take off their shoes and stay awhile and then entice them to contact you, that click you just paid for, is pretty much wasted.

The key to B2B landing pages that convert is the following

Clear, concise messaging: Most B2B products and services are complex and hard to explain in text. Your message on the landing page needs to speak to what they need, keeping your buyer persona on the landing page to contact your company.

In this example, Mailchimps landing page is short, sweet, and touches the B2B buyer’s core by speaking to building better relationships with customers.

Removing as little as one form field can boost conversions by as much as 26% and that form fills with 5 fields usually have the highest conversion rates. (WP Forms)

Simple, relevant form fills: If you want to improve conversion rates, make your form fills easy to find and easier to fill out. As WPforms states above, it is essential to only require relevant information and keep your form fill fields short as this will increase your revenue by as much as 26%.

When creating form fills for your landing page, strive to limit the spaces to fill out to 4 or 5. Also, do not make your prospect work to become a customer, make sure it is easily visible, so the prospect knows how to contact you.

In this example, we see a short form fill, a clear call to action, and additional options to login with Google or LinkedIn. Doing this creates less friction, easier access and quicker logins with companies most of us use and trust.

Landing pages with multiple offers get 266% fewer leads than single offer pages (Wish Pond)

Have A Clear Call To Action: Your call to action needs to be clear and to the point. If you want someone to download your e-book, the CTA should be download now, not learn more. If you have an offer as your CTA, you should only have one offer per landing page. More offers mean confused customers, which means lower conversions.

In this example, the call to action is clear, easy to spot with button colors that stick out and the CTA’s are aligned to rid of any confusion of what to do next.

Small business CRM company, Highrise, started adding client images with their testimonials and saw their conversion rate rise by 102.5%.

Displaying reviews for higher-priced products can increase conversion rates by 380% (Spiegel Research Center, 2017).

92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review(G2 and Heinz Marketing, 2017)

Show your credibility: Take away the doubt with logos and testimonials of current clients or badges to ensure you can be trusted and are the company they need. When a B2B buyer needs a product or service, no matter what company they are looking in to, they are going to be skeptical at first. A landing page with testimonials and trust marks can assure them they are in good hands. This portrays that companies, like theirs with the same problem, have had great success and can do the same for them.

In this example, UnBounce features a personal client testimonial about the success they’ve had and other recognizable brands that also use their brand.

Companies see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15. (Hubspot)

Create multiple landing pages: With PPC campaigns, your keyword, ad copy and landing pages should be in sync. Doing this will help increase your quality score and as explained earlier, this will lead to a lower cost per acquisition. Considering Hubspot found that businesses that increase their number of landing pages from 10 to 15 saw a 55% increase in leads, this will help drive more revenue.

Imagine you sold 1 million dollars in construction supplies from your PPC campaigns. If you increased the number of landing pages you used, you could have sold more than $1.5 million from one change in PPC. The reason why this works is that more landing pages mean you are testing more and/or your landing pages are further segmented to match the buyer in their journey and what resonates with them.

6.  TRACKING & MEASURING ROI

It is crazy for any business not to have the proper tracking set up to measure how your marketing campaigns are performing. Due to a long buying cycle, this is especially true in B2B advertising. If you aren’t properly tracking conversions (An action that signifies a quality lead) and ROI, it is very hard to determine how to improve your PPC campaigns, let alone, how they are performing.

In fact, the CEO of Disruptive Advertising Jacob Baadsgaard found that 42.3% of Google Ads accounts have no conversion tracking set up. Considering Google’s ad revenue was $113 billion in 2018, that means nearly 47 billion dollars had no idea how their PPC campaigns are doing!

Without conversion tracking, you won’t know if that one keyword with a good cost per click, high click-through rate (CTR), and excellent search terms are driving leads or just getting you meaningless traffic. What you track as a conversion depends on your company, for B2B companies, it is usually a phone call lasting x amount of time, or a form fill submission (contact form, e-book download, free trial, etc.)

“Due to the long life cycle of a B2B sales, you want to track as many conversions on your website and landing page as you can. (Think with Google)

The best way to set up conversion tracking is to link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account. This will help track the performance of your campaign, create remarketing audiences, and gain insight into the users clicking on your ads. If you aren’t already doing so, this will walk you through how to connect them.

To track actions on your website, a handy tool (and free) is to do this with Google tag manager. This video will guide you through how to set it up and what is possible with Google Tag Manager.

I can’t stress enough the importance of tracking conversions and ROI from your PPC campaigns. The reality is, tracking your campaigns improves your odds of success by 1,700%. (Hubspot). If you aren’t, you are missing out on a lot of money, while wasting a lot of advertising dollars.

7. RETARGET LOST LEADS WITH DISPLAY & SOCIAL ADS

Due to the amount of research that goes into B2B buying, being able to get in front of potential customers in more than one place can increase revenue and brand awareness. This can be done with re-marketing campaigns. There are a few ways to think of re-marketing with PPC, but two of the most effective are

1. Re-marketing with display ads: With display re-marketing, we can get in front of specific audiences at any stage of the funnel and remind them of your brand. What is so great about display remarketing is that it is a low CPM (Cost per impression) tactic to stay in front of people that have already interacted with your brand. This is essential as the B2B sales cycle can be quite lengthy.

2. Re-marketing with LinkedIn & Facebook: The beauty of LinkedIn & Facebook remarketing is you can retarget users that made it to your website from a Google ads search ad and remarket to them in their social feed. These platforms help your brand stay top of mind for your prospective customers with unique and compelling creative.

To capitalize on your remarketing efforts, you want to create specific remarketing lists based on the stages of your sales funnel. With this strategy, creative and messaging is aligned with the prospect in the buying journey.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you’re a B2B company, you know you need to be using Google Ads because it delivers results from every step of the funnel. That being said, it is very easy to spend a lot of money on low-quality leads, very quickly. Utilizing these 7 tips to dominating paid search in the B2B space, will help your business get more quality leads and customers.

What success have you had with Google Ads? Is there anything I missed?

Any and all feedback is appreciated!