Businesses are always seeking new customers to connect with. This is especially true for companies that market their products or services to other businesses, the B2B model. B2B lead generation helps sellers introduce their products or services to the market and strengthen their position through active advertising and marketing techniques. One of the most effective tools for this is pay-per-click (PPC), which we’ll discuss in detail today.
What is the B2B Lead Generation Process?
The B2B lead generation process begins when a business starts sharing information about its products or services, such as publishing content on its website, running social media ads, or hosting in-person events and webinars. It is often followed by a dormant period in which prospects and the marketing team begin to engage with each other. The length of this stage can vary depending on each prospect’s level of interest.
These initial activities aim to urge interest among a carefully targeted audience who have the potential to become customers. The goal of this early phase is to attract potential buyers and move them toward becoming qualified leads through a sales funnel.
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How the B2B Sales Funnel Works
The formal lead generation process begins when a prospect takes an action that signals interest in a product or service. For example, downloading a case study or guide from a company’s website after submitting their email address. At this point, the individual becomes a prospect.
After showing the initial interest, all the leads then travel through a sales funnel. This sales funnel can be categorised into its three stages:
- Top of the Funnel: The funnel is wide at the start, meaning all types of leads are captured to gather as many interested customers as possible.
- Middle of the Funnel: As the funnel narrows, the interested customers and the business’s marketing team communicate back and forth to see if they are a match for each other.
- End of the Funnel: The leads passed on to the sales team by the marketing team are the most compatible with what the business provides and are highly likely to become a spending customer or business partner.
With PPC, you can make sure your adverts reach a large number of people. The more people at the start of the funnel, the more chances of increasing the number of compatible leads at the funnel end.
Role of PPC in B2B Lead Generation
It is important for businesses to actively search for new customers to power their growth. Especially for the B2B model, where business dealings are more complex than simply selling a single product to an independent customer. When buying for their own company, potential vendors undergo higher scrutiny because of the complex nature and greater commitment of the deal. This makes it even more critical for businesses to employ PPC in their lead generation process, if they have not already, to keep pace with competitors.
What is Pay Per Click?
It is an advertisement strategy where a business pays to display its ads on any search engine or social platform and pays per click to the host site. With pay-per-click, businesses can secure a spot on the first page of their targeted SERP. While the service is paid, the charges are comparable to investments made to build other marketing channels.
Here is what you can achieve with PPC:
- Top rankings: Jump to the top results for SERPs related to your targeted keywords.
- Lead generation: Expand your database and guide more people into your sales funnel.
- Targeted traffic: Attract users actively searching within your niche to increase interactions and engagement.
- Control & tracking: Manage the influx of prospects and leads at each funnel stage while tracking the ROI of each ad to identify which campaigns generate the most results. This is done in the latter stages by comparing outcomes and implementing insights to further improve your PPC campaign, which we’ll discuss in detail towards the end of the blog.
5 Steps to Set Up a High-Converting PPC campaign
Now that we know what PPC is, the next stage is to design a campaign that attracts clicks and also moves prospects toward becoming customers.
Step 1: Map your PPC strategy
The first step to building a productive plan is to start your research on SEO based elements related to PPC. These are:
- Keyword Targeting: Identify alternative and broad-match keywords relevant to your business niche. The goal is to discover what your target audience actually types into search engines when looking for solutions like yours.
- Funnel Awareness: At this stage, the priority is filling the top of the sales funnel. Don’t worry if every click isn’t a perfect fit because casting a wider net increases the pool of potential leads. Evaluation and filtering come later.
- Conversion Focus: With PPC, it is important that maximum users click on your ads, but the ultimate goal is high-quality leads. Testing ad copy, landing page design, and incorporating call-to-action elements make sure that the traffic you attract has a higher chance of converting, which we’ll explore in the third step.
Step 2: Build your campaign
Doing thorough research is important at every stage of a PPC campaign. You should implement all these techniques:
- Keyword Research Tools: Use Google Keyword Planner, Google Analytics, and competitor research to build a database of both generic and specific keywords. Start broad, then narrow down based on search volume, cost-per-click, and relevance.
- Ad Copy Creation: Write powerful ads that align with the keywords and user intent, which will encourage clicks that lead to meaningful engagement.
- Audience & Channel Selection: Decide where to run your ads, whether on Google Search, YouTube, or LinkedIn, based on where your target B2B audience is most active. Let us explore how to do this in detail next.
Step 3: Pick the right platforms for your audience
Google Ads is the most common PPC platform, but there are several other channels which can be equally effective depending on your audience and goals. You can choose one or more channels to run your PPC campaign:
- Google Ads: These are the most compatible for keyword-based campaigns targeting users already searching for solutions like yours. Search ads capture high-intent leads, and display ads reach a higher number of audiences.
- YouTube Ads: Video ads are more memorable and impactful than text-based formats. That is why YouTube is a powerful channel for building awareness and driving conversions.
- LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn allows you to target professionals, executives, and key decision-makers, which is perfect for B2B campaigns. Here, ad costs can be higher, but the audience quality is unmatched for business-focused lead generation. The professional networking nature of the platform allows you to precisely target high-level executives and decision makers. These individuals play a critical role in the B2B sales funnel, and you can reach prospects with real purchasing authority.
- Facebook Ads: Facebook offers massive reach and advanced targeting options, being one of the largest social platforms. Even though it’s not strictly work-related, the user base ensures your target group can be found within its vast audience.
Step 4: Design and launch a high-converting PPC ad
The gated lead magnet, such as a product demo offered in exchange for a short form (name, email, phone, and business query), is the centre of your campaign. Alongside this, provide a valuable piece of ungated content that visitors can access freely or with minimal information. This content should be informational and solution-oriented so that even if users don’t enter your funnel, they still gain value and remember your brand when searching in the future.
To maximise conversions further, make sure your PPC campaigns have the following elements:
- Use primary and secondary CTAs to guide different types of prospects.
- Test landing page lengths to find the best balance between information and type of content to see which works best.
- Keep forms short and simple to avoid discouraging sign-ups. Users should be able to easily enter the relevant information you need without filling out lengthy forms with complicated information.
- Track every lead with a CRM system to monitor engagement and measure your campaign success. Many success metrics can be tracked to get an exact picture of your engagement. We discuss them in the next step.
Step 5: Track results and measure success
| Metric | Meaning | Insights |
|---|---|---|
|
CTR |
% of people who click after seeing your ad. |
2% CTR = 20 clicks per 1,000 impressions. |
|
CPC |
Average cost per click. |
Higher on LinkedIn than Google |
|
CPA |
Cost for each new lead. |
Cost per lead. |
|
CVR |
% of clicks that complete the action. |
Fill the form, request a quote, book a demo. |
|
ROAS |
Revenue earned per pound spent. |
Final measure of campaign success. |
The most useful thing about PPC is that you can track the results of your campaign across all channels to evaluate what’s working and what’s not. These results inform your opinions in real time and shape your strategy for the next steps. Let us break down some of the metrics that you can measure starting today.
- CTR: The click-through rate tells the percentage at which your ad is shown to people compared to how many people click on it. A CTR of 2% means that if your ad is shown to 100 people, 2 people actually click on it. For practical purposes, it is evaluated over a larger scale of thousands of impressions, which is called CTR over 1,000 impressions. Following up with our prior example, a 2% CTR would mean 20 clicks when your ad is shown to a thousand people.
- CPC: Cost per click is the average amount paid each time someone clicks on your ad. It varies depending on the specific channel of the campaign. LinkedIn has a higher CPC than Google, which means you’ll spend more for each user clicking on your LinkedIn ad than on a Google ad.
- CPA: Cost per acquisition is different from CPC; it is related to what happens after the click is made. It is also called cost per lead because it calculates how much each new lead actually costs the business.
- CVR: Conversation rate also refers to what happens after the click is made. It is the percentage of people who click your ad and then actually do what you asked for on the landing page (like filling out a form to download your online guide, requesting a quote or booking a demo).
- ROAS: Return on ad spend measures the effectiveness of the overall campaign, not just the clicks and leads. It calculates the revenue you earn for every pound spent on ads. In B2B lead generation, the sales cycles are usually longer than B2C, so it can take time to measure the ROAS of a campaign, as it is the final verdict.
These metrics should be closely measured at regular intervals. This way, you can shift your budget (based on CPC and CPA) from one PPC channel to another one with better outcomes.
PPC vs. Other Marketing Channels
Let us compare PPC with some other mainstream marketing channels used in the B2B lead generation process:
- Blog Writing: It involves creating informative, valuable content that stands out from competitors. Hiring a niche-specific writer can improve quality in this case, but results depend on consistent publishing and audience growth over time.
- Organic Search: SEO requires ongoing optimisation and patience. Even with strong content, it can take six months to a year to reach page one of a SERP.
- Social Media Marketing: With a large number of platforms, it offers a vast reach but can be hit or miss. In this case, success often depends on a skilled team that stays on top of trends and platform algorithms.
- Physical Webinars: They provide direct interaction but have a limited audience. Attendance doesn’t guarantee that participants fit your ideal customer profile. Compared to these slower or less predictable methods, PPC delivers immediate visibility, controlled targeting, and measurable ROI.
Generate Qualified B2B leads with Prointeractive PPC
Marketing your business in front of the right decision-makers is critical in the UK’s B2B market. But relying on slow, unpredictable channels can hold you back.
ProInteractive makes the lead generation process easier with data-driven PPC campaigns that deliver immediate visibility and measurable results. We target the exact keywords your prospects are searching, generate ads that attract high-intent clicks, and optimise every step of the funnel to turn traffic into qualified leads.
Launch your PPC campaign with ProInteractive today and start converting targeted clicks into real business growth.
