Google Ads Strategies for B2B Marketing

How to Use Google Ads for Marketing

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can propel your business to newer levels and deliver great returns from your online marketing expenditure. While there are several methods of PPC advertising, it is Google Ads that reigns supreme. Namely, using Google Ads to drive traffic to your website is the most effective to generate sales leads for your business as well as listing your business on Google plus local.

In light of this, virtually any business looking to generate qualified, low-cost sales leads should capitalize on this powerful tool. In this article, we present you five Google Ads strategies to power your B2B marketing.

Begin with Keywords

It is imperative that you focus on the keywords that work for you. This is the single most important factor in building the best Google Ads strategy to garner positive returns from your advertising.

Keyword Match Types

Using different keyword match types gives you greater control over which searches on Google can trigger your ad. There are four different match types to help you optimize your campaign.

Match Type	How to Specify	Example Keyword	Example Searches
Broad Match	None, this is the default match type	Dog Walking	Dog Walking Pet Sitter Dog Sitting Walking
Broad Match Modifier	+ keyword	+Dog Walking	Dog Walking How to Walk a Dog Dog Sitting
Phrase Match	“keyword”	“Dog Walking”	Dog Walking Price Best Dog Walking Route Dog Walking Services Near Me
Exact Match	[keyword]	[Dog Walking]	Dog Walking Dog Walker

Negative Keywords

Once you’ve selected your keywords and have started your campaign, you will start to see that some searches are valuable, and others are not. To further optimize your campaign, trim anything irrelevant using negative keywords.

When Trimming, Watch for: 

• Irrelevant searches – You should ensure that every search is relevant to your business. Hence, depending on how wide your keywords are, you should exclude pop culture references, homonyms, misspellings, as well as NSFW searches.
• Unqualified traffic – You need to exclude people who are not really ready to buy and who would still cost you a click. These may include online learners, job seekers, budget hunters, online learners, as well as press and review seekers.

It is advisable to pay attention to lead quality. Users looking for free software via Google, for instance, would convert well on a free trial. Hence, you should lure-in instead of excluding traffic for free products.

Negative Keyword Match Types

Match Type	How to Specify	Example Negative Keyword	Ad Will Show	Ad Will Not Show
Negative broad match	None	Mercedes Benz	The German beautiful Benz	Is the Benz made by Mercedes
Negative Phrase Match	“keyword”	“Grilled Chicken”	Do you love your chicken boiled or grilled?	Tasty grilled chicken recipes
Exact Match	[keyword]	[Brown Envelope]	The Envelope is Brown	Brown Envelope

Bonus Tips On Negative Keyword Strategy

• Capitalize on users searching with action words such as “purchase,” “buy,” “trial,” “free,” and “demo.” When you are paying for expensive keywords, it is advisable to ensure that the converting keywords are at the bottom of your sales funnel.
• Make use of the keyword planner tool and perform simple Google searches to see what happens. If there are trends and popular terms that don’t favor your business, consider building that negative keyword list.
• Automate the process. After figuring out all your negative keyword terms, consider adding them in bulk. This is an excellent time-saver.

Strategic Remarketing

Our second Google Ads strategy is strategic remarketing. While remarketing is profitable when done correctly, most companies get it wrong and end-up achieving undesirable results. Here are a few tips to help you have successful remarketing:

• Bid on conversion – You should center every retargeting effort around the value you are offering to your prospects. Present a different value proposition or message based on where the user dropped off. If the user abandoned a shopping cart, for instance, retarget them and offer them some form of discount.
• Time-delayed retargeting – Targeting a prospect for two months can end up being annoying. The best solution to this is to create a time-delayed retargeting campaign. This will significantly minimize fatigue since you will be delivering new messages, designs, and ads in an organized order.

Use Gmail Ads to Target Your Competitor’s Clients

Another brilliant Google Ads strategy is to take advantage of the one billion or more Gmail users. How do you do this?

Simply use Gmail ads to:

• Target users who have visited certain websites.
• Target users who are interacting with particular domains.
• It is worth noting that a high Cost per Action (CPA) is not always a bad thing. It is advisable to evaluate your prospect’s lifetime value and bid accordingly.

Effectively Challenge Competitor’s Keywords

Gmail Ads may not be working for you. The Google Ads marketing strategy for this case is to take the conventional route. Namely, target the competitors’ keywords on the search network.

SEMrush, the ultimate keyword resource, is one of the companies that have perfected the use of this strategy. When targeting your competitors’ keywords, it is imperative that your content is relevant not only to the ad but also to the search term. Otherwise, your ad would be reported and removed.

It is also worth noting that while you can bid on your competitors’ brand names, you cannot use those brand names in your advertising copy. Otherwise, your ad could be removed.

Add Extensions to Get More Real Estate and Click-throughs for Free

The last, but not least, Google advertising strategy is to add extensions. This will earn you more real estate, a 10-15% better click-through-rate (CTR), and improved Ad Quality score for free.

What are Extensions?

These are added snippets of information, which you can tack onto your ad to enhance the effectiveness of your selling proposition. If you search “Pensacola real-estate agent,” for instance, the top position ad takes up about 35 percent of the real estate on smartphone devices.

Moreover, when targeting competitors, you should allow the site links to direct the user to a competitor comparison page, having their brand keywords, thus enhancing the quality-score for ads that bid on competitor brand keywords. This is also a brilliant way to help customers understand why your brand is better than brand X.

Final Thoughts

Google Ads is a powerful tool for B2B marketing. However, many companies have a hard time getting desirable results from their PPC advertising. This is because they don’t understand how to target and engage with their prospects. Successful B2B marketing goes beyond just knowing your customers. You should also master every successful Google Ads strategy.

If you want any professional help with your PPC campaigns, including Google Ads, just contact Lucid Advertising. We are a full marketing agency that will take care of all your digital marketing needs.