Can Adwords help in B2B Lead Generation ?

Intelligent marketers know Google AdWords is a crucial part of a solid B2B marketing strategy. Since Search Engines (Google, Yahoo & Bing) searchers are vigorously looking for relevant answers or solutions, businesses can rapidly capture their attention and transform them to leads with search engine paid (SEM) campaigns.

With this post, we will try to give companies our best suggestions about how to use Adwords in their b2b lead generation and demand generation efforts.

Skillfully Organize Your Keywords and Ad Groups

One of the most important components of your Search Enginepaid campaigns is the organization of your keywords. With this post we will help you to  learn the best practices to create ad groups:

Group keywords

For example, keep all “Cloud” keywords in one ad group, separate from “solutions” or “platform” keywords.

Put informational keywords and transactional keywords Separate 

For example, “what is Cloud Computing” versus “cloud computing service or “do I need cloud computing” versus “Cloud Computing solutions”

Organizing your ad groups in this way will make your ad copy and your landing page more appropriate to the keywords, and also it will make easier to measure performance patterns and execute appropriate bid and status adjustments.

By grouping keywords by theme, if a prospect searches “Cloud  platform” and is served two ads—one with the headline “Best Cloud Platforms” and one with the headline “Best  Cloud Software”—that prospect is more likely to click on the 1st one. Relevancy plays key role in every part of SEM campaigns.

You can match your landing page to the searcher’s level of intent. It would be unwise to use a direct-response ad (“Call Us Now”) and a Contact Us landing page with an individual who searched “what is Cloud Computing.” Similarly, you may not want to send someone who searched “buy Cloud software” to a landing page where they’re invited to download an eBook about general customer relationship management advice.

ADDITIONAL TIP: It’s absolutely right to have ad groups with only one keyword if there are no similar terms with which that keyword can be grouped. But avoid creating a “Miscellaneous” ad group to lump together all of the keywords that don’t seem to fit anywhere else. If the keywords in an ad group aren’t related, you won’t be able to create ads relevant to each of them, which will lead to poor click-through rates and low conversion rates. So please, just don’t do it.

Enrich Your Ads with Extensions

AdWords offers many ways to strengthen your search ads with extensions, and you should use as many as possible. Here’s why:

1. Your ads will take up more of that precious property in search results, pushing your competitors farther down the page

2. Searchers can learn more about your company without clicking your ad

3. You can provide links to additional landing pages

4. Google rewards those who use ad extensions with higher quality scores, which means lower cost per click and, in turn, a lower cost per conversion


The biggest disadvantage of AdWords is the character limit. It’s difficult to give a complete summary of the content you’re offering or the total benefits of your product in only 70 characters.

With ad extensions, marketers can not only include more information about the company (using callout extensions and structured snippets), but they can also include four more links in addition to the main landing page. 

This means you can offer five different conversion opportunities with one ad.

Also available is the review extension, which allows marketers to append a product review to the ad, helping lend credibility to your business. There is also the call extension, which lets marketers add a phone number to the ad, encouraging high-intent searchers to connect with your company immediately.

Not all of the AdWords extensions will be appropriate for your advertising, but there certainly are no drawbacks to using those that are.

Use the Appropriate Landing Pages

B2B SEM campaigns traditionally use two types of landing pages: direct-response and content downloads. Both are equally important in paid search marketing.

Many marketers make the critical mistake of not taking advantage of content. They assume the best practice is to cut to the chase and simply tell searchers, “Let’s talk,” regardless of where the searcher is in the buyer’s journey. However, the actual best practice is to use paid search together with content marketing to start the lead nurturing process.

ADDITIONAL TIP: Feel free to have multiple conversion opportunities on your PPC landing pages. For instance, include a link to a gated PDF download of an industry report or eBook on a Contact Us page(example below). If a prospective customer arrives on the landing page but doesn’t want to chat right then, they can download the content instead, and you still capture their email address. Win-win!

AdWords can be a profitable channel, but it’s important to remember that SEM campaigns can take time to show their worth. If you’re patient, follow this advice and use all of the tools at your disposal, you’ll see how much paid search can boost your overall ROI.