Category: Advertising

When we talk about search campaigns, we’re referring to publishing text ads on SERP (Search Engine Results Pages), or the search engine results pages. Together with the Display Network, which we discussed in this article, it is one of the two main paid tools that Google Ads makes available to advertisers to promote their business. These campaigns are built based on keywords users search for.

When someone types a phrase into Google, they are precisely communicating their search intent. Simplifying the underlying logic a little, if someone were looking for products or services you offer, and your ad was considered relevant, the search engine would show it among the first results.

In this scenario, the user finds an answer to their question in your ad, which increases the chances that they will click on it and convert into a customer on your site. The more clicks you get, the more chances there are that your ads will be shown on the first page of the search results, triggering a virtuous cycle.

But how does it work?

When a user searches for something, they type in a keyword or phrase. Once the search starts, Google compares it with all the content on the web and, through complex algorithms, tries to provide the user with the most relevant answers in order of relevance.

Let us remember that although online visibility has become a business, the search engine model is based on offering users the best possible response in the shortest possible time.

The two main methods to position yourself well on Google (also valid for B2B companies) are:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), or optimising a site for search engines that allows you to improve your organic positioning without fees, based on the relevancy of your keywords and domain authority of your site.
• SEA (Search Engine Advertising) includes Display and Search campaigns that allow you to purchase advertising space on Google and its network. In the specific case of Search, the ads will be shown in search results before the organic ones.

As mentioned, SEO is “free” but requires long-term investment, while SEA is paid but gives immediate results.

Google Search Campaigns

Search Engine Advertising (SEA) is based on an auction system, where different actors compete with each other by making a bid to win the advertising space shown in response to users’ keywords and identifying their product or service.

On each page, search engines offer a limited number of ad spaces. As mentioned, advertisers participate in an auction to get their ads placed in these spaces. To submit their offer, they must indicate the amount they intend to invest. This amount is called CPC max (maximum cost per click, as discussed here). This is because the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad. That’s why this type of advertising is called Pay-Per-Click (PPC).

So whoever bids the most will get the best position on the results page?

This is partly the case, but relevance is considered above all. Typically, this is measured on a scale of one to 10 that search engines identify as the ad’s quality score. Therefore, making the best offer is not enough, as one of the criteria for assigning advertising space is the ad’s relevance with the product and search intent.

Suppose a user searches for “screen printers” and your ad title is “Italy screen printers”. The search engine will likely consider your ad to be relevant and give it a high-quality score.

The two main factors that determine the auction result are, therefore:

• A competitive offer
• High relevance

If you want to improve your ranking without spending more, then focus on the relevance of your ads, making sure that they are in line with the terms users actually search for.

How to improve your search campaigns

Once you create and launch your campaigns, you will need to constantly monitor and optimize them by tracking the results of the ads, the keywords used, and the conversions made on your site. Here are some tips to improve their performance.

Structure your advertising account

An effective way to help customers find what they’re looking for is to divide your products or services into separate campaigns and ad groups. This means that you will have to create an ad group for each type of product within each campaign with the related keywords.

Imagine you are a manufacturer of different types of printers: digital, offset, or screen printing. Each category includes different products, so you will need to divide them into different campaigns.

In the “Digital Presses” campaign, you could create ad groups for digital printers in color, black and white, and many other variations. Within the “Screen printers” campaign, you could create ad groups with relevant keywords such as: “flatbed screen printers,” “rotary screen printers,” or even “cylinder screen printers.”

Organizing your account well will allow you to be more granular and show more relevant and effective ads.

Make your keywords as effective as possible

With the help of keyword research tools such as the Google Keyword Planner, you can identify the most relevant and effective keywords for your campaign as well as what words to avoid.

This tool also shows the search volume, Cost Per Click, and the competitiveness of each keyword. This last piece of information is extremely useful because it helps you avoid investing in keywords that are too general and overly inflated (and therefore expensive) and to focus on more specific keywords. This way, you will be able to identify the best keywords based on actual data and consequently organize the terms into different groups and write relevant ads for each of them.

It is also possible that your ad is incorrectly shown to non-targeted users. We usually notice this from the poor quality of the requests we receive (leads) or from a low number of clicks on the offending ad. In this case, you can use negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for searches that aren’t relevant to your business.

[-DIY silk screen printer]

This way you will save money and only your ideal customers will find you.

Use the different types of keyword matching

The types of correspondence establish the action area of ​​your campaigns. They allow you to decide how much relevance there must be between the search query and the campaign before activating your ad.

If you use broad match, search engines will show your ads even when users search for slightly different terms than your chosen ones or just variations. For example, the broad match keyword “digital wide format printer” will trigger your ad when someone searches for variants such as “digital wide format printer manufacturers”.

Broad match is usually very time-consuming, as you won’t have to add every variant of the keyword you want to use (such as singular, plural, or incorrect spellings) during setup. This flexibility, however, could cause your ads to show even when keywords that are not relevant to your business are searched for. Therefore, there is a risk of spending your budget on non-target users.

