10 Tips to Make Google Ads Work for Your B2B SaaS Company

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Running Google Ads today isn’t the same as running Google Ads in 2015. 

What years ago was a winning strategy no longer is, and will only lead to headaches, poor leads, and wasted spend. 

Many marketers have already abandoned Google entirely, claiming that it doesn’t work anymore or it’s a waste of money — but this, in my experience, isn’t true. 

Over the past few years, I’ve helped B2B SaaS companies such as Dreamdata, Airtame, and Templafy drive millions in revenue through Google Ads, and have developed a repeatable strategy to maximize performance. 

I’ll be sharing my tips for success below 👇

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Tip #1: Set up quality conversion tracking

Many companies are simply tracking form submits, without paying attention to lead quality. This makes optimization challenging, both for the performance marketer managing the account and for the Google Ads algorithm. 

To improve performance, make sure you send all the lifecycle stages from your CRM back into the Google Ads platform — this might look like MQLs, SALs, opportunities, etc. — and assign higher values to higher value conversions, so that Google’s algorithm understands what to optimize for. 

If you’re using HubSpot as a CRM, this process will be very simple, as your Click IDs will automatically be captured without requiring a manual setup. 

If you’re using a different CRM, you’ll need to manually push your click IDs into your CRM using hidden fields — this process might seem complicated, but you should be able to find a marketing operations specialist on Upwork that can help you with the initial setup. 

Tip #2: Consolidate your campaigns and ad groups

In the past, when exact match was still exact, SKAGs (single keyword ad groups) made sense. 

By including one keyword per ad group and using that keyword in the ad and landing page copy, you could improve your overall quality score. 

Now that exact match is a lot less exact, this approach doesn’t make sense anymore. 

These days, consolidation is the way to win — by grouping relevant keywords into the same ad group, we give the Google Ads algorithm more data points to make optimizations. 

Tip #3: Focus on exclusions

With exact match being less exact, exclusions are now more important than inclusions. 

In other words, instead of trying to come up with hundreds of keywords to include in your campaigns, it’s better to spend your time excluding hundreds of irrelevant keywords. 

For example, maybe you want to show up for the keyword customer journey tracking, but notice in your search terms report that you’re consistently showing up for the term customer journey mapping, which isn’t relevant to your core offering. By excluding different variations of customer journey mapping, you’ll be able to improve your overall targeting and get in front of more relevant prospects. 

screenshot of the term customer journey mapping added as a negative keyword in Google Ads

Pro tip: In the Google Ads reporting section, you can easily create a search terms report and schedule it to be emailed to you on a weekly basis. This will allow you to be more proactive about making exclusions in your account. 

Tip #4: Create fast and relevant landing pages

Landing pages are one of the most overlooked aspects of Google Ads performance. 

If they aren’t loading quickly, Google will lower your quality score and it will be nearly impossible to get in front of your prospects. Before launching any campaign, double check that your landing pages are loading quickly on both mobile and desktop devices. 

Next, make sure your landing page is as closely related as possible to the keywords in your ad group. For a product analytics ad group, you’d want your landing page to focus on product analytics. For a marketing analytics ad group, you’d want your landing page to focus on marketing analytics.

Take a look at the customized landing pages below:

screenshot depicting customized landing pages for product analytics and marketing analytics experts

This message match will improve your quality score and will also improve the relevance for your prospects, leading to better performance. 

I know that creating new landing pages can be a heavy lift, especially if you have a small team. If this is the case, I recommend duplicating an existing landing page and simply modifying the hero section. Once you start seeing some initial traction from this simple landing page, you can put in the extra effort to create a fully customized experience. 

Pro tip: To check the speed of your landing pages, you can use a free tool such as PageSpeed Insights

Tip #5: Leverage Smart Bidding

Sometimes, smart bidding doesn’t make sense. For example, if you’re starting a new campaign and have zero conversions, it’s a better idea to start with manual CPC or maximize clicks with a bid cap. 

However, once you have 10+ conversions per campaign, you’ll typically see better performance if you switch over to smart bidding and let Google optimize for you. 

screenshot depicting automated bid strategies and manual bid strategies available within Google Ads

This wasn’t always the case — in the past, Google’s algorithm was much less sophisticated, and you were better off trying to control every single bid adjustment. 

But these days, you’ll usually see more traffic and an increase in conversions by letting go of control, as long as you’re feeding Google high quality signals from your CRM. 

As with everything in marketing, there are exceptions, and there are instances where you’ll switch to smart bidding and your CPCs will skyrocket 😨

If this happens, consider testing a portfolio bidding strategy with a target CPA and a bid cap — this will mimic max conversions bidding while giving you more control over the cost per click. 

Tip #6: Decrease the amount of RSAs per ad group

Most people think that having more responsive search ads = more variations for Google = better performance. 

But the opposite is actually true. 

Let’s say you create 3 RSAs, and have 15 headlines per ad. This means that Google will have to test 45 different headlines until it finds a winning combination, which could take years 😅

If you only include 1 RSA per ad group (maximum two), your headlines will be tested much faster and Google will be able to find a winning combination more easily, minimizing wasted spend and improving overall results. 

Pro tip: If you have a small budget, you might want to take things a step further, and test 6-9 headlines instead of 15. This way, Google will be able to test all the headlines in a matter of weeks (not years). 

