PPCChat | What’s Working in B2B PPC? | 11th Aug, 2020

Guest host, Andrea Cruz, discussed about B2B advertising, trend in B2B, tactics to capture B2B traffic and much more, in this week’s PPCChat discussion.

Here is the screencap of the session:

Q1: Do you only do B2B or do you tackle other industries as well?

B2B only here! It’s all we do at gyro – @Mel66

Other industries as well, but I really like doing professional services whether it’s B2B or B2C (or somewhere in between) – @ferkungamaboobo

I do B2B and B2C. Heavy in B2B at the moment though! – @NeptuneMoon

I have done 80% B2B in my career. I only dabble in B2C, and right now my clients are 100% B2B (and I’ve never been happier) – @Mark_from_MKTG

We do a pretty even split of B2B and B2C, with a little B2B2C mixed in. – @DigitalSamIAm

I work in a B2B only digital marketing agency, so tons of lead gen and a few ecommerce B2B clients. – @andreacruz92

I’d say we are 70% B2C and 30% B2B. Some of our clients also serve both! – @ynotweb

We primarily focus on ecommerce PPC, but have a few smaller B2B accounts to keep us sharp. Looking forward to learning today, and sharing where I can. – @PPCKirk

Do much less B2B than I do B2C, so excited to learn from the pros. – @CJSlattery

90% of my clients are B2C, but some serve both B2B & B2C. – @lchasse

All industries, I like B2B, but I struggle to find enough to make it a viable solo practice – @JonKagan

I would say that 90% of our clients are B2C and 10% are B2B. – @adwordsgirl

We do very well for lead generation, which lends itself very well to B2B. I’d say well over half our client base is B2B – @armondhammer

We tackle a lot of different industries. – @jord_stark

50/50 60/40. We get more spend on B2C, but more clients on B2B – @360vardi

We have SaaS clients that tend to be B2B. Lots of transferable knowledge from B2B/SaaS clients that relate to our ecom and DTC brands. – @duanebrown

Q2: What is your top issue when thinking about B2B advertising?

Biggest issue is consumer overlap. Both on terms and audiences / social targeting. One makes ad copy super important, to make it clear that it is enterprise targeted. Also targeting keeps getting worse on the social platforms. I would so love a targeting option that was like “ON AN OFFICE NETWORK” – even in covid – to get in front of the right people. – @armondhammer

Filtering out consumers and focusing exclusively on B2B. Easier w/audiences but still not simple. –  @Mel66

Accurate tracking & attribution. Especially drop-off from MQL to SQL unless really solid CRM and tracking in place – @PPCKirk

Quality traffic is the goal while keeping B2C away and costs low – @andreacruz92

Constantly figuring out ways to make platforms clearly designed for B2C and even more specifically, e-commerce, work for B2B needs. Major issue lately? FACEBOOK COMMENTS. The level of crazy is well past 11 and has been for the past 2 months now.. – @NeptuneMoon

My biggest hurdle is inheriting a poorly configured marketing automation & CRM stack (or Pardot) and trying get that to a place where we can actually track PPC performance down the funnel and effectively nurture leads – @Mark_from_MKTG

don’t forget the #ppcchat hashtag or we won’t see the questions!) First thing- how to laser focus the intended audience – @ynotweb

Hearing it a lot, but one more vote on getting rid of consumer-leaning traffic/impressions – @robert_brady

For me, it’s really about getting the funds and strategy to hit all the core customer touchpoints. A $100 e-commerce buy is one thing — a $10,000 relationship is something totally different. So many B2B plans struggle because they only look for direct-response. – @ferkungamaboobo

B2B tends to be a much longer, much less linear and much more emotional process – this isn’t a quick thing that you can forget; it’s something that’s likely going to be a core part of your life/work for years (and can be career-ending for some people). We invest a ton of time into building budget models + projections (it’s a long-term game – gotta set expectations + identify milestones) understanding our audience, creating relevant content, meticulously targeting every aspect of the campaigns. – @DigitalSamIAm

