According to Google, businesses make an average of $2 for every $1 spent on Google Ads, which results in a 200% return on investment (ROI). However, averages don’t build pipelines, and statistics mean nothing if your campaign isn’t strategically optimised to its fullest capacity.
A well-executed paid ad strategy can be a powerful tool for your lead generation campaigns. And the first step to turning ad spend into revenue is generating high-quality leads. This is exactly what this article will explore.
The Importance of Using Paid Ads For Your B2B Lead Generation Process
Consumer insights reveal that 71% of B2B buyers start the buying journey with a generic search and perform an average of 12 searches before engaging with a brand’s site.
This insight emphasises the importance of using paid ads in your B2B marketing strategy to generate new leads. Paid ads ensure that you’re visible and relevant in those crucial early searches, increasing your chances of a quality lead.
Businesses can use several channels for their strategy, including search engine advertising, social media, display advertising, and native advertising.
Many B2B teams struggle to consistently attract the right leads. Paid ads offer a scalable way to reach decision-makers early in their journey, when they are actively searching for solutions like yours.
What Is a Lead?
In simple terms, a lead is someone who expresses interest in your business and exchanges their contact details for something valuable in return, such as an eBook, free trial, or newsletter. While they may not be ready to buy immediately, this action signals potential interest in your offerings.
At this stage, the lead has entered your sales pipeline, and with the average B2B sales cycle lasting around 2.1 months, nurturing that lead is key to eventually closing the deal.
4 Different Types of Leads
There are four different types of leads depending on where they are in the marketing funnel:
Information Qualified Leads
These types of leads have not yet entered the buying journey and are still in the research phase. Information Qualified Leads are interested prospects who have shown curiosity about your products/services by engaging with your informational content. This could include your blog posts, whitepapers, or other content marketing materials designed to educate and inform.
Marketing Qualified Lead
Marketing Qualified Leads are prospects who have moved beyond initial awareness and demonstrated interest by engaging with your marketing channels, such as visiting your website, interacting with your social media campaigns, or clicking through promotional emails. These leads are more engaged but might not yet be ready to become paying customers.
Sales Qualified Lead
A potential buyer who has shown a strong intent to purchase and may already have viewed product prices, requested a demo or consultation. At this stage, they’re ready to be passed from marketing to sales for direct follow-up.
Product Qualified Lead
These leads are further down the marketing funnel. They’ve tried the product either through a demo, a free trial, or a freemium offer. In other words, they have experienced your offering first-hand. They’ve found value in your product and are more likely to become a paying client.
Best Paid Ad Channels for B2B Lead Generation
Not all platforms are created equal when it comes to B2B marketing. It’s also important to remember that it’s not a one-size-fits-all scenario; it highly depends on your goals, audience, budget, and niche industry.
The first step in deciding which marketing channels are best for your strategy is understanding how each one fits into your sales funnel. Some channels are more effective at attracting high-intent buyers at the bottom of the funnel, while others are better suited for building trust and nurturing leads over time. Let’s dive into the benefits of each platform.
Google Ads
Google Search Ads are one of our favourites because they generally perform well across a wide range of industries.
The search engine dominates the current market share, meaning more visibility.
It enables B2B marketing teams to reach high-intent audiences through keyword match types and reduce irrelevant traffic by using negative keywords.
Google Ads allow you to re-engage (Retargeting) with potential customers who have previously interacted with your business but did not convert.
Analytics gives you comprehensive data on campaign effectiveness and lead generation efforts.
LinkedIn Ads
Arguably one of the most popular and best option for the B2B space.
It offers detailed business information, allowing you to reach key decision makers and the ability to create personal relationships with them.
Has features such as Lead Gen Forms that streamline lead capture and the sales process.
Offers comprehensive data and analytics on effectiveness, so that businesses can refine and optimise accordingly.
Meta (Facebook and Instagram)
As one of the largest social platforms, Meta can be an effective tool to use in your B2B strategy.
The largest social platform with over 3 billion users means more visibility.
Great for building brand awareness and retargeting your audience.
Meta can be a cost-effective solution, depending on your industry and audience.
