B2B brands looking to up their digital marketing game would be foolish not to consider using Google Ads to help them target strong audiences, and ultimately, create a profitable and rewarding campaign.
Google Ads can help you create campaigns that will build brand awareness, increase your web traffic levels, and generate conversions.
The best part? Google Ads’ technology is so adept and data-precise, it takes much of the time and hassle out of your campaign building process.
However, it doesn’t do everything for you.
Whether or not you use a B2B Google Ads agency, if you incorporate Google Ads into your marketing strategy, it is important to fully understand the fundamentals of the feature, and put into place some of the best tactics to guarantee success.
Google Ads B2B Targeting: Top Tips & Practices
Your Google Ads marketing campaign will only be successful if the planning and care you put into it is second to none.
While the Google Ads feature provides you with excellent tools and analytics that take a lot of stress out of creating an ad campaign, there are still tried-and-tested methods to adhere to in order to get the best return on your investment.
Here are the top tips and practices to smash your Google Ads B2B targeting campaign:
Keyword Research
Your keyword research is perhaps the most crucial aspect of your campaign building process because they will need to align with what your target audience is searching for, which sounds fairly straightforward, but there’s a catch: you will need to have a full awareness of what your audience seeks via the search engine – right down to the last syllable.
But that’s only half of it. The other important part of your keyword research is to fully comprehend your industry and the advertising of your competitors.
It is also important not to be vague when selecting your keywords; being as specific as possible will elevate your campaign’s success, and this includes industry jargon and acronyms your target audience may use.
When conducting your research, it can help to categorise your keyword groups:
Branded Keywords
Naturally, these are keywords that are associated with your brand and its products/services. Typically these words will include your company name and the services/products it provides.
These keywords will target users actively seeking those products/services, and who may be in the mid-final stages of the Buying Journey, and may be ready to convert. These words will come in use for brands creating campaigns with the goal of lead conversion or generating more website traffic.
Researching your branded keywords will help you during the preliminary campaign-building stages, and will direct you towards the type of content/ad types best-suited for your goal.
Generic Keywords
As the name suggests, these keywords tend to be broad words/phrases that describe your products/services and the content of your campaign.
Sometimes known as ‘short-tail keywords’, generic keywords will be words that are popular in terms of search engine research by potential leads.
These words will not feature branding words (like the name of your company), therefore they can be best-suited for users who are at the beginning stages of their Buying Journey.
Related Keywords
These keywords are synonymous with your industry and services/products, and are akin to both your branded and generic keywords.
Related keywords benefit campaigns that are aimed at users who are still in the early stages of their Buying Journey, and may not be ready to convert yet. Therefore, they can be useful for brand awareness campaigns.
Competitor Keywords
We harkened earlier to the importance of being aware of your competitors when conducting your keyword research, so naturally, this keyword category consists of the ones your rival companies are using.
Fortunately, using Google Ads’ Keyword Planner tool makes this very easy. You can find this feature in the Google AdWords dashboard.
Research Your Target Audience
The second most crucial part of your campaign planning is nailing your target audience, and the key to building this audience is to research the businesses who have already organically familiarised themselves with your brand via your website. You can do this by examining your company’s IP address.
While you cannot do this via Google Ads, there are other tools available to do so, including Leadinfo. This will help you identify your site’s visitors, which even includes contact information, such as email addresses and phone numbers. This data provides priceless information on a “hot” target audience for your campaign.
Research Negative Keywords
Just like your main keyword research, you will need to curate a list of “negative” keywords to avoid in your campaign’s content. Failure to do this will mean your campaign misses the target audience and instead will be viewed by web users with little or no likelihood to convert.
A way to seek out these words is to bear in mind homonyms (a word that has one spelling but multiple meanings. For example: “close”, “tear”, “dove”), misspellings, abbreviations, and anything else that may thwart your audience.
Make Use of Gmail
This can be an extension of your audience building process, and can allow you to target your competitors’ clients.
To do this, you will need to use the feature Gmail Ads, which will allow you to target leads who visit certain websites and/or interact with certain domains.
Challenging Your Rivals’ Keywords
Going back to your keyword research for a second, you can examine and target your competitors’ keywords by bidding on them.
It’s noteworthy that your keyword choices should be as relevant to your campaign as possible and that they do not feature words that may coincide with a competitor’s branding keywords.
Scheduling
Your ads need to be scheduled to times when they’re most likely to be viewed by your target audience, and Google Ads Scheduling allows you to do this.
Before your campaign goes live, it is wise to engage in some testing to see when the most productive time/days are for your ad to be featured (as in, when leads are most likely to be online). Analytics will provide insight as to when the most engagement occurs, which will give you an accurate idea of what your ad schedule should be.
Smart Bidding
Those new to the world of Google Ads may not be wholly confident with the aspect of scheduling yet, which is perfectly okay, because Google can do this for you.
Google Ads has a feature called ‘Smart Bidding’ which will automatically optimise your campaign using AI with the end goal being lead conversion. Part of this optimisation process includes adjusting bids and ad delivery to the best time/location of your target audience, which will further maximise your conversion chances – without you needing to lift a finger!
In order to utilise Smart Bidding, you will need to have the conversion tracking feature enabled.
Using Demographic Targeting
The final practice to implement is Google’s demographic targeting tool, which allows you to target:
- Small companies (less than 250 employees)
- Medium companies (between 250 – 10,000 employees)
- Large companies (10,000+ employees)
As well as targeting the following industries:
- Tech
- Construction
- Education
- Finance
- Healthcare
- Hospitality
- Manufacturing
- Real Estate
Choosing the Right Demographics to Target
It is likely that you already have a buyer persona in mind, and this should help you dictate which demographics to choose. Also, because every brand has its B2B products/services, this also helps narrow it down.
A useful part of Google Ads’ management is that you can add/edit/adjust your demographic settings accordingly later on in your campaign’s life; you’re not stuck with the first ones you choose, so don’t be disheartened if you’re not receiving the engagement results you’d hoped for straight away. Chances are a little demographic tweaking is all that’s needed.
If you’re still stuck on where to begin with your demographics targeting, you can make use of Google’s Observation Mode, which gives you key insights to the best (and most profitable) ones to select, as well as any other campaign adjustments that may be needed.
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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