Testing Paid Search in B2B Marketing
IMPAQT Case Study: B2B
A Business to Business IT company wanted to expand its Search Marketing campaign and increase conversions. Because the company had limited knowledge of Search, they sought IMPAQT's expertise to help reach their goal. Specifically, they wanted to increase the number of conversions for whitepaper downloads, webinar views, quotes and specific IT related tests among business prospects.
QUESTION:
How could IMPAQT help this company increase conversions through Paid Search?
REVELATION:
As the client requested, IMPAQT began to implement a short-term PPC campaign for the client's site. First, IMPAQT assessed the different ad groups that were set up, and then revised the structure to produce tighter and more structured ad groups. This helped the company increase its Search Engine quality score and made it easier to write ad copy that aligned with each ad group.
Then, our team analyzed the conversion funnel for the company's products and found keywords within earlier stages of the funnel that held opportunities. These keywords helped the client capture visibility at the beginning of searchers' buying process, or before the buying process even started. Next, the IMPAQT team expanded keyword bids from higher level keywords to product specific keywords. For each of these keywords, new tightly structured ad groups needed to be formed, along with specific ad copy.
Finally, IMPAQT used data from the previous steps to evaluate the campaign's success. Our team used this information to optimize the campaigns keywords and increase visibility.
Throughout this entire process, IMPAQT made sure that the client grasped all of our strategies and the reasoning behind those strategies. This time devoted to education helped our client gain a better understanding of Search and the many methods that could be used in their future campaigns. Also, by working along side our client we were able to better understand their needs and current situation so that the campaign was successfully optimized.
The IMPAQT:
Paid Search has often been seen as a primarily B2C marketing tactic, with comparatively little written about using it in a B2B environment. The greatest impact of this test was demonstrating that Paid Search can be a valuable asset in a B2B marketing campaign, while showing what works, what doesn't, and especially what to expect in terms of results. A "conversion" is defined as an inquiry, a sign-up, or a download; knowing where in the sales funnel to target the campaign means better qualified leads for the money.
Another important learning was that continual optimization of the campaign was possible beyond the initial test length. The company had planned to test the campaign for one month, yet as IMPAQT continued to review the results and tweak the approach, improvement continued. The client decided to extend the test, which yielded results beyond the initial expectations. This company learned just how specific PPC tactics are to an individual product market, and that allowing more time for the campaign strategies to evolve will lead to better solutions for optimizing the corresponding campaigns.
Over the course of the test period, the campaigns produced six times the number of conversions expected. Recognizing where these searchers were in the buying cycle allowed our client to target more and more qualified leads and to engage with them at the appropriate level.
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Increasing Organic Visibility for a New Product in a Competitive Space
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