B2B marketers are typically not included in most articles, case studies, and analytics. Even when mentioned, these marketing activities are referred to as “B2B” rather than industry-specific.
In this article, digital marketing agency specialist Mārtiņš Tirzītis tells how to use a set of B2B ideas in Google Ads ads to bypass the platform’s limitations and use many marketing subcategories, including e-commerce, education, healthcare.
People tend to ignore several useful factors because they are not specific to the B2B approach.
Basic bugs and platform limitations
No ad schedule
Businesses won’t be looking for your site any day or any time. If you’re helping a business that has never used Google Ads before, it’s a good idea to look into Google Analytics.
With Google Analytics, you can understand exactly when prospects are engaging with your business and whether these prospects are passively researching your business or actively filling out contact forms.
An important part of creating an ad schedule is also knowing what you want to promote during a certain period of time. If your landing page says visitors can request live customer support, but your team can’t help at 3 in the morning, you should not promote that particular page during that time period.
Common sense will also come in handy when creating advertising graphics.
For example, if you are repairing kitchen equipment for restaurants, you need to consider customer schedules. Their busiest times (when they need to respond urgently) will depend on the type of restaurants. Catering establishments open in the evening will need help both at night and on weekends, but the most free time for a cafe will be in the morning.
While generating small, yet important analytical insights, you can also think about reviewing ad planning and making price adjustments.
Lack of control over where your ads appear
Many B2B companies operate in sensitive or highly regulated verticals
As such, maintaining your ad placements is critical for any marketer working with these tools.
Running search ads on the Display Network or the Search Partner Network are two things you don’t want to do if you want to protect your brand and save money on your advertising budget.
When creating search ads, you can use keywords to predict user search intent.
But display ads use targeting to increase awareness. Therefore, creating search campaigns with “image selection” turned on is a quick way to lose visibility where your ads are showing.
On the other hand, we have search partners. Your ad appears on pages you can’t track, you can’t adjust your bids, and you can’t stop unnecessary placements.
Why use Google Ads anyway? B2B may get some leads, but almost none of those leads will make it to MQLs or SQLs.
Intermediate issues and platform limitations
Still using Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAG)
SKAG was probably one of the most popular tactics in B2B marketing a decade ago. However, it is no longer worth implementing them at the moment.
What are they and why were they so popular? This means creating an ad group with one keyword, and that keyword had to have its own ad text and landing page. This means that all messaging between your keywords, your ad, and your landing page is the same. Keeping that messaging consistent means the quality of your ad will be higher, too.
When Google Ads expanded the match types to include close variants, keywords with the same meaning, entire industry, this tactic lost a lot of power. Now, there’s no guarantee that all messages will line up, so you end up competing against yourself.
The entire marketing industry has evolved to understand that the focus should be on the quality and usability of the overall experience, rather than just trying to match keywords to landing pages.