Google Paid Search Ads for B2B Software

 

More than any other digital channel, paid search ads allow B2B software companies to target prospects who are in the market for their solutions.

Search ads allow software companies to create campaigns around the searcher’s intent. Whether business prospects are actively evaluating vendors, or just learning about the kinds of software tools that are available, the ad copy and offer can match the searcher’s intent or use case.

 

 

B2B Intent vs. B2C Intent

One key to success is to identify the search terms that prospects are actually using to find your product or service, and to make sure that you budget stays focused on these types of searches. These searches have B2B intent, meaning that they are probably searching for a business use case.

In this example, you can see various searches that prospects would do when looking for ‘event management software.’ You will notice that none of these search terms get more than 2K searches per month.

By contrast, here’s a list of search terms where the searcher either has B2C intent, or they are looking to hire a service provider as opposed to purchasing software.

You will notice that the search volume is much higher for these search terms when compared to the B2B software search terms in the previous table. If a software company is not careful, they can waste their budget on these types of searches.

Good vs Bad Keyword Variants

Google’s use of variants is what causes you to inadvertently show up for B2C and other inappropriate searches. When you provide Google with a Keyword to target, they will of course target the exact phrase that you selected.

They will also target phrases that are very similar. This is helpful because you cannot possibly anticipate all of the possible variations of searches that people will do. Examples here include “event planning software for SMB” and “best software for event planning.”

However, Google will also sometimes target the B2C and other similar searches that you don’t want to appear for. A large number of paid search campaigns fail because the manager unintentionally allows too much of the budget to be spent on these inappropriate searches.

And it is very easy for this to happen on B2B campaigns since there is such a large volume of relevant but inappropriate consumer searches in most categories.

Preventing your ad from appearing for B2C and other inappropriate searches

The first tactic for focusing your campaign is to use only Phrase or Exact matching which tells Google to be more strict in terms of only showing your ads for searches that are the same, or have the same meaning as your chosen keywords.

The second tactic is to make sure that all of the keywords that you target include B2B modifiers that would not be used in a B2C context. These modifiers vary from one business to the next. Some examples include modifiers to specify that the focus is software. This includes words like software, system, platform, and solutions.

Other modifiers may specify that the user is choosing between or comparing different vendors or options.

Other modifiers may specify that the user is looking for alternatives, equivalents, or competitors for a specific vendor.

And other modifiers may specify that the user is looking for software for a certain industry, or for a type of business like startups or small businesses.

The third tactic to prevent your ads from appearing for inappropriate searches is to use negative keywords. With negative keywords, you are telling Google not to show your ad if specific words or phrases are included in the search.

For example, if “free” and “open source” do not match your offer, then you can add those phrases as negatives and your ad will not appear for any searches that include “free” or “open source.” There may be other attributes or features that are not included with your offer that you may want to exclude.

Using the previously mentioned tactics, there’s several other categories of searches we want to avoid including searches that are vague or lacking intent…

Searches that lack purchasing intent and appear to be research or purely informational should be avoided. Examples include “what is CRM” or “how to use Salesforce.”

Likewise, If you are not careful your ads will appear for searches that are related, but inappropriate. Examples include “CRM stock price” and “CRM integration.”

 

 

Create a comprehensive list of high-intent keywords

Because the volume is limited for relevant B2B searches, you want to make sure that your list of highly relevant and high-intent keywords are as comprehensive as possible.

To explain why, imagine that all searches fall somewhere on an axis for the level of relevancy and intent.

The second axis would be for cost-per-click or bid price.

Obviously, we would want to spend as much of the budget as possible in the top left quadrant. These are the less competitive searches where the cost-per-click is low, but the quality of the search terms are high. We can stay in this quadrant by using the previously mentioned tactics to ensure keyword quality and setting a low Maximum bid price.

The only problem is that the volume of these searches may be limited, and not enough for the budget that you’ve allocated. So to spend the full budget, you may have to go into the other quadrants.

However, our goal is to spend the full budget in the top left quadrant, and we need a comprehensive keyword list to make sure that we do so.

When creating a comprehensive list of high-intent keywords, you first start with all of the words and phrases that prospects might use to describe your product, or the functionality or utility of your product.

Then you create a list of B2B modifiers and combine the seed phrases with the modifiers.

To get a list of highly relevant search terms. You then plug each search term into Google’s Planner to get related keywords.

Here we select the search term “event management software” and these are the ideas we get back.

We then go through the list of ideas, select any that meet our criteria for relevancy or intent, and add them to our list of keywords to target.

If any of the suggestions both meet our criteria and are different enough from other search terms, we plug that phrase back into the keyword planner to see what new suggestions it brings up. If you continuously repeat this process, you will eventually run out of new search terms to plug into the Keyword Planner.

 

Demographic & User Behavior Targeting

Location and demographic targeting can be layered on top of the keyword targeting. These options are highly flexible and specific to your offering.

Recent user behavior can also be taken into account. This includes people who have recently done relevant searches and visited relevant web pages, as well as people who have visited your own website.

About the Author

Gregg Kellett has more than 20 years of experience in digital marketing and 18+ years of experience with Google Ads and Google Analytics. This includes 10+ years working for Bloomberg and 4 years for MarketResearch.com where he managed multimillion-dollar advertising budgets for both companies. He holds current Google certifications for Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads, and Google Analytics. In addition to spending the bulk of his career in the investing/finance space, as a hobby he is a Warren Buffett disciple who has been making his own stock picks and following the financial markets for more than decade.

About Vizala Digital

Vizala Digital® is an advertising agency that was founded in 2018 in Falls Church, Virginia - just outside of Washington DC. In the years prior, Google and other ad networks had been adding new technologies that allowed for more precise targeting, targeting of affluent individuals, and targeting of people in the market for specific products and services. With our experience in B2B and financial services, we saw an opportunity to leverage these new technologies to create ad campaigns with better conversion rates and higher quality leads. We specialize in targeting B2B and financial services prospects who are actively researching with an intent to purchase.