Not only is it cost-effective but also one of the quickest ways to reach your potential buyers. At its core, pay-per-click advertising for B2B is much like a B2C one. Instead of you waiting around to be found, your target market hunts for you with the help of keywords in search engines.

Today, modern B2B buyers have high expectations and much like any consumer out there, they too expect information to be easily available at their fingertips.

With the right pay-per-click strategies, you can forget about the laborious tasks of cold-callings, follow-ups, and trade shows that might not always generate positive results

In this post, we’ll discuss the key strategies you can leverage to make the most out of your campaigns:

First, Let's Look at Some of the Key B2B Characteristics

Due to the audience number being relatively smaller for B2B market in comparison to that of B2C, the volume of keyword search is lower as well. Before you move forward with your PPC ad campaign, there will be a few things to consider:-

Know that PPC marketing is an investment in the future. That’s because the sales cycle is generally longer in B2B, which means your ROI will often come months down the road.
Get ready to provide a lot of buyer-oriented information. Make the most out of the case studies and whitepapers which you have in stock. When it comes to long-term contracts, expensive purchases or possible on-going relationships, buyers tend to do a lot more of comparison shopping.
While designing your PPC campaigns such as key words, landing pages, ad copy etc, keep in mind that your target buyer could be anyone from various departments at a company – it could be the company accountant, someone from the IT, it may be the end user or the CEO.

Hence, you have got to keep these characteristics in mind in order to drive results on your PPC ad campaigns.

Do Your Keyword Research Thoroughly

Albeit time-consuming and taxing, researching on keywords is an integral part of your PPC campaign. Without the relevant high-value keyword search, your company won’t have the right PPC optimization strategy. Make sure to analyze which keywords your competitors target; look into the high-value terms in order to assess your competitor’s B2B Google Ads strategy. Also compile a list of keywords in-house. Look for keyword types that are:-

Generic – This includes any keyword that’s related to your products or services.
Branded – This covers any keyword that’s related to your company’s brand name.
Competitor – Any keywords that mimics branded keywords but uses competitor brand names.
Related – Your house keywords related to brand, competitor and generic keywords.

Use tools like Google Trends, Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, FAQ Fox and think from the viewpoint of the company that’s out there looking for you. Along with terms such as “companies”, “providers” and “tools”, also look for “vendor” and “supplier”, for instance, “PPC software vendors” or “GPR suppliers.”

Get Strategic with Campaigns and Ad Groups

Another key strategy is to use the various stages of the purchase funnel as a guide to understand what keywords to use and follow the same method for landing pages as well. Build your campaigns and ad groups around the research stage all the way down to the purchase stage. This will give you clarity in terms of research campaign/ad groups, consideration campaign/ad groups, and conversion campaign/ad groups.

Managing Your Campaigns

Always manage your campaigns in order to continue being effective and grow your customer base. Make sure to continuously analyze the performance of your Google ads and your Adwords account by making the following adjustments to your campaigns:-

To extend the reach of your pay-per-click campaigns, add keywords that are relevant to your domain.
Adding non-converting terms such as negative keywords will improve campaign relevancy thereby reducing wasted spend.
A great tip is to split your ad groups into smaller and more relevant ad groups which will give you more targeted ad text and landing pages. Not only that, this strategy will also improve your CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and Quality score.
Review and shut off those underperforming and expensive keywords if necessary.
Do not make the mistake of sending all your traffic to the same page. Boost your conversion rates by modifying the content and the Call-To-Actions and having them aligned with the individual search queries.

Work on Your Ad Copy and Landing Pages

Whether it’s for lead generation or immediate sales, your ad copy plays an important function for your PPC campaigns. So it’s equally important to come up with compelling ad copy that your target buyer can’t overlook. Remember to keep your campaign specific, include social proof, position yourself as a trusted source of information and give credibility examples.

While building your landing page, you need to make one that builds off the ad copy. For instance, users should arrive on the relevant page by clicking your ad.

If your ad offers a free trial of the products or services, then make sure you deliver on that promise when users decide to click on it.

Make sure that your test your campaign before its launch. Additionally, see that your landing page is also fast, intuitive, on-brand and responsive.

Assessment

Continuously keep track of your progress using Google analytics or other analytics software package. With the period of B2B sales cycle being three to six months long it’s very important that you closely monitor your visitors and keep adding information, because they will come back. Another useful tip is to remarket in an effort to stay in front of your prospects consistently.

To Conclude

Unlike the on-the-spot nature of B2C marketing landscape, PPC marketing for B2B requires a long view, but is highly effective and drives amazing return on your investments. Provided that you have a well-designed and smooth PPC campaign, the visits you get will be worth more than what you pay for them.