Today's post is an excerpt from The MFS Guide to B2B PPC - A Strategic Approach to B2B PPC.
Step one - in our experience - is to take the time to figure out how PPC will fit in with your broader marketing strategy. There are many technical considerations and tactics that will be important throughout your PPC program - but strategy needs to be your starting point.
Before you launch your PPC campaign, consider the following questions:
- What do you want to get from your PPC campaign?
- How does PPC dovetail with your other marketing initiatives?
- How do you envisage a PPC campaign helping you achieve or get closer to your strategic goals?
There is nothing wrong with taking a couple of minutes to consider the above questions - grabbing a coffee and taking a few minutes to think strategically about the whole process is a very good use of time. In fact, in a world where efficiency gains seem to take priority, it is the strategic concerns that often get overlooked. Taking the time to understand and articulate the role PPC will play in your broader marketing strategy is a fundamental step that should not be skipped.
B2B PPC Use Cases
One of the biggest advantages of PPC and its ever-expanding set of capabilities is that there are many B2B use cases that are ideally suited to PPC.
1. Testing
If you are looking to test out some assumptions on your go to market approach, then setting up a quick PPC campaign is probably the best route forward. Quick to set up and with in-depth visibility into progress and results, PPC provides B2B companies with invaluable market data that will help to inform strategic direction.2. Lead Generation
PPC is also one of the most effective lead generation channels in B2B marketing today. As we outlined earlier, PPC campaigns can be relatively quick to launch in comparison to other marketing channels. Many digital platforms today also come with in-built form functionality so you might not even need to bring the visitor to your website if you are purely focused on generating leads.3. Competitor Strategy
PPC can be an important component in any B2B competitive strategy. Take Google search results as an example. Here we have started to see the somewhat absurd situation where many companies are bidding on their own name so they appear on top of the paid results when someone searches their company on Google. The reason being, many competitors are also targeting searches of the company name. This example is just one of ways companies are using PPC as part of their competitor strategy. Others include companies targeting search terms that are related to competitors such as “company alternative”. Another possible option here is to go down the route of paid ads on directory websites so that a company can get in front of prospects who are researching related tools.4. New Product Launch
Launching a new product comes with a multitude of marketing tasks - as evidenced by the growing importance of the product marketing manager. One of the key marketing channels for product marketers today is PPC. For many product marketing managers, they may well be tapping into a new audience so the in-depth targeting options available makes PPC a really suitable channel around new product launches.5. Account Based Marketing (ABM)
ABM - a topic that is of special interest to us at MFS - is another area where PPC campaigns can prove really valuable to B2B companies. ABM is based, essentially, on treating target companies as a market of one. Instead of targeting an industry, companies would treat a large enterprise company it wants to sell to as its own market. Doing so requires considerable effort on behalf of the selling company, but the rewards can be significant. ABM is ideally suited to companies looking to make the transition into enterprise level sales that come with annual dollar values in the 6 or 7 figure range. PPC again, with its in-depth targeting and retargeting options, can be an important component of an ABM strategy as companies use advanced filtering to hone in on key decision-makers.Above are just some of the most common PPC use cases in B2B today. There are many other use cases and each company will have their own unique reasons to include PPC in their marketing channel. What is important here is understanding precisely how PPC fits in with your company’s greater strategic goals.
This post is an excerpt from the MFS Guide to B2B PPC: A Strategic Approach to B2B PPC. If you would like to read more you can access the guide in full here. If you have a marketing challenge you are looking for support with, feel free to reach out today - we’d love to talk with you about what you’re trying to achieve with your B2B marketing and how we might be able to help.