The Pros and Cons of Launching a B2B PPC Campaign
The online business space has become overcrowded.
Imagine 175 new websites being added to the internet every minute, which makes it extremely difficult for businesses to catch users' attention.
Agreed, ranking in SERPs would help drive traffic and conversions on your website. To that end, SEO folks could use a range of SEO permutations and combinations over an extended period that may even get your rankings rights.
But even then, you cannot be sure. So, yes, there are a lot of ifs and buts when it comes to driving traffic to your website.
This is where a B2B PPC campaign can be helpful. However, given the money and time required, such campaigns are meant for only some businesses.
So, let's learn the pros and cons of B2B PPC discussed in this blog to help you make a correct decision. Before we discuss the pros and cons at length, let's first get an idea of what B2B PPC campaigns are.
What is B2B PPC?
B2B and PPC are trendy acronyms, so I am skipping their expansion here and directly getting into the meat of the matter, i.e., what’ B2B PPC’ is.
B2B PPC is about businesses advertising services to other businesses through a pay-per-click model.Businesses pay for every PPC ad click. The strategies and tactics used in B2B are very dissimilar to those used in B2C. Here’s how they are different.
What makes B2B Campaigns Distinct from B2C Campaigns
B2B Campaigns differ from B2C Campaigns like chalk and cheese. Here are four distinct ways that make them unique from B2C campaigns.
Slower Sales Cycle: Unlike B2C, the scope of immediate sales in B2B PPC campaigns is almost negligible. However, a PPC sets the scene for future actions, leading to traffic and leads.
Industry-centric Keywords: B2B advertisers bid for industry-centric or niche keywords that align with their business. For example, a B2B company that provides mobile app development solutions will prefer to target keywords that app development seekers would be looking for rather than general keywords.
Higher Cost-per-Click (CPC): The CPC in B2B PPC campaigns is higher than in B2C. This is because B2B products and services come with higher price tags and longer contract terms. Don’t sweat, though, as it won’t pinch you in the longer term, as B2B customers offer higher lifetime value.
Content Strategy: The content strategy is more educational than commercial and revolves around webinars, whitepapers, and case studies that expose customers to the value of the offering.
If you plan to run your PPC campaigns this year, follow the platforms you can look into.
Popular Platforms to Run B2B PPC Campaigns
The ideal platform for your B2B PPC campaigns depends on your industry, target audience, and business goals.
Some of the most commonly used platforms for B2B PPC campaigns include:
Google Ads: Google Ads allows you to advertise on many Google platforms, such as Google SERPs, YouTube, Google Display Network, and more. Given Google’s massive reach, many B2B marketers prefer it over other platforms.
LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn is a networking site specifically designed for professionals, which makes it an ideal platform for B2B advertising. Given that the platform boasts business leaders, decision-makers, and industry leaders, it is costlier compared to other platforms. The best part? You can target users based on their profiles, industry, team size, and more. Types of ads on LinkedIn comprise Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, Sponsored content, and more.
X Ads: This platform is ideal for those in the tech and software industry. It allows you to target customers based on their interests, keywords, and followers.
Meta Ads: Facebook and Instagram ads are often effective for B2C campaigns but are equally suitable for B2B campaigns if your product has a broader appeal.
Reddit Ads: Reddit is yet another ideal platform to consider for B2B PPC advertising. Ads can be created based on user interest or specific subreddits. However, avoid overt advertising. Brands should ensure their ads are thoughtful and add value to the communities.
Quora Ads: As you know, Quora is a question-and-answer platform. If your target audience is hanging out at Quora looking for expert advice or knowledge, Quora can be an ideal platform for PPC.
The Pros of Launching a B2B PPC Campaign
Simply relying on SEO to drive organic traffic and conversions can be time-consuming. This is where PPC campaigns can help. Here are a few advantages that B2B businesses stand to gain by leveraging PPC campaigns.
Quick Results Vis-a-Vis SEO
The rationale behind opting for PPC campaigns is to generate quick results in the form of relevant traffic and conversions, unlike SEO tactics that are tedious and time-consuming. Rapid results are possible because PPC campaigns provide you with ‘target audience’ options that help you reach the right people quickly.
Pro tip: If you plan a new product launch or seasonal promotions, consider B2B PPC campaigns.
Hyper-Targeted Advertising
As it turns out, PPC ads are hyper-targeted, unlike traditional advertising, which randomly targets any user that comes its way. For instance, Google Ads helps you reach the right audience through demographic targeting, interest-based targeting, and, more importantly, based on the keywords that searchers seek. This means your ads will pop up once when users search for solutions your business provides, increasing engagement and conversions.
