Who it is for
PPC for B2B: lead quality, long sales cycles, and offline conversions
A B2B enquiry can take three months to become an order, and a form filled in by a student is worth nothing, so an account optimised for form fills optimises for the wrong thing. We manage B2B Google Ads from the Growth tier at £399 a month with offline conversion import from your CRM, so the bidding learns from qualified leads and closed deals rather than submissions, and with Microsoft Ads and its LinkedIn profile targeting where the buyers sit at desks.
Lead quality
The feedback loop that tells the account which leads were real
Google only knows a form was submitted. Your CRM knows whether the person was a buyer, a student, a supplier or a competitor. Connecting the two is the single change that most improves a B2B account, and most accounts we audit have not made it.
- 1
Capture the click ID
The Google click ID is stored with every form submission, in a hidden field, and written to the CRM contact.
- 2
Mark the stages
Your team does what it already does: marks the lead as qualified, proposal sent, won or lost. Nothing new to learn.
- 3
Import the stages as conversions
A scheduled upload, or the CRM's own integration, sends each stage back to Google Ads against the click that started it, within the ninety-day window.
- 4
Bid on the stage that predicts revenue
The primary conversion becomes a qualified lead with a value, not a form fill. Smart Bidding then buys the searches that produce buyers, and the search terms that produced students stop being rewarded.
Match types and negatives
B2B searches share their words with students, job seekers and the curious
“Industrial flooring” is searched by facilities managers and by people writing essays. “Payroll software” is searched by finance directors and by people looking for a job in payroll. The Search Terms report on a B2B account is full of “what is”, “salary”, “course”, “template”, “free” and “definition”, and every one of those clicks costs the same as a buyer's.
So the money terms run at exact match, phrase match carries the longer buying queries with a long negative list beside it, and broad match is allowed only once the offline import is feeding qualified leads back, because at that point the bidding can tell a buyer from a browser and the Search Terms read on Monday confirms it. Our free negative keyword generator seeds the list for your sector on day one.
The cycle problem
Bidding cannot wait six months, so it bids on the early signal
Google Ads attributes a conversion to a click for up to ninety days. A deal that closes in month five is outside the window, so the account never learns from it directly. The answer is to give the bidding a stage it can see: a qualified lead within a week, a proposal within a month, each with a value set from how often that stage becomes an order and what an order is worth. The closed deals that do land inside the window correct the values over time.
The report is built the same way: cost per form fill is on it, but the line that matters is cost per qualified lead and, once the CRM has enough history, cost per won deal against the deal value.
Where B2B buyers search
Desks, office hours, and a second engine Google cannot reach
B2B searches happen on a desktop between nine and six, which is where Bing lives. Microsoft Ads is imported from the cleaned Google account and given a small budget, and its LinkedIn profile targeting lets the bids rise for a search from a company in your target industry or a person in a buying role, which Google cannot do. The ad schedule on both follows the working day, with a lower bid for the evenings when the searches turn into students and the weekend when they stop.
Related
Where this connects
Microsoft Ads management
The second engine, with the LinkedIn targeting B2B accounts use.
Landing pages for PPC
A page that qualifies as it converts: the right questions on the form.
Pricing
B2B accounts start on Growth; offline import is on Scale.
Get a quote
Your sector, your CRM and what a deal is worth; the plan in reply.
Questions from B2B firms
Our sales cycle is six months. How can the ads learn from that?
By feeding back the stages that happen sooner. A lead becomes qualified within days and becomes a proposal within weeks; those stages are imported as conversions with a value that reflects how often they close, so the bidding learns from the early signal of a deal rather than waiting for the order. Closed deals are imported too, inside the ninety-day window, and they correct the values over time.
Which CRM do you need?
Any that can store the Google click ID against a contact and export it: HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Pipedrive, or a spreadsheet if the volume is small. The import is a scheduled upload or a native integration, and we set it up as part of the setup fee.
Do you run LinkedIn ads?
No. Microsoft Ads lets us adjust search bids by LinkedIn company, industry and job function, which reaches the same people when they search rather than when they scroll. LinkedIn's own ad platform is a different product and we say so.
Is exclusivity by sector realistic in B2B?
One business per sector and area on the monthly plans, confirmed personally in the reply. In B2B the area is often the UK, so it is one business per sector, defined as narrowly as your searches are: two commercial cleaning firms cannot both be clients; a cleaning firm and a facilities software firm can.
Tell us your sector, your CRM and what a closed deal is worth. The reply sets out the import and the fee.
If the account is already running, add the customer ID and the reply also shows how many of last quarter's conversions were searches with job, course or salary in them.