How Important is PPC for Your B2B Company?

Feb 12, 2020

It’s been a little while since we wrote about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. It’s about time we bring it back to the basics and dive into PPC advertising strategies for B2B companies. To decide whether or not to invest in PPC ads, first we have to answer the question: “How important is PPC for your B2B company?”

How Important is PPC for Your B2B Company?

To answer this big picture question, there’s a few more specific questions that will help decide how important PPC is for your B2B company.

First of all, what are PPC ads for B2B companies?

PPC for B2B companies allows for targeted, specific ads that will lead potential customers to your site. This blog post from August goes into exactly what PPC advertisements are and the benefits and negatives of them. If you don’t want to read that whole blog post, here are bullet points to catch you up to speed:

PPC ads. . .

  • have instant results
  • produce quality traffic
  • are measurable
  • are controllable

On the other hand, PPC ads can. . .

  • be ignored
  • get expensive
  • become time consuming

The moral of the story here is that PPC ads need to be run with a careful eye and then they can have great results for your B2B company.

Does PPC work for B2B companies?

The short answer is yes—PPC advertising campaigns can work for B2B companies. They have the potential to lead very interested customers to a page on your site. This leads to a direct line between engaged customers and a specific service, product, or aspect of your brand. In the same way that they work for a B2C company, PPC ads catch someone’s eye and can draw them to your site. Since they pop up before other search results, the first impression can make a big difference.

How do you prepare for a PPC campaign?

Before you run an effective PPC campaign, check to see if your website is a nice place to land. This could be a specialized landing page for the specific service, product, or aspect of your brand that you highlight in the ad. Make sure your website and page has a fast loading rate. If the visitor has to wait a while for your page to load, chances are they won’t stick around. They’ll hop on down to the next search result. So optimize your website for fast loading rates.

How do you run an effective B2B PPC campaign?

When running ads for B2B companies it’s important to recognize that the search volume for these keywords are lower than for B2C keywords. This means you’ll have less number of results, but your results will usually be pretty targeted.

When thinking of keywords for B2B campaigns, consider the acronyms your field uses. If a manufacturing company is searching for a product, they’ll likely use the in-field acronym when Google searching versus a longer, more wordy description. Utilizing acronyms and industry jargon can bump up the effectiveness of your PPC keyword ads.

In addition to industry keywords, consider using words like supplier, vendor, and company to play into a conversational tone that some people use while Google searching.

How does the B2B buying cycle affect PPC campaigns?

Since the buying cycle is longer for B2B purchases, the PPC results may take effect in a few months, rather than right away. Building on to that, the B2B buying process has many steps. Consider running various PPC campaigns for the different audiences involved in each layer. This means you might want to target ads to initial researchers, buyers, and high-level decision makers.

To continue improving your company’s advertising, reach out to RedMoxy. Our services include media planning, analytics and reporting, lead strategy and nurturing, and full social media work.