In addition to generic, Google also allows phrase match and exact match. To use phrase-matched search terms, simply place the word or phrase in quotation marks.
For example:

"Rotary screen printer"

This option will show the ad for searches such as “Milan rotary screen printer” but not for “digital printer”. We can understand phrase match as the middle ground between broad match and exact match.

If you want to be even more specific, use exact match keywords. For this option, just enclose the keyword or phrase in square brackets.

[flat bed screen printers]

Thus, if someone searches for “screen printers” or “flatbed printers,” your ad will not appear because it does not correspond 100 percent to the keyword “flatbed screen printers”.

It’s essential to balance your use of match types so that ads are shown to potential customers and blocked to irrelevant ones instead. This way, you can optimize the spending of the allocated budget.

Conclusion

Google Ads Search Campaigns are a really powerful tool for companies in B2B industries to promote themselves online.

If you think about it, the customer is asking for information (inbound marketing), so with Search campaigns, we are intercepting them when they are interested and willing to receive information on a topic of potential interest. It’s hard to ask for more.

As we have seen in other articles, there are many different channels to promote an online business. Well-structured promotional activities usually diversify based on specific objectives, the so-called Marketing Mix. Suppose your goal is to promote your company’s products or services to an audience that has just become aware of a need – and is therefore in the research phase – or evaluate different providers. In that case, Search campaigns are definitely an ideal choice.

As we explained in the previous article, various tools can help create successful online advertising campaigns. In this example, we’ll consider one of two such tools offered by Google Ads, particularly the Google Display Network (GDN) for B2B brands.

It’s an intuitive mechanism that lets websites reach people with targeted Display ads. In this way, business owners can monetize their sites by displaying third-party advertising banners that reach their audience within a broad network.

The Google Display Network does not place ads on a single page but rather targets them across a broad network, whether they’re viewing their favorite website, watching a YouTube video, checking email, or using a mobile app.

Note: when creating a video campaign, you must select “Video”; conversely, you can select “Display campaign.”

Thanks to its far-reaching targeting options for apps, sites, and video platforms, the Google Display Network has over two million digital “places” in which to show advertisements.

Types of campaign content

Within the GDN, the Display campaign allows you to create three types of content: text, graphics, and video.

Text Display campaign

The Text Display campaign allows you to show purely textual advertising banners. While they are less effective than banners that include images or videos, the upside is they tend to have a lower cost per view.

Graphic Display campaign

With Graphic Display campaigns, you can show advertising banners with images on websites, apps, or videos.

The available formats are listed on the following page.

Graphic Display campaigns are a highly effective tool for capturing the user’s attention. The ability to include images makes this the most popular format in the Display network.

Beyond this, Google allows users to choose different-sized formats. These include large banners designed to attract a lot of attention as well as smaller, less invasive formats that aren’t so prominent on the screen, such as the example below.

This feature allows the user to choose the most ideal formats for targeting a specific audience and achieving its objectives.

Pro tip: to maximize the result of Display campaigns, create similar banners with slight variations, test them to see which one returns the best result. This process is called “A / B testing,” and with Google Ads it’s easy to implement. Just load different examples and the system will tell you which one gets the most clicks.

Video Display campaign

Typically, these YouTube ad campaigns are short commercials that appear before the video (pre-roll ads) or during the video (mid-roll ads).

This type of campaign can be very effective as long as the content is of excellent quality and captures the viewer’s attention in the first 5 seconds. Fails to entice the viewer in the first few frames and he or she will almost certainly skip over the ad.

How the Google Display Network works

Let’s consider a typical purchase funnel, which tracks the customer journey from initial interest up to the final sale. The Display network is mainly located in the beginning of the funnel, which is called ¨awareness.¨ At this initial stage, a brand message reaches the user when he or she is not in an active search phase.

The click-through rate (CTR) at this point will not be too high, because, at this stage, the goal of the advertiser is to simply make its target audience aware of the brand or product in question.

The Display Network aids these advertisers by allowing them to reach a larger portion of their target audience with a relatively low cost per impression (views).

Another advantage of the Display Network is less aggressive competition in the advertising network when compared to more typical search campaigns. Plus there’s the cost. In traditional search campaigns, investments are made in specific keywords, which may stress existing budgets.

Therefore, display campaigns are a good solution if the goal is awareness, as these ads are effective at reaching users who do not yet know your product/service or brand.

To maximize results and receive more clicks, Google allows you to target a specific audience. When creating the Google Ads platform campaign, you can choose from useful features to help identify your ideal target and the type of campaign you’d like to launch. The algorithm will then define the suitable spaces to reach potentially interested users.

For example, suppose you sell components for pharmaceutical machines in Italy. In that case, you can set the audience target to “business professionals,” or “Italians aged 30 and over,” etc. Then enter the keywords related to that specific sector where you’d like to show the ad. You can target it to:

• all users who have that potential interest;
• those within the websites that deal with that topic.

It’s worth noting that, concerning B2B, Google Ads does not allow a targeting as precise as that of LinkedIn Ads, where you can filter the audience by market, company, company position, etc. That said,, Google has much lower costs.

Retargeting

Another method to maximize the effectiveness of display campaigns is retargeting.