B2B is one area where (IMO) you need to be brilliant at the basics + buttoned-up in your strategy + structure. B2C mistakes can cost you $5 a click (bad, but not outrageous); B2B mistakes in competitive spaces cost you $100 or $200. Much bigger ouch. – @DigitalSamIAm

Often the client thinks their industry and demand is smaller than they realize (they get that tunnel vision) – @JonKagan

I find that one of the most difficult issues to work through with a client is getting their feedback to coordinate value tracking. If they have a CRM it’s a lot easier. Some don’t tho, and when the sales cycle is 12 months and the contract is 3 it can get rough. – @jord_stark

Understanding the audience and what the client actually does and cares about. So many B2B clients have a really hard way of explaining something really simple + a lot of acronyms and industry terms – @360vardi

Where do our potential customers live and hangout online. How do we standout in a crowded market of very similar products and brands. Especially when we work with VC backed startups or brands like WooCommerce that competes with Shopify. – @duanebrown

Q3: Any interesting trends you are seeing in B2B?

A lot of people complain about low budgets, but according to eMarketer, B2Bs are seeing a surge in spend and desktop traffic https://t.co/mkNFtutpmB . Quite a few clients have asked to focus on awareness and traffic with paid, and then magically wait for the user to come back. Sometimes they might mention leveraging remarketing but unless they get a ton of quality traffic, this is a challenge– @andreacruz92

exactly this. Way more desktop search. No events – if they are happening at all they are virtual. No print and OOH. More digital. – @Mel66

The trend is that B2B clients are nervous & edgy about the economy taking a downturn (= some businesses will not survive) – @ynotweb

I have found that B2B starts feeling recession issues before B2C in a lot of cases. For me right now it is getting clients to breathe and be willing to do the things we need to do to keep things flowing. When they get nervous and want to contract, it’s hard. – @NeptuneMoon

Demand always spikes right before the end of the quarter, while new quarter budgets are getting ready to be used – @JonKagan

online events/workshops etc continue to slay despite the space getting saturated. I don’t know how people attend 10 online events a week but I’m not complaining. Ive been hitting remarketing hard and it’s paying off! Specifically LinkedIn LGFs. Lots of search traffic still coming in. Scaring this out fully and letting higher intent search rock right now! – @markpgus

I have been personally experiencing a shift in alternative offers to the demo/trial request that are customized to personas, especially those that are sales averse. Also webinars as evergreen content, not just one time, and a great comfortability with FB/IG – @Mark_from_MKTG

I think there’s a lot of replacement of the wine, dine and sign model that’s happening right now. And this isn’t easy to displace for some categories of B2B that are well entrenched with long term players. Webinars don’t create the same relationship – @armondhammer

I have been experimenting with in-market audiences for search and pairing them with top-of-funnel keywords as a way to qualify traffic. – @shepzirnheld

he shift in budgets for 2021 from conferences and in-person. B2B are still trying to figure out what to do. – @360vardi

To many brands look a like and don’t standout. Not a good trend at all. – @duanebrown

Q4: What platforms / tactics do you use to attract top of the funnel B2B traffic?

Social is great for top of funnel. Search can be too, using non-branded broader keywords – but only if you have good lead scoring. –  @Mel66

Google Ads search, if CPCs allow it, can be very powerful. Facebook Ads and Display Ads are cheap options to get users to the website for the first time – @andreacruz92

Another challenge is telling the client, hey I am going to target managers. Then the client says, they are not the decision making person – so explain to them that there are multiple stakeholders in the decision and use top of the funnel traffic to target them – @andreacruz92

Target on LinkedIn, retarget on Facebook. And, a LI lookalike on FB (including all LI traffic) has been performing well lately too. – @NeptuneMoon

