Flourish or Fizzle? How to Make Paid Search Work for BtoB

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		November 2009, Issue 69

Lead-Generation Best Practices
Flourish or Fizzle? How to Make Paid Search Work for BtoB
By Jim McKinley, Founding Partner of 360Partners

A prospective client recently approached 360Partners asking for insight into a lead-generation dilemma. They had previously launched a paid search account through Google, which they hoped to leverage as a fresh source of sales leads for their product: a complex BtoB service with a long sales cycle. After months of trying to manage the campaign in-house, they came to us scratching their heads, asking, "Why are the leads so expensive, and are they any good?"

This is not an uncommon experience for BtoB marketers, and leaves some wondering: Is paid search even worth it?

Our answer: Paid search is a valuable means of helping to frame a potential client’s buying criteria early on, as well as relaying key messages to them throughout the rest of the cycle.

Lesson #1: There Is No Instant Gratification

The complex sales cycle of a considered purchase does present some unique challenges for a paid search campaign; for example, a company searching for a $50,000 software solution is, of course, not going to click on a paid search ad, place a product in a shopping cart and then simply check out. More than likely they will go through a long research process, involving multiple decision makers, with an extensive period of relationship-building between them and their prospective vendor that requires multiple interactions. This can frequently take several months or longer.

So, within such a layered, complex process, where does paid search fit in?

First of all, let's take a look at the three main obstacles of paid search for BtoB marketers:

Optimization Difficulties: The drawn-out sales process makes it difficult to make improvements to campaigns in a timely fashion. For example, how do you determine that paid search efforts are hitting the mark if it takes upwards of 12 months to reach a sale? How do you decide which keywords and messaging are speaking to targeted customers?
Measurement Problems: The audience typically consists of a small niche, which entails