Tip #7: Pin your headlines

There’s still a lot of debate around pinning vs not pinning headlines. 

Some people say that pinning is a bad idea, since it will negatively impact your ad strength, but ultimately, Google’s ad strength has no bearing on performance

I’ve seen more success with pinning because it makes your headlines more legible — if your ads are clear and searchers have a better understanding of what your company does, you’ll see an improvement in performance. 

If your headlines are redundant — as often happens with unpinned headlines, which leads to words like Google Ads agency and Google Ads consultant being next to each other — prospects are less likely to trust you, and much less likely to click. 

Here’s the exact formula that I like to follow for my headlines:

Headline 1: Include your target keyword to maximize relevance

Headline 2: Include unique selling points or social proof

Headline 3: Include your company name or a relevant CTA

example of high quality Headline 1, Headline 2, and Headline 3 within Google Ads

For each headline, I like to create 2-3 variations that Google can test. 

Pro tip: Spend most of your time crafting headlines 1 and 2. Headline 3 is much less important these days, as Google rarely displays it in the SERP. 

Tip #8: Don’t forget about device adjustments

Oftentimes, certain devices will significantly outperform others. 

For example, if you see that 20% of your spend and 90% of your conversions are happening on desktop, you might want to add a negative bid adjustment to mobile devices or tablets, in order to increase the budget allocated to desktop. 

Screenshot depicting a negative bid adjustment of 90% on mobile devices in Google Ads

You could argue that mobile impressions are still valuable, and that decreasing spend on mobile could negatively impact performance if people are researching on their phones and then converting on desktop, but based on my experience, it’s best to work with the data that’s available to you — if a certain device is converting at a higher rate, I would recommend adding negative bid adjustments to the other devices. 

Tip #9: Figure out whether you should bid on your own brand or not

Running brand campaigns vs not running them at all is a controversial topic. 

Some people say that the impact of brand campaigns is minimal — prospects were already looking for you and may have converted organically — and that they simply exist to inflate performance marketing metrics. 

However, in my experience, this isn’t the case, and it usually is a good idea to run brand campaigns to protect your brand, especially if competitors are bidding on your company name. 

Back when I was working at Momondo, a B2C company, we were driving a ton of revenue from competitive campaigns, bidding on our competitor, Kayak, who wasn’t running brand campaigns to protect themselves. 

Now, you might be thinking: sure, that’s B2C, but in B2B, especially enterprise B2B, you probably won’t change the course of a deal with a single ad. 

But from what I’ve seen with my B2B clients, this isn’t true — my clients have driven a significant amount of revenue by bidding on competitor terms, which validates that bidding on your own terms to protect yourself is a good idea. 

Check out the example from Mixpanel below. If they didn’t bid on their own brand name, competitors like Pendo and Heap might end up stealing some of their prospects. 

Screenshot highlighting a great example of a successful Brand campaign, in which Mixpanel protects itself against competitors

If you’re undecided about whether you should run brand campaigns or not, you can run a holdout study. 

Stop running brand campaigns in a specific region — maybe start with one of your less important regions — and see if the amount of demos or trials goes down. If it does, you can assume that you’re losing out on pipeline and revenue by not bidding on your own terms. 

Tip #10: Separate Brand and Non-Brand in your reporting

Brand and non-brand campaigns are completely different. 

Brand campaigns are defensive. Someone already found out about your brand through other marketing efforts, and they’re looking for you specifically — you’re bidding on your own name in order to protect your brand from competitors trying to steal your traffic. 

On the other hand, non-brand campaigns are offensive. You’re trying to show up for relevant solutions that your prospects might be looking for, and you’re trying to drive interest from a colder audience. 

In other words, getting a conversion on a non-brand campaign is significantly more challenging than driving a conversion on a brand campaign; you need to separate these campaign types in your reporting to truly understand what’s working. 

Bonus tip: Dive deeper into your performance by country

Most companies and ad agencies tend to look at performance by region, but completely ignore performance by country, which results in inefficient spending. 

For example, if you’re targeting France, Italy, Spain, DACH, Nordics, and the UK in the same campaign, if you drill down and analyze performance by country, you might realize that all your spend is going to the southern European countries, which typically have more affordable CPCs. 

And if you look further down the funnel, you might see that Spain, DACH, and Nordics are generating a lot of form submissions, but that all your pipeline is actually coming from the UK. 

Ultimately, you want to ask yourself: 

1. Are any countries cannibalizing my spend and do they need to be separated into different campaigns?

2. Are there countries that aren’t generating any form submissions that we might want to pause?

3. Are there countries that are generating submissions but never convert into pipeline that we might want to invest less money in?

If you ask yourself these questions consistently, you’ll be in a much better position than 99% of companies.

Hope you found this article helpful! 

If you’re looking to learn more about Google Ads, check out these free Google Ads courses, that will teach you how to launch, optimize, and scale Google Ads campaigns effectively. 

And if you have any questions about Google Ads or paid media in general, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. 

Want to level up your B2B advertising skill set?
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Want to level up your B2B advertising skill set?
AdConversion was created to help B2B marketers master advertising with free courses, articles, resources, and templates created by the world best practitioners.
☝️Takes <  90 seconds
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