May 24, 2022

PPC Works for B2B

PPC works for B2B beyond the shadow of any doubt

Speaking from personal experience, PPC works for B2B. Pay per click advertising (PPC) has generated significant ROI for me with software sales, professional service sales, and technology enabled services sales.

As outlined in the recent B2B Lead Gen article, there is much more to a B2B sales opportunity than getting traffic to fill out a form. But, when operated correctly, PPC absolutely works for organizations selling B2B by providing a steady flow of new leads.

Defining B2B PPC

PPC (Pay per Click) advertising is the process of using search engine advertising to generate new leads for your business-to-business product or service. Social media advertising can sometimes get lumped into PPC, too, but social is outside the scope of this content.

Pros and Cons of PPC Advertising for B2B Companies

As with all things in life, there are tradeoffs with PPC campaigning. Here are the main considerations for your business to business PPC efforts:

Pros

You have the ability to literally turn on a faucet of new leads. There is no faster way to generate a sales pipeline than with PPC.
Hyper targeted advertising. A proficient PPC operator will be able to place get messaging exactly in front or your target market.

Cons

Getting into bidding wars for traffic. In highly competitive spaces, you can expect to “pay” hundreds of dollars per lead on average. Though with an optimized campaign your ROAS (return on ad spend) will turn your ad spend into ROI versus remaining a pure cost. Still, the cost can be daunting for businesses launching PPC efforts when they see what their competitors are spending.
Lead quality (based on conversion to opportunity and eventually customer) will end up being average for you. There is more churn with PPC leads than other digital sources.

Wrapping Up PPC for B2B

PPC for B2B organizations works great if you can keep your budget under control while generating pipeline and, later in the sales process, new sales.

As discussed in the previously linked to B2B Lead Gen article, these leads you’re generating from your PPC landing pages need to be immediately injected into your CRM.

One other word to the wise, if you’re launching a B2B PPC effort it will make the most sense to start with Google Ads instead of immediately branching out to Bing, Baidu, Yandex, etc. The rationale here is 73% of the paid search market share belongs to Google. You should “go fishing where the fish are.”