I’ve rapidly become a fan of @Quora for B2B TOM advertising, along with Twitter, FB (don’t let it go crazy) and OFC LinkedIn. On the search side, @MSAdvertising is awesome – and gotta love that Bing is a default search engine for many large companies. – @DigitalSamIAm

I’ve been really pushing to get audiences tagged at the top of funnel. I like using FB and Youtube there, and then using both retargeting and lookalike on other channels. Sadly I just don’t have the options to target as much as I’d like – @armondhammer

Offers: content downloads that indicate broad product interest (ie for a Salesforce integration platform, The Complete Guide to Salesforce integrations) Platforms: Always LinkedIn and sometimes FB, IG, Quora, Twitter, Display, Search if CPCs are low – @Mark_from_MKTG

I’d say this is more difficult- and we use our SEO & social media branches more often for this- content marketing, educational, inbound… Most of our B2B clients don’t want to pay for that upper funnel traffic directly. – @ynotweb

ALL ABOUT SEARCH!!! Social will work exponentially better when high quality search traffic is coming to the site! Remarketing/LOokalike audiences in Facebook can kill it if built on the foundation of a lot of high quality traffic/data flowing through! – @markpgus

focus on long tail/specific keywords that are less common on the consumer side, and alot of affinity/in market audience targeting – @JonKagan

FB is killing it for stuff I’m doing recently. I used to think B2B on FB was so hard, but we finally figured out some things with targeting, ad types etc.. I am a FB hater normally, but i’ll be damn the client is happy, I’m happy – @360vardi

Anything search related from Google and Microsoft to Quora Ads. – @duanebrown

in the years ago that I used to work on B2B clients we used top of funnel with Paid Search (but the chunk of the budget did go to BOF) – also SEM and Social media. – @mindswanppc

Q5: What platforms / tactics do you use to capture middle of the funnel leads from B2B traffic?

Two words: LinkedIn Ads – I love it, I will defend it non-stop. IMO LinkedIn is the best platform to guarantee you are sending quality traffic through the middle of your funnel – @andreacruz92

Custom Intent/Affinity Display campaigns have been doing really well for us recently. Then we remarket on LinkedIN & FB. Remarketing or email campaigns that follow up and address specific pain points in the customer journey. The middle of the funnel touch points are crucial. – @jord_stark

LinkedIn is an obvious sweet spot for this. Good old GDN retargeting too if you’ve segmented people with ToF interest – @timothyjjensen

You have to go with LinkedIn ads here. I still like Google retargeting as well. – @lchasse

push more on price based searches – @JonKagan

LinkedIn ads all the way! LaLs, job title, skills, and group audience make this very doable. I would usually promote some sort of gated demo video or an evergreen webinar as a strong “MoFu” asset. – @Mark_from_MKTG

Everyone knows but LINKEDIN ADS. such a rich B2B dataset. Let that be your filter so you don’t clog up saws with leads! It’s also the least sophisticated platform when it comes to bid automation so small audiences are ok here! – @markpgus

Custom Intent, Google and Bing Retargeting. We are also working with Clutch & LI – @ynotweb

Really depends — I do like LinkedIn, but it can get expensive; I’ve been all about a “navigate-them-through-by-committee” approach with GDN/YouTube, Search, Quora + Twitter. I use LinkedIn at the TOM more than the middle, b/c I want access to those audiences early– @DigitalSamIAm

channels same as top funnel (excepting of YouTube) but with different audience targeting & expected action. I.E. remarketing content visitors to bring to product pages, and if they don’t sign up, remarket them later with gated content that introduces product value – @corimarcano

looks like LinkedIn is the winner here. I’m not even going to try to argue this. Unfortunately this wasn’t a popular opinion when i was doing B2B – @mindswanppc

Follow-up question, has anyone tried advertising on podcasts or connected TV? – @360vardi

Q6: What platforms / tactics do you use to capture bottom of the funnel leads from B2B traffic?