Pause, Rinse, Repeat Campaigns
PPC campaigns are effective because you are not supposed to spend all the promised money on them but cut back on them as and when you feel that they are not meeting your desired ROI targets. Such flexibility allows refinement during a running campaign without the risk of sunken costs.
Track Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
PPC is purely data-driven. This means you can use real-time data analytics to optimize your campaigns continually. Simply put, you can have access to granular details of all performing and underperforming ad assets. The CTR will help you pin down those ad headlines that the audience finds appealing.
All said and done, the most crucial metric it helps you track is ROAS - Return On Ad Spend. This metric will tell you whether your ad spent is more/less than revenue. So much data gathering will help you decide several factors, such as whether to retain or refine the keywords, introduce new ad variations, and drive increased returns on ad spend over a while.
Enables Brand Awareness
The continual bombardment of ads may initially seem counterintuitive. But believe us, CTR and ROAS are just one part of the story when it comes to PPC ads. Brand awareness forms the other part of the story, and maybe it occupies a far more important share in your marketing spend than the former.
When potential customers see your ads over and over again for their search queries, your brands get lodged in their brains. Even if they shy away from clicking your ads for the time being, be assured that they are going to come back to your ads when they are actively looking for a solution your business provides.
Pro tip: Brand Building is not destructive for businesses entering competitive markets or launching new businesses.
The Cons of Launching a B2B PPC Campaign
B2B PPC campaigns will drain your budgets, result in click fraud, and be an all-consuming affair for your team, leaving little time for core business activities.
Let’s dive into detail the negatives of B2B PPC campaigns:
Costly Affair
Industry-specific keywords don’t come cheap. When you bid for such competitive keywords, costs simply go up, yielding no actual returns on ROAS. The only way out is to allocate a sizable budget for PPC campaigns or conjure creative campaigns using long-tail keywords. Even optimizing landing pages might help a bit.
However, don’t forget that you would bump into loads and loads of similar-sounding ads that could create hurdles for your business. Sure, PPCs are ideal for quick results, but at the same time, you need to be realistic about results.
Click Frauds
Click frauds are commonplace in the PPC world. Google Ads has been fighting this issue but with no real results. The result is click fraud carried out by automated bots, which could use up all your ad budget with zero conversions.
Though metrics monitoring and fraud detection tools can help, there’s no absolute way to eliminate such click frauds. Therefore, there will invariably be a certain percentage of ad spending wasted in the overall PPC budget.
Pro tip: Focus on niche keywords, not to mention keep revising your campaigns that could result in actual clicks rather than automated clicks.
Time-consuming
Setting up a PPC campaign to achieve consistent results may initially seem easy. But for consistent results, you must be a jack of all trades—keyword research, bidding strategies, dissecting complex data, and copywriting.
Plus, you need to constantly be on your toes, monitor the campaigns, update the bids, and use different approaches to stay ahead of the competition. I admit that all this could be time-consuming and affect your business if you lack resources.
Hiring a PPC specialist may seem more viable but would mean additional costs.
Ad Exhaustion
If you think you can bombard your users with ads, think again because your users will likely tune you out. Intrusive ads, irrelevant ads, and even retargeting ads might annoy the users and might as well be rightly or wrongly perceived as a ‘desperate strategy @ brand revival’ by the users.
For a PPC campaign to be successful, you need to be more creative and strategic than this. In other words, you must keep changing your ads, use high-impact copywriting, and target the right audience. This will ensure you are not adding to the existing noise.
How to Hire a B2B PPC Advertising Agency?
B2B PPC is an expensive strategy. Running in-house PPC campaigns may not only be pricey but also time-consuming if you lack qualified resources.
Hiring a B2B advertising agency can be the safest bet, as they will have all the requisite resources to make a success of your campaign. However, tickmark all the requirements on this checklist before you sign the contract.
Check testimonials to find successful PPC campaigns they have run so far
Their forte is ad copywriting, bidding, and targeting the correct audience
Their knowledge of the latest trends
Their experience in tracking and reporting campaign results
Additional services such as SEO and social media
Finding answers to all the questions will help you find an agency that fits your needs. Lastly, check out how willing they are to answer your queries.
Wrapping up - Leverage PPC If It Aligns with Your Business Goals
By now, you already know that a PPC campaign is not every business’s cup of tea. Suppose you target highly competitive keywords and take on filthy-rich competitors head-on. In that case, you must shell out accordingly and continually pause, rinse, and repeat your campaigns to stay in the competition. It’s a marathon with money and mind games involved.
So, understand the pros and cons and see whether such ads align with your business needs.