There has never been a better time to promote a B2B, technology or SaaS business through paid search. Marketers are learning the importance of increasing online leads and finding that paid advertising is a creative and effective way to increase their customer acquisition.
A recent Microsoft Retail Survey indicates there are plenty of opportunities for businesses to connect to their audience in different ways. Between the new working from home and other lifestyle shifts of blended schedules and trends, this has affected all businesses. It is now time to be where your audience is and search advertising can help you generate instant and engaged traffic along with finding that audience.
Microsoft Retail Survey Marketplace trends COVID-19 vs. Pre-COVID-19:
Desktop & Tablet Volume Share continues to grow respectively at 8% and 18% on average.Weekend Volume grew significantly by 12%; 2x that of weekday volume growth.
Non-business hours Volume (5pm-5am) increased by 11%. This is approximately 2x the volume growth during regular business hours.
Here are some of the paid search marketing tips that will dramatically improve your ability to find your audience:
- Contextual Keywords
Choosing the keywords that generate leads and finding out what words your customers are using is pivotal to any profitable paid advertising. Starting with keyword research and match type strategies is essential. The Pay-Per-Click (PPC) tested keywords allow business to write more effective industry specific landing page content which matches the search intent and increases the conversion rate.
Stat: 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine
- Audience targeting
Get to know your customers. Use audience targeting in Google Ads.
This is a useful strategy to find your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and start building out their buyer personas. Paid ads reach the perfect audience, help you learn what they care about, focus budget in a specific area and lets you increase your bid for more relevant subgroups within your target audience.
Stat: 5.8% Increase in digital buyers ages 45 and older is expected
- Promote your business with LinkedIn ads
Show your potential audience proof that you really do what you say you do. Linkedin ads can help you define your campaign goals in a more considered way and find the right balance with targeting and creating the customer-specific ad copy.
Stat: 87% of B2B buyers have a favorable impression of a salesperson if they were introduced to them through someone in their professional network.
- Add negative keywords to eliminate waste
There is no point spending money on irrelevant search terms which your customers are not searching for. Get really specific and remove all the other keywords that don’t convert. Split tests are a great way to check what is working. Using Ad extensions and pausing keywords that are underperforming based on certain metrics will help refine the negative keywords.
Stat: 15% of the online searches are new every day.
- Invest in ads using brand keywords
By investing in your brand keyword strategy, a business can retain customers, build brand awareness around a new or an already existing product. The brand keywords can help keep your paid advertising costs align with your business goals for increased brand recognition.
Stat: Brand keywords can produce an additional 20%-50% more clicks for a company
- Create more relevant ads
To avoid irregular clicks for your campaigns a business is encouraged to write really clear and specific ad copy. You can choose to run a small paid ad campaign initially to see if it attracts and converts your ideal B2B leads. Test out different steps, like call ads and consider which call to actions (CTAs) work best such as ‘Get’ vs ‘Try’. The top-performing ad keywords can be used in communications with your audience that match the different funnel stages which the audience may be in, allowing you to access the leads with higher purchase intent.
Stat: 77% of B2B purchasers won’t speak to a salesperson until they’ve done their own research.
- Combine PPC and SEO
Applying PPC and SEO together helps with the overall content marketing, by capturing more quality traffic from using the keywords which performed well in the paid search advertising campaigns, then using those keywords to optimise landing pages, lead magnets and blogs. By having a combined strategy to consider customer lifetime value and customer acquisition costs when attracting new leads, this will help to maximise your ROI: PPC and SEO work together to give your business increased visibility in both commercial and organic search queries.
Stats: 65% of ‘customers’ click on PPC ads.
94% of ‘searchers’ actually head straight to the organic results and skip search ads.
- Valuable customer Reviews
What people say about your business or product is a genuine opinion and trusted more by potential customers than anything you may write about your own business.
Listening to this feedback creates a strong bond with the customer along with the ratings help visibility in the organic search results, Amazon, comparison websites, Google My Business for local and on products in Google Shopping. Reviews have an important impact on B2B lead generation.
Stat: 52% of online shoppers call the advertiser directly from the search results.
- Additional customers with Bing Ads
Microsoft Advertising (formerly known as Bing), can connect your business with millions of searchers not using Google. Over recent years there have been some really compelling reasons to use both Google and Bing ads such as, there are 12.2 billion global desktop searches per month on Bing, 40% of the Bing Network ranges from 35 to 54 years old along with Bing tends to reach an older and more educated audience which could work rather well for B2B lead generation.
Stat: Bing Ads CPC can be up to 70% cheaper than Google Ads
- Try Facebook Ads for Your Business
Targeting unqualified leads can be expensive but B2B brands using Facebook can take advantage of the exceptional audience insights that Facebook has for businesses to use, which helps you reach your target audience with paid ads. You can target either specific locations or expand your location, target specific times of day which are proven to improve conversion rates and target specific demographics who could be interested in your business. Facebook has several different ad types, such as lead generation and retargeting, which allows your businesses to reach out to prospects and help others remember your business to potentially make a purchase from you.
Stat: 31% of B2B professionals say that social selling allowed them to build deeper relationships with their clients.
Conclusion
Remember to make sure Google Ads and Google Analytics are linked and to track ‘metrics that matter’ to your business, such as leads that convert into satisfied customers. We hope this gives you a flavour of how your business can target the ideal audience with paid search.
Ask us for a Free PPC audit and analysis of your account, and we can discuss how our paid search management can help.
