How To Make Paid Search For B2B Marketing Effective

High CPCs.

Low search volume.

Unqualified leads.

When it comes to getting paid search results for B2B marketers, the challenges are endless.

Learn how to make paid search work for you in order to generate more B2B leads.

With ad copy, you can prequalify users

Many B2B search campaigns struggle because keywords alone do not fully define a user’s intent.

A managed IT services provider, for example, may want to focus solely on enterprise-level organizations, but not every qualified prospect will use the word “enterprise” in their search queries.

To cast a wider net while encouraging the right people to click, you could use more general keywords like “managed IT services.”

The ad copy, on the other hand, might say “Enterprise Managed IT Services.”

You can mention it directly in ads or include it in callout extensions if you only service businesses with more than a certain number of employees.

“For Businesses with 100+ Employees,” for example.

Furthermore, including pricing in your copy can be an effective way to deter people who can’t afford your services from clicking.

“Starting at $500/month,” for example, will deter those who aren’t willing or able to spend at least $500 per month.

Add Audiences to the Mix

Even if your keyword intent is hazy, audience targeting can help you narrow down who you want to reach with your ads.

In most cases, it’s best to combine first-party and third-party audiences in campaigns.

Your own data is used to create first-party audiences.

You can use Customer Match to upload prospect lists to target people who have shown an initial interest in your company by signing up for a newsletter, downloading a whitepaper, or attending a webinar.

Another advantage of these audiences is that they can be used to create similar audiences that can be layered onto campaigns to reach people with similar characteristics.

Create remarketing audiences from website visitors, and don’t forget to include them in campaigns, even if they’re only for observation.

When manual bidding is set to observation-only, you can bid on these people to be more competitive for search queries from people who have already expressed an interest in your business.

Layering these audiences in automated bidding indicates intent to Google. It demonstrates that you think these people are important enough to reach out to forbidding signals.

On Google’s and Microsoft’s end, third-party audiences come in a variety of flavors, with B2B-focused in-market audiences providing the most precision.

By searching and browsing, in-market audiences have demonstrated that they are actively looking for a specific product or service.

Enterprise Software and Network Systems & Services are two segments that IT companies can target.

A Business Financial Services segment can be targeted by B2B accounting firms.

Business & Industrial Products > Food Service Equipment is a good target for restaurant supply stores.

There are numerous other ways to target audiences directly related to various B2B niches.

For Microsoft Advertising, you can also overlay LinkedIn audiences for additional B2B layers.

Use industry targeting in particular to reach people who work in the fields you’re pursuing.

Read A Beginner’s Guide To PPC Marketing For Small Businesses.

Look for keywords that are relevant to real-world issues

B2B marketers are notorious for only wanting to target highly specific technical keywords related to their product.

People who are experiencing the problems that a product solves, on the other hand, maybe unaware that the product exists.

For example, one of the clients with whom I worked provided board meeting software.

Only a small percentage of people use keywords like “board meeting software” in their searches.

Many more people, on the other hand, are looking for keywords like “how to improve board meetings” or “how to share board meeting minutes,” which are all questions that the software can answer.

Identify questions people are asking using tools like Google Keyword Planner, Answer the Public, and Also Asked, and use your ads to show how your products or services provide answers.

Additionally, monitor your own search term reports for keywords that you can incorporate into ad groups with more customized ad copy.

Remember to Include a Landing Page

Landing pages are important for any niche and campaign, but there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to B2B campaigns in particular.

You should keep the same theme going with your landing page copy as you did with your ad copy to prevent the wrong people from clicking.

Use your copy to allude to your ideal clients’ ideal business sizes, job roles, and potential budgets.

Additionally, the form setup can be critical in balancing the need to qualify the right people with not deterring contacts from submitting the form unnecessarily.

Include enough form fields to ensure that people are serious about providing you with their contact information, while also allowing you to vet out their company details without requesting unnecessary information.

Job title and company name, for example, are probably reasonable requests, but do you really need them to specify city and state in order to download a whitepaper?

Requesting a phone number for a top-of-funnel offer can also be a turnoff, as many people dislike being called out of the blue when they are just doing preliminary research.

Include trust signals such as logos and quotes from other businesses that have worked with you.

B2B buyers want to see that your services have been trusted by other businesses.

Optimize Your Website For The Best Conversion Rates

As ad platforms encourage advertisers to use automated bidding in their campaigns, accurate conversion data is more important than ever.

Also, make sure you’re optimizing for conversion actions that are most relevant to generating qualified leads.

To optimize around higher volume asks, you might choose conversion actions such as asset downloads or webinar signups for higher funnel campaigns.

Lower-funnel campaigns, on the other hand, maybe more focused on demo requests, trial signups, and sales inquiries, and should choose those as conversion actions.

Additionally, using a Salesforce integration or an offline conversion import to send back offline conversion data can provide additional signals to optimize around qualified leads.

Finally, assigning values to specific conversions (even if they are just rough value indicators based on your data) and optimizing conversion value can aid Google in distinguishing between a lower-return, higher-funnel conversion, and a higher-return, lower-funnel conversion.

Put Business-to-Business PPC to the Test!

If you’ve been skeptical of paid search for B2B or have struggled to make campaigns work for your company, it’s time to give it another shot.

Consider actual customer problems when writing keywords and ad copy, use audience layers to target the right prospects, keep your landing page focused on the right persona, and make sure your conversion tracking is set up correctly.