Ideal for targeted outreach, and great for complementing a mass awareness campaign.
Microsoft Ads (Previously Known as Bing Ads)
Microsoft offers several tools that can be highly effective for B2B marketing.
The underdog of search engines means less saturation and less competition for the same keywords.
It allows you to be visible to professionals who use Bing as their default browser, especially in corporate sectors and in older age groups.
Cost-effective solution for the amount of visibility you get.
Allows integration with its business ecosystem (e.g., LinkedIn, Microsoft Advertising, Dynamics 365).
Optimising for Lead Quality
Paid ads can be a rewarding investment or an endless money pit. The best way to ensure it remains a rewarding investment is to optimise your paid ads lead generation strategy.
First, if you’re already running ads, a good first step is to assess the quality of your leads.
One way to do this is by measuring the conversion rate from lead to paying customer. If your conversion rate is high, you’re on the right track.
If you’re getting a lot of traffic but few conversions, the following steps may help you refine your marketing campaigns:
Revisit Your Keywords
Keywords are the cornerstone of any successful paid ad strategy. Start by understanding your audience’s intent, then refine your keywords to be as specific as possible. As a general rule, long-tail keywords tend to align with higher buying intent, making them especially valuable for lead generation.
Match Types
Match types refer to how closely a user’s search query must be to your keywords to be shown.
Broad match types mean your ad will show if the searcher’s query slightly matches your keywords, bringing higher traffic but less buying intent. The aim is to have a good balance of traffic and exact matches with high-buying intent.
Filtering With Your Ad Copy
When focusing on qualifying leads, the aim is to tactfully deter unqualifying leads from clicking your ads. Target your messaging to potential customers, highlighting your unique selling points to attract them. For example, your copy might say ‘Teams Managing 100+’ for a SaaS company, which sets expectations on company size and filters companies with specific needs.
If your strategy is solid but your creative isn’t landing, it might be time to hire a marketing agency. Get in touch if you’d like some creative direction.
Landing Pages
Similar to your ad copy, your landing page copy should also reflect the type of leads your business seeks. It should display your solutions for their complex business needs and pain points, and if possible, be relevant to their business size.
Lead Capture Forms
If you notice a large number of forms filled by website visitors with low buying intent, it can help to refine and increase your form fields, as people with low buying intent are more likely to abandon the process. When adding fields, ensure that the information will be valuable to your sales reps. For example, their budget, industry, and more about the problem they’re looking to solve. This not only helps qualify prospects but also equips your marketing and sales team with better insights to tailor their approach.
Assets
Ad extensions (or assets) allow you to include extra details such as site links, phone numbers, locations, and pricing in your ad. These additions can help potential customers quickly access key information, making it easier for them to take action or assess whether your offering aligns with their needs.
Benefits of Using Paid Ads to Generate Leads
Paid advertising offers several advantages for businesses focused on growth and scalability. It not only drives traffic but also helps streamline the sales process by attracting more qualified leads.
Here are some of the top reasons why paid ads are effective for lead generation:
Visibility: Paid advertising allows you to reach a highly targeted audience based on searches, demographics, interests, and geographic locations.
Speed: Targeting based on what people are already searching for can dramatically speed up the sales cycle. Organic methods of lead generation, such as social media and search engine optimization, which focus on building trust and brand awareness, are also important but take longer. Also, much more time efficient compared to cold-calling!)
Control: Unlike traditional advertising methods, paid ads allow you to test every ad element with A/B testing. This gives your business insight into which elements of your copy, creative, and segmentation generate the most leads.
Performance insights: Analytics tools will show you how effective your ads are by revealing how many leads you’ve generated and the return on investment of your ad spend.
Turn Clicks into Clients
As with most things, the key to success is consistency. While conversion optimisation often involves trial and error, continuously monitoring and refining your strategy makes all the difference. If your ad campaigns are draining your budget without delivering results, the lead gen strategies above can help turn things around.
You can also tap into your existing customers as part of your strategy, as their behaviours can provide valuable data for refining your future campaigns. And if you’re unsure where to start, we’d love to chat. Pop us an email at company@snowballcreations.com or get in touch via our webform.