If you work in the world of B2B PPC marketing, your primary objective is always going to be (or definitely should be!) focused on driving high value leads for your business.
Therefore, one of the biggest challenges is always going to be finding the most efficient channels from which you can drive enquiries that you are confident will turn into revenue. This is hard because sometimes the time lag between getting a click and signing a contract (AKA winning the business) can be significant.
Is PPC (pay per click) advertising still a good option for B2B marketing and lead generation? We believe it absolutely is, and see significant revenue generated for our B2B clients via Google Ads, however there are some key items you need to consider if you are looking to run PPC in 2024.
What is b2b ppc marketing all about?
Your first battle is going to be quality over quantity. If you’re genuinely looking to drive revenue, the number of form completions you get is a completely irrelevant metric if all of these are unqualified.
Your focus has to be on quality. This is where an extremely considered approach to PPC is very much needed.
From the moment you start collating your keyword research, right through to the regular optimisations you make, your mind must always be looking for quality indicators and not volume.
Spend caps for B2B
The point above means that in most cases, PPC accounts in B2B tend to have a very clear spend ceiling. Go beyond this and you risk getting a lot of irrelevant traffic that will never convert, or even worse, breaching into consumer traffic.
Obviously things will be a bit different if you are using PPC to build awareness, and also vary by sector, however with the majority of advertisers being focused on qualified lead generation, spend can be limited.
This is fine because you can grow volume on other channels / platforms such as LinkedIn Ads, thus creating more demand in search. As with all good strategies, this is all about having a clear purpose for each platform and planning your approach accordingly.
Keyword selection
Can you see we’re following a theme of extreme consideration here??
Center to this is always going to be your keyword selection and match types. To help illustrate this, let’s take a look at an example and consider we’re going to be building leads for a corporate accountancy firm.
Keywords such as ‘tax accountant’ may seem like a good option on the surface, but you run a big risk of showing ads to people looking for personal tax help. A much better option would be ‘corporate tax accountant’ or ‘vat accountant’. Choose keywords that ONLY a business that matches your service would use.
Then we have the subject of match types. Our recommendation is to either use exact match, or if you want to use phrase match or broad…keep a VERY close eye on your search term reports. Look for any signs of consumer traffic or informational queries and get them on the negative list instantly.
You can only do the above if you have a good understanding of the business you are working for. There’s no shortcuts here at all, you have to get under the skin of things.
Does PMAX work?
A quick note re: PMAX and B2B lead generation. Does it work?
Well, our experience so far is that it doesn’t. Typically what we see with PMAX is that conversion rates look good, CPA can be positive, but the lead quality lacks dramatically.
Our advice with PMAX and B2B campaigns is that if you are hunting for high value leads, we would always favour traditional campaigns due to issues with lead quality.
With that being said, if your business has lower deal values or focusses on volume, PMAX could be a good fit for you. Also, it’s always worth testing everything so do experiment, however the above is all based on our experience.
Hopefully the above is useful if you are running, and if you ever have questions or need help with your B2B PPC marketing campaigns, please do reach out for a chat.
