B2B PPC

Part #5.3

Introduction

B2B PPC (pay per click) is a channel used to primarily support your B2B website, B2B content marketing and B2B campaign strategies. Similar to B2B SEO, B2B PPC is a mechanism designed to help your website and content both reach and attract your target audiences through search engines. The key difference however is that SEO is focussed on organic search results and PPC is focussed on paid search results.

This section will generally adhere to the Google Ads platform, which is the tool you will use to create your PPC campaigns to trigger on the Google search engine.

B2B PPC Strategy

Objectives: Defining what you want your PPC strategy to deliver and what is important to your organisation.
User Discovery: Refers to identifying your target personas and associating them with keyword research.
Campaign Structure: Refers to the elements that consist of a paid search campaign.
Text Ads: The best practice and considerations to be made when building the ads.
Landing Pages: Refers to the post-click location and where the user conversion takes place.
Measurement: Identifying objective success, general performance and opportunity.

1. Objectives

Refer back to the ‘Level 3 – Marketing Team Objectives’ (Part #1: B2B Marketing Objectives) you set and build your specific PPC/paid search objectives around these (along with general best-practice/secondary objectives).

2. User Discovery

For this section, you can use the same user discovery and keyword mapping output from Part #5.2: B2B SEO as you will need to identify what keywords are being used by your target audiences/personas when they perform search queries throughout their B2B buying journey.

2.1 – Keyword Search Intent & Impact

Whereas in B2B SEO your webpages and content pages are built around target keywords and searcher intent to deliver value and drive conversion – with B2B PPC you build text ads and landing pages to achieve the goal of delivering value and driving conversion.

Considering the intent behind the keyword and what journey stage it is likely to fall under is also critically important in B2B PPC. In fact, unless you are strategically building tailored text ads and landing pages around this keyword intelligence, your paid search performance is likely to be limited.

As a brief overview, the diagram below describes how you should approach your text ads and landing pages depending on the keyword intent type and associated journey stage.

2.2 – Keyword Selection

Whereas in B2B SEO the keyword selection process involves assigning a single primary keyword for each of your website and content pages – B2B PPC is different. Here you need to bundle together multiple (highly similar) keywords into tightly packed groups – which will act as the basis for the creation of your text ads and landing pages. Regarding the actual keywords you decide to target and serve ads for, you can simply utilise the same keyword lists previously developed.

3. Campaign Structure

Your PPC campaigns contain several components.

3.1 – Campaign Structure Levels

The Google Ads platform (and campaign structure) is split into four key levels.

Account Level: This is the top-level layer containing all campaigns – typically an organisation will have just one account.
Campaign Level: Think of this as being the key level as it contains AdGroups, Keywords and the Text ads that will trigger – all closely aligned to a specific topic or theme.
AdGroup Level: These are the sub-topics/themes that fall under the core campaign and contains tightly packed keyword groups of relevant keywords.
Keyword Level: These are essentially the triggers for your text ads – this level also provides granular data and bidding options.

3.2 – Campaign Types

There are generally four major types of PPC campaign that will guide the topics/themes you select at the campaign level.

Persona: Campaigns that are focussed on the key challenges, pain-points and needs related to your target personas. These will usually contain Informational keywords and sit in the identification stage of the buying journey.
Product/Service: Campaigns that are focussed on the products and services you offer to target audiences. These will usually contain Commercial Investigation keywords and sit in the early-consideration stage of the buying journey.
Branded (Product/Service and/or Company): Campaigns that are focussed on your offerings and company – using your brand name within the key phrase. These will usually contain Navigational keywords and sit in the late-consideration & decision stage of the buying journey.
Competition: Campaigns that are focussed on targeting keywords that contain your competitors brand name. these will usually contain Navigational keywords and sit in the late-consideration & decision stage of the buying journey.

4. Text Ads

Your text ads need to fully consider the intent behind a searched keyword and its associated journey stage. Only when you do this can you create ads that will resonate and engage, whilst offering the most relevant CTA. Further to this, the more relevant your text ad is, the better it will pre-qualify search audiences that optimises conversion potential and minimises wasted spend.

4.1 – Text Ad Elements

Headlines: These are the titles of your text ad and should ideally contain the searched keyword (or close variation) along with key statements.
Description: This is where you can describe the value proposition, benefits, and key elements of the topic/theme your text ad is based on.
Call-to-Actions (CTA): This will be included within the ‘description’ and should offer a logical and clear next-step for your searchers with zero ambiguity.
Extensions: These are additional mini elements that can be associated with your text ads and include items such as additional/bulleted text, website links, contact numbers and star ratings.

4.2 – Journey Stage Impact

To maintain alignment in with your PPC campaigns and maximise conversions – you need to consider the impact of the searchers journey stage (and associated keyword intent) when crafting text ads.

Identification Stage (Informational Intent): The keyword suggests the searcher is currently researching around their challenge or pain point and looking for content and resources to increase their knowledge around a particular business topic or theme. The text ad should take this into consideration by offering to plug the searchers knowledge gap and building credibility as a thought-leader. The CTA will be based around further learning and enabling the searcher to become an internal ‘topic leader’ within their organisation/DMU.
Consideration Stage (Commercial Investigation & Navigational Intent): The keyword suggests the searcher is currently looking for a solution for their challenge or pain point having now performed enough research to be in the position to do so. The text ad should surface key benefits and the core value proposition of the product/service/solution and build credibility as a product-leader. The CTA will be based around further exploring the benefits and value provided by an offering.
Decision Stage (Transactional Intent): The keyword suggests the searcher is currently comparing vendors and actively looking to purchase, trial a solution or make a sales enquiry. The text ad should surface the key value derived from using the product/service/solution along with key proof points or statistical figures. The CTA will be based around booking a demo, free trial, submitting a sales enquiry or purchasing the offering.

4.3 – Ad Rank

The ranking position of your text ad within search engines is primarily determined by two key factors:

Bid Price: Refers to the maximum cost you are willing to pay for each click of a text ad (associated to your trigger keywords).
Quality Score: Refers to the keyword-level scoring system that consists of three key sub-elements; expected CTR%, text ad relevancy and landing page experience.

5. Landing Pages

Your campaign structure, keyword choice and text ads are obviously critical, but never forget that it is on the landing page your users will convert and where you will generate value from this channel and drive ROI.

5.1 – Journey Stage Impact

To maintain alignment in with your PPC campaigns and maximise conversions – you need to consider the impact of the searchers journey stage (and associated keyword intent) when crafting landing pages.

Identification Stage (Informational Intent): The page needs to reinforce the text ad by delivering valuable information and resources to the searcher for them to increase their knowledge upon a particular topic.
Consideration Stage (Commercial Investigation & Navigational Intent): The page needs to reinforce the text ad by delivering a deep dive on product/service benefits along with building brand preference.
Decision Stage (Transactional Intent): The page needs to reinforce the text ad by delivering hard facts and statistics on the immediate value derived from the product/service along with case studies, testimonials, and solid proof points.

6. Measurement

A combination of hard and soft metrics should be used to allow measurement of your primary and secondary objectives in relation to the PPC/paid search channel. Jump to Part #8: B2B Marketing Measurement for ideas on what metrics and KPI’s you can utilise as part of your strategy.