feel like your paidcampaigns couldn't sell water in the desert?
Paid Campaigns: Generating SQLs Like You Wouldn't Believe
So what? Challenge accepted!
As an expert B2B PPC agency working with multiple tech brands, targeting a variety of industries, we believe the real challenge is the overwhelming noise bombarding your potential clients. Don't worry though–our PPC services have the chops to cut through the clutter and help you hit your targets.
Love them or hate them, if you need to hit growth targets, you'll need to invest in paid media campaigns. LinkedIn, Google Ads, Twitter/X, Outbrain/Taboola, and even Facebook, we cover them all.
Raise your hand if any of these statements sound familiar:
- Your LinkedIn campaigns are eating your budget & generating low-converting leads
- Folks aren’t downloading your eBooks and whitepapers like they used to
- You’re generating a decent amount of SQLs but your CPSQL is eye-watering
- You need a full-funnel B2B PPC management, not just “more leads”
The Envy Way of B2B Paid Campaign Strategy
We get it, you’re eager to jump into B2B Lead Generation campaigns. Heads up, this isn’t about getting some great-looking ads onto your favorite social media channel. It is about building a B2B paid campaign strategy that covers the full funnel.
Envy’s a B2B PPC marketing agency which, over the years, has worked with 100s of B2B tech clients on testing their messaging and creatives, defining their paid campaigns strategy and management. If you want to move from a dry funnel to plenty of SQLs, follow this B2B PPC campaign strategy that actually works.
Identify the decision-makers within the target comanies, including their pain and motivations.
Talk to them, use surveys, and social listening to gather insights about the burning problems your audience faces that your product can solve.
Focus only on high-quality keywords that are relevant, have a significant search volume, and have low competition to ensure targeted traffic.
Tailored messages, visuals and content for each stage of the buyer’s journey. Blogs, videos, web pages, product guides, competitor comparisons, case studies, emails etc.
Set up ad groups for each stage—awareness, consideration, decision—customizing your messages and visuals, addressing their specific issues
Reports and dashboards are key in PPC marketing; Tracking the campaign from kickoff to engagement and through to closed won.
A/B testing – PPC ads, landing pages’ creative, and messaging throughout the funnel. Measure key PPC metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI to refine performance.
Watch!
Brand Awareness VS. Lead Generation
Ever wonder what the difference is between the two marketing strategies?
Basically, you’ve got to get your name out there with some solid brand awareness before you dive into B2B lead generation campaigns. Think about it—when was the last time you splurged on something pricey or crucial from a brand you’d never heard of? Buyers do their homework these days; before reaching out to speak to you! So you need to be on their radar, meeting them on as many touchpoints as possible.
Brand awareness focuses on making your target audience familiar with your brand. It’s about building recognition and trust through consistent messaging and engagement across various touchpoints. This sets the foundation for future marketing efforts by ensuring your brand is known and remembered.
Lead generation, as the name suggests, focuses on hard numbers: how many leads, SQLs, and demo meetings a campaign generates. It’s the direct, results-driven aspect of marketing.
Both brand awareness and lead generation are important to your company’s marketing and sales success, but they need to be measured very differently. And of course, our agency does both.
- CTR
- CPC
- Impressions / Views
- Engagement / Likes / Follows
- Brand Recognition
Lead Gen
- ROI
- CPL
- CPMQL / SQL
- CPO
- Bounce Rate / Traffic to Website
When Should You Start Running Paid Campaigns?
We’re a B2B PPC marketing agency, obviously, we’re huge advocates of paid campaigns. But they’re not always the right ‘go-to’ for companies. When is this route right for your company?
- Your budget is ‘sufficient’ to cover at least 3 – 6 months of paid campaign testing
- You have an experienced in-house PPC team or an agency to plan and manage the campaigns
- A full-funnel strategy and content are ready for implementation
- Clear KPIs have been agreed between Sales <> Marketing <> Management
Pick Your Poison. We Do It All.
Search ads are great because they can be used to target someone who’s already looking for what you offer. AKA, “high intent”. Ideal, right?
Whether you love its leadership or not, X is not a channel to be sniffed at. You can target based on keywords, tweet engagements, influencers, or tailored audiences.
The reason it is such an attractive channel for B2B marketing is that you can target by company, position and so much more, really drilling down into your target market.
When used effectively, these little banner ads that follow folks who’ve engaged with your content can do wonders for awareness building and retargeting.
If you haven’t tried it yet, Reddit is a fantastic resource for many tech companies to specifically target their ideal audience.