Remarketing or very specific keywords on Google with tons of bid modifiers based on audience, behavior and so on – @andreacruz92

Linkedin is the way – @JonKagan

In an ideal world, it’s some combination of late-stage remarketing, branded search + email; in reality, it’s a those things, plus some lead forms (LI + FB, depending on the client) – @DigitalSamIAm

GIVE ME LEAD GEN FORMS…. if you have data that an audience is an ideal fit reduce friction! You can also just reduce form lines for these audiences and enrich the data later! – @markpgus

an my sweet spot – Google Ads and Bing. Definitely long tail keywords to the Buy Now or lead generation page. i.e. make it easy for them to convert! – @mindswanppc

Product related search kws on Google/Bing -In some instances job title targeting & LaLs have worked for me on LI & FB (LaLs only here) -Retargeting demo abandoners and ToFu conversions across paid social, display, and search -CRM remarketing. CRM retargeting is one of my favorite things to do across paid social (especially with the @HubSpot ads add in). If you have enough contacts you can really work some magic converting ToFu leads and cold MQLs/SQLs. #ppcchat (shameless plug cypressnorth.com/display-advert…)  – @Mark_from_MKTG

Definitely paid search, but also what I call lower remarketing: remarket product page visitors with value of the features of the product to help them sign up and try our them out – @corimarcano

google ads, paid directories (capterra, software advice, etc), and sometimes LinkedIn. Paid directories have been the most consistent source of bofu leads over the years – @atjoshnelson

Remarketing, remarketing, and more remarketing. If your audiences are big enough, I like to segment further, but that is not always an option. – @lchasse

Google and remarketing still works better. The real problem is the feedback loop for closing rates and the high CPCs of some of these keywords. Sometimes, it’s just better getting 100 FB leads for low CPCs that you know are lower quality than 5 Google search leads – @360vardi

I do a higher intent remarketing so not just people who have been on site but those who have spent extra time, visited key pages, or downloaded the whitepaper. Layer that with demographics and converting audiences etc – @jord_stark

Remarketing, customer lists from people who have interacted with the company – @timothyjjensen

Google & Bing long-tail search, remarketing and remarketing with “asset” on LI or FB Ads in some cases. – @marksubel

maybe unpopular opinion but I hate when people put dollars behind contacts you have in your database. Let automation/email take care of them. Unless they aren’t engaging don’t spend money. Focus on NN leads. – @markpgus

Branded search and remarketing. – @Mel66

google ads, paid directories (capterra, software advice, etc), and sometimes LinkedIn. Paid directories have been the most consistent source of bofu leads over the years – @atjoshnelson

Q7: Which platform/tactic do you avoid for B2B accounts?

I would not say no to anything. Normally, I would not use the ones that have a younger audience, but I’ll try them if I think I can catch my target audience at a time my competitors are not. As long as I don’t have to take them out of their current platform – @360vardi

Same. Never done snap or pinterest, very little FB. – @jord_stark

Snapchat. TikTok. Pinterest (unless the client has a very visual product). Snapchat & TikTok skew too young – decision makers do not have time to fart around on these apps lol – @Mel66

I’m glad I’ve finally had the chance to play with Pinterest Ads for a B2C client recently. But I honestly don’t see a B2B use for that platform. As far as tactics to avoid – trying to push a quote/purchase right away is the wrong tactic for B2B products with a long sales cycle (except maybe for some search keywords with very high intent)  – @timothyjjensen

snapchat 🙂 – @JonKagan

I have not done much Instagram and no Pinterest or Snapchat for B2B clients. Very little YouTube either, as @Mel66 said – often lack of video assets, which is a shame. – @NeptuneMoon

I tend to avoid Pinterest, Yahoo!, Snap* + TikTok — though I’m starting to see opportunities for some strategic Snap ads in the right B2B context + for the right audience. – @DigitalSamIAm

I would not say no to anything. Normally, I would not use the ones that have a younger audience, but I’ll try them if I think I can catch my target audience at a time my competitors are not. As long as I don’t have to take them out of their current platform – @360vardi

We think our personas are not using any of the new(ish) social media platforms, so we don’t use much instagram or GDN (acquisition), and we’ve never used snapchat, pinterest, tiktok. – @corimarcano

I avoid Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest *and sometimes* Display. I’ve actually had a surprising amount of success with Instagram. – @Mark_from_MKTG

Q8: What’s your wish list for B2B advertising?

