Paid Advertising Tips For Your B2B Organization

In this blog post, we will go through certain aspects that you must consider when building your startup’s B2B PPC campaign. Before we get started, it is crucial to remember that before jumping into paid advertising for your B2B organization, your methods will not follow the exact practices a B2C business would. Beware of wandering down the rabbit hole of paid advertising hacks or black hat tricks that may not be relevant to your product or services.

 

A Focused Target

Your audience will not be the same as a B2C company. You are most likely targeting other professionals and businesses, not just the general public. When preparing your PPC campaign, your audience will have a more refined search query.
 
Your user could be a manager, CEO, sales representative or even an accountant. These characteristics should inform your keyword research. Although your search volumes are lower, your end user has a very specific problem to be solved by your products and services. The more focused your keywords, the higher quality leads you’ll receive. Since you are essentially paying per click, those clicks count! Tip: Try to attach the verticals you serve with your product, for instance “accounts payable solutions for construction” therefore “accounting software” can be highly competitive and a little too broad.
 

Longer Sales Cycles

Your prospect’s commitment is long term as opposed to a quick B2C transaction. You may be offering a recurring service, or a potential contract may be involved, making a B2B product a more expensive purchase overall. With that being said, your incentives will be different. Try using PPC campaigns as a way to share valuable resources (such as case studies and white papers) as opposed to discounts or purchase incentives. For example, your PPC campaign can be structured around an exclusive report that will teach your prospect about the features of a new software vs. industry stats. This piece of information will educate your lead and it is a subtle approach to help them warm up to your business.
 

Monitor your Analytics Closely

Sometimes we can get caught up in only looking for clicks and conversions (after all, that is the goal). As mentioned previously, with a long sales cycle, your prospect may really enjoy one white paper and want another. They may visit your website on multiple occasions. Hang in there! Don’t be too impatient with your PPC campaigns because your conversions might come back again and again later. Including re-targeting in your B2B PPC campaign can work well in this instance.
 

Campaigns and Ad Groups

Instead of building PPC campaigns around your products and services only, try building them around the different stages of your purchase funnel. Establish what your typical funnel and structure campaigns around those stages. Hubspot advises:

  • Group keywords with similar themes: For example, put all “software” keywords in one ad group, separate from “solutions” or “platform” keywords
  • Divide informational keywords and transactional keywords: For example, “what is customer relationship management” versus “buy crm software”, or “do i need crm” versus “customer relationship management solutions”

 

Conclusion

PPC Campaigns for your business will be a slower burn. Be patient and do your research. A/B testing will be your friend and you can adjust your budget based on your performance at any time. Also, sometimes what may work well on Google Adwords, may not work well on a Facebook Ad. For more information about how you can get started on building your paid ads, check out our blog post on “PPC Campaign Management” to show you the basics.
 

Paid Advertising Tips For Your B2B Organization