Though often overlooked as a B2B channel, with 2.94 billion active monthly users on Facebook, our agency finds it a useful tool for raising brand awareness and retargeting.
Watch!
There Are (Almost) No Stupid PPC-Related Questions
Account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on targeting specific high-value accounts and customizing marketing efforts to engage them directly. Companies should initially target prospects from their Ideal Customer Profile.
Lead Generation (Leadgen) involves identifying and capturing potential customers who have shown interest in a product or service. An example of lead generation is hosting a webinar on a topic relevant to your target audience. During the registration process, you collect contact information and subsequently follow up with emails containing offers or additional content to convert attendees into customers.
Demand Generation (Demand Gen) aims to create awareness and interest in a product or service among a broader audience to stimulate demand. Writing and promoting informative blog posts that address common pain points and offer solutions can be part of a demand-generation strategy.
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model where advertisers – either in-house marketers or PPC agencies – pay a fee each time their ad is clicked, commonly used for targeted online advertising campaigns. Each approach serves distinct purposes within the marketing funnel, with ABM and Leadgen focusing on individual leads, Demand Gen targeting broader audiences, and PPC utilizing paid advertising channels.
Running PPC ads without high quality content might get people to your website, but it won’t keep them there. You spend $$$ to get your target audience to your website, but need excellent content to keep them there. Content builds trust and credibility, enhancing the user experience and helping convert visitors into customers.
Content also improves your ads’ effectiveness and SEO over time. Essentially, while ads can grab attention, solid content is what engages people, answers their questions, and convinces them to stick around and buy. So, skipping content could mean missing out on better results and higher conversions.
At our agency, we stick to a minimum three-month stretch for our B2B PPC services to really knock it out of the park for you.
The golden 3-month minimum rule for PPC campaigns is about managing expectations realistically. Many people think that as soon as a paid campaign is launched, leads will start flooding in within 24 hours. Experienced marketers know this isn’t the case, and stress the importance of setting realistic expectations with sales teams and management.
Initially, you might see some leads, but most won’t be of high quality, and they won’t be as numerous as hoped.
We AB test tons, so adjustments and optimizations to content and ads are often needed. This process will take at least three months to start seeing the channels, strategies and campaigns that truly work.
Instead of just throwing an arbitrary number that most likely doesn’t fit your budget or marketing goals, let’s go about it differently.
Assume you (or your agency) have a budget of $15k.
At least $3k will be allocated to post-promotion, video promotion, retargeting, and document ads, leaving you with
$12k for lead generation campaigns on LinkedIn and message testing.
If each lead costs $250, this budget will generate 48 leads.
From these, you can expect to get between 4 to 8 MQLs (monthly).
Note that, 8 MQLs monthly are not enough to accurately assess if your campaign is effective or not.
You need 50 – 100 leads in order to get into any statistical understanding of which campaign – message and creative and content is generating the leads converting into SQLs and Opportunities.
Yes, $15,000 monthly is a lot of money,
But it still isn’t enough to fill your funnel or prove “it’s working”.
Does that answer your question?
Every CMO knows that agency costs are a big chunk of the marketing budget and they’re always under the microscope. So, when they hit us up asking how to justify what they spend with us, we keep it simple: “Just do the math”.
Spending about $10K to $15K a month on a marketing agency gets you 2-3 services like PPC, inbound marketing, and RevOps.
Think about going solo without an agency. Hiring in-house pros for each of those services? Costs a lot more.
Junior staff alone would run you $5K each per month, and the seasoned pros? They could be anywhere from $10K and above, each.
Plus, don’t forget the extra costs like employer taxes, office space, tech gear, and benefits, which can tack on another 30%-40% to their salaries. Trust me, the math really does add up in our favor.
Whether PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is more effective than SEO (Search Engine Optimization) largely depends on the specific marketing goals and the timeline for achieving them. PPC offers the advantage of immediate visibility and traffic generation, which is valuable for launching new products, promoting events, or testing market responses. It allows for precise targeting and budget control, making it highly effective for reaching specific business demographics quickly.
Conversely, SEO focuses on organic growth, enhancing website authority, and long-term traffic sustainability without the direct cost per click. It is crucial for building a credible online presence and can yield a higher ROI in the long run, but requires patience and consistent effort.
And so, B2B PPC is optimal for quick, targeted exposure and specific campaign goals, while SEO is superior for enduring visibility and cost-effective marketing. For a comprehensive strategy, integrating management of both PPC and SEO may yield the best results.
Client Flattery