This involves inserting a tag, known as a tracking pixel in the website code and Cookies – code traces saved on a web browser that stores navigation information. By tracking this pixel, the Google algorithm can then show your ad to users who already have expressed an interest in your product/service.

For example, a user could land on your website without filling out any contact forms or taking any purchase action. In these instances retargeting can be a powerful tool to gain more insight into the user’s interests, thus making it easier to target them with effective campaigns.

This applies to e-commerce as well. You can use retargeting to show the site visitor an offer concerning the product he or she put in their digital cart but later abandoned. This is precisely the strategy Amazon employs on social networks like Facebook.

Conclusion

Display campaigns can be effective tools to not only increase brand awareness but also help potential customers make a purchase – or at least leave their contact info.

It’s thanks to these tracking systems from Google that we can now target ads specifically to audiences proven to have interests and behaviors in line with certain products and services.

Among its many revolutions, the Internet has also managed to change the world of advertising, bringing enormous benefits and making accessible a sector that was once highly complex and not for everyone.

Nowadays, online advertising has not only become much easier and cheaper, but above all, it is possible to target even very specific audiences with extreme precision.

This is a Copernican revolution regarding B2B: if a few decades ago an industrial company could have dreamed of advertising on television as their B2C counterparts do, today even the most technical companies can advertise on digital channels with excellent results.

However, it is essential to know the world of online advertising and understand what it is made of.

Having a clear idea of ​​the tools available is essential to decide where it makes the most sense to invest and what kind of results to expect.

Goals of B2B online advertising

As you might expect, online advertising can be used for different purposes, so before even choosing the type of ad to invest in, it is good to ask yourself what purpose you want to pursue.

In fact, there are three main objectives to find your way around:

• Sales: These campaigns are used to sell products or services online.
• Brand awareness: These campaigns aim to make the product or company known to as many people as possible.
• Lead generation: These campaigns aim to push potential customers to request an offer and thus generate an opportunity. Typically they are used to capture email, phone numbers or other contact information.

Sure, you can try to do a campaign by aiming for all three objectives at once, but we advise against it. Creating a campaign dedicated to a specific goal is much more effective to achieve more significant results.

The advantages of online advertising in B2B

Before the web, advertising campaigns appeared in newspapers or on television and were very costly. With traditional marketing channels like these, it is also challenging to track and monitor progress. On the web, we no longer have this problem. When you create an online campaign, you can monitor all the steps made by users, as well as costs to optimize your efforts.

Take a campaign for selling a product on an e-commerce site as an example. In this case, you could monitor the cost for each click on a page, which is essential to understanding how much each user brought to our marketplace costs us. Or you could monitor directly the cost of each sale, a very important metric to understand how much it costs to acquire a customer.

But that is not all. It is possible to trace all the steps of the user, from the moment they click on the ad to the point of purchase. For example, you can discover that 80 percent of users that visit a landing page immediately leave the site. This is called the bounce rate. This can indicate some problem on the page itself, or more simply that the audience we are targeting is incorrect and, therefore, our ad is not responding well to the user’s search intent. Either way, we can take prompt action and change the campaign, something we wouldn’t have control over in a more traditional offline campaign.

But there is another essential aspect of online advertising: it can reach a much more granular target, showing our ad only to a selected and relevant audience for us. It is possible to invest in keywords that we know are of interest to our audience or show our ads to people with specific characteristics that relate to the ideal customer.

There is a huge difference compared to before when paying high budgets for mass channels, such as radio, television, or a major newspaper. But as we know, in B2B, we often operate in market niches, and we speak to a very small audience. Therefore, it’s necessary to spend the right amount to reach a targeted audience, something that, with due care, can be easily achieved with online advertising.

Online advertising terminology

To conclude this introduction to online advertising, it makes sense to overview its main terms related to measuring campaign performance or operation.

• CTR – Click Through rate: This is the number of clicks divided by the number of views. For example, if an ad is seen by 1,000 people and of these only 100 people click, the CTR is = 100/1,000 = 0.1 or 10 per cent
• Conversion: When a user performs the predetermined action, they buy a product or fill out a contact form.
• Impressions: The total number of views of an ad by users.
• CPA – Cost per acquisition: It is the cost of a single conversion.
• CPC – Cost per click: It is the cost for each click received on the ad.
• CPM – Cost per thousand: It is the cost of showing an ad 1,000 times to users (and thus obtaining 1,000 impressions).
• Bidding: The purchase of advertising space is generally carried out through a buying and selling mechanism based on automatic auctions that allow advertisers to make an offer (“bid”). As a rule, the advertiser who submits the best offer wins the impression.

Conclusions

Online advertising campaigns can have enormous advantages and allow us to invest our budget in an intelligent and targeted way to maximize the result and avoid wasted ad spend.

As we have seen, B2B companies can benefit enormously from this type of opportunity. After reading this article, you should have a clear overview of the means, the possible objectives, and the main metrics to evaluate them.

Various platforms allow you to invest in online advertising. In the following articles, we will focus on those most used in the industrial sector, namely Google Ads (Display, Search) and Linkedin Ads.