Job title targeting and company size filtering everywhere! A Better tracking for this is a thing that goes across B2B, B2C, DTC and all the crazy names out there today– @andreacruz92

In general, would always love to have more accuracy in attribution. But that’s a pretty major problem to fix – @timothyjjensen

realistic expectations – @JonKagan

Better interfaces to scale and do things quicker and more efficiently. I wish every platform had an offline editor to expedite. – @marksubel

with every client a full connectivity from their CRM to the platforms, so we can tell good/bad leads and not have to pull 2 sources of data and patch – @360vardi

omg, more segmentation abilities across platforms of course. Per my video comment, more great video assets by B2B clients. – @lchasse

More clients understanding customer funnels, Lifetime Value and ROI. You dont get $100k contract on a single $2 CPC – @ynotweb

Job title targeting and quality lookalikes on every platform More CRMs/Mktg Automation platforms with integrations with ad platforms (and support beyond Google/Facbeook/LinkedIn) Easier connection of deal information to networks for ROI optimization/reporting – @Mark_from_MKTG

I’ll go back to your second question. Full integration of channels (paid + others) with the CRM to have better (and data driven!) information about the impact of our paid media investments, the quality of leads, and an accurate ROAS! – @corimarcano

The best digital marketing in the world will not make up for a terrible web experience, a bad or ill-positioned product/service. And finally, sales people still need to actually make sales close… – @NeptuneMoon

people understanding the difference in intent with search and social! I have pulled lead to MQL reports for multiple clients recently and they’re always shocked that social has a much higher lag…. seems obvious that having intent speeds up the process. – @markpgus

Besides better UI for LinkedIn? Better B2B targeting for Google. Even the B2B audiences you can get whitelisted for haven’t performed great for me. – @jord_stark

Where do I start? 😀 Job title targeting – at least offer it! Better UIs for LI and Twitter. More retargeting options. Better tracking all the way through the funnel – connect the dots better (this is on clients, usually). More B2B friendly features (looking at you Google) . Ways to opt out of crazy stuff that doesn’t apply to B2B (looking at Google again). – @Mel66

For platforms to realize that B2B is a huge market and give us capabilities that are geared toward lead gen more. For clients to realize that marketing still takes tremendous effort and expense, even though it is now mostly digital. – @NeptuneMoon

PPCChat Participants:

• Andrea Cruz –  @andreacruz92
• Julie F Bacchini – @NeptuneMoon
• Jon Kagan – @JonKagan
• Melissa Mackey – @Mel66
• Mark T Saltarelli – @Mark_from_MKTG
• Daniel Vardi – @360vardi
• Mark Gustafson – @markpgus
• Steve Hammer – @armondhammer
• Jordan Stark  – @jord_stark
• Anu of Mindswan – @mindswanppc
• Robert Brady – – @robert_brady
• Duane Brown – @duanebrown
• lchasse – @lchasse
• Sam – @DigitalSamIAm
• Kammy Caruss – @ynotweb
• Cornia Marcano – @corimarcano
• Christine Shephard Zirnheld – @shepzirnheld
• Mark Subel – @marksubel
• Tim Jensen @timothyjjensen
• Kirk Williams @PPCKirk

Related Links:

• PPCChat | Life Beyond Facebook & Google | 28th July 2020
• PPCChat | PPC Trends & Campaigns That Are Nailing It Or Failing It | 7th April 2020
• PPCChat | Local PPC | 30th June 2020