When adding Google Ads into your marketing strategy, you have two options: hire a B2B Google Ads agency, or do it yourself.
If you opt for the latter, there are a few things to consider before launching your first advertising campaign. For B2B brands, this is especially important in order to generate success.
Because a typical B2B marketing campaign will generally run for a longer period of time, Google Ads can often be the ultimate solution. When building your campaign, there are some expert tried-and-tested steps to adhere to in order to generate the most profitable outcome.
This article takes you through them to get you on the road to success.
B2B vs B2C Advertising on Google Ads: What’s The Difference?
There’s a common misconception in the B2B community that Google Ads marketing is best-suited to B2C organisations, but here’s the deal: that’s not true.
Not only does it work for B2B companies who offer services instead of/as well as products, but it plays an important role in the decision-making process of the sales funnel, as well as enabling brand awareness on a larger scale.
It’s also one of the strongest instruments in SEO/garnering web traffic, remarketing campaigns, encouraging phone calls/form filling, and much more.
So, with that in mind, many B2B organisations could benefit from including Google Ads in their marketing strategy, and will certainly see a return-on-investment (ROI).
How To Utilise Google Ads as a B2B Company
While Google Ads is both a simple and effective tool for B2B companies, it is important to implement some planning and strategizing in order to fully reap the benefits. Here’s how to do that.
Be Clear on Your Campaign Plan & Objective
Irrespective of strategy, no marketing campaign will be successful unless the company has clearly defined what the objective should be. Without this, the planning will be sloppy and ineffective.
Some important questions to ask yourself include:
- What are we selling and why?
- Once we acquire leads, where is their data going?
- Are we prepared for success in terms of customer handling?
- Are we prepared for the product/service launch?
- How does this campaign tie into our monthly/quarterly/annual targets?
- Realistically, how long do we need/expect it will take to convert a lead via this campaign?
The bottom line here is understanding what you hope to achieve via this campaign. Once you have this defined, you will find that the objective lies within that.
Website Optimisation
The purpose of Google Ads is to lead your audience to your website, so once you’ve done this, it’s important that your website is fully optimised and has everything your leads want and need. Failure to do this will result in losing the lead.
Optimising your website will help improve:
- Brand impression
- Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
- Quality score
- Conversion tracking
- Overall positive UX
Regardless of how snazzy and well-executed your Google Ads campaign may be – if your website doesn’t mirror it, your success rate will suffer because of it.
Conversion Tracking
Once your campaign is live, you’ll want to track its progress, and this means having the appropriate tools in place to effectively do so.
Not only will conversion tracking allow you to see how your ads are performing, but it will also track and trace leads generated via the campaign, as well as providing the data you need to scale your marketing budget and your campaign/s.
Conversion tracking also comes in handy when implementing automated bidding strategies to optimise your campaign for maximum conversion. Part of this process includes being clear on what qualifies as a lead (e.g.: a phone call, completed web form, product/service purchase, event sign-up, etc).
Having certain tools in place (such as a CRM) means the tracking and handling of lead data is managed for you – and that includes data collected from your campaigns.
Splitting Your Campaigns Demographically
It is important to double-check the locations you’ve selected are performing well during the course of your campaign’s life – this is especially applicable if you’re running your campaign via a manual bidding strategy – and then adjust accordingly.
Please note: if your campaign is running via smart bidding, Google Ads’ algorithm will override any location amendments you make. If you’re noticing that your campaign is garnering a significant amount of engagement, it can be wise to split your campaigns via different locations to better manage your budget.
With smart bidding, Google works to achieve the lead-gen goal for all locations per average, which can sometimes mean some locations will either be over/under-optimised, or missed out entirely.
Naturally, it is wise to ensure the ad is most-shown in the most profitable locations, as opposed to even distribution across all locations.
Implement Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords can be more beneficial for B2B marketers solely because B2B leads are usually fully aware of the products/services they require and are more likely to use them than a B2C lead would when searching online.
It is important to note, however, that your long-tail keyword usage depends on the type of campaign you plan on launching. For example, if you are building a campaign from scratch, maximum keyword usage is wise, and additional keywords can be placed into it later in the campaign’s life.
For marketers who have conducted a campaign trial period based on exact match keywords may find that within 15-30 days (for example), it may be required to add in more broader keywords. While this will mean slightly increasing your ad spend, you will likely make up the return via leads generated.
Negative Keywords
Staying on the subject of keywords, your negative keywords play a fundamental role in your campaign’s success.
The role negative keywords play is – just like positive keywords – is to ensure your ad is reaching your target audience. But they need to be managed accordingly and attentively. If this is achieved, they will keep your ad spend down as well as increasing your ad’s quality score. These words particularly work in conjunction for those using phrases and broad match keywords.
When using negative keywords, here are your three options:
- Exclude keywords that bear no relevance to your brand/campaign.
- Maintain a threshold for excluding keywords.
- Cross-campaign & cross-adjust negative keywords.
Lead Form/Lead Call Extension
This tactic may depend on the nature of your business, and therefore, may or may not be relevant to you. For instance: those not using a lead form or lead call system as their CTA will not require this.
However, for those with wider targets/goals, this may come in use if your business sees an influx of lead communication prompted by your campaign. As your brand starts to receive a higher volume of calls/communication, it might be necessary to implement actions, such as having a call centre, or the necessary tools to collate data from lead forms, such as a CRM system.
Top tip: including as many fields as possible, or in the case of brands that sell physical products, using multiple products in your Google account will work in your favour when it comes to bidding auctions and outbidding your competitors.
If you’d like to learn more about how we help B2B SaaS and Tech companies grow their MRR through Google ads, contact us online or send us an email today at info@getuplead.com to speak with someone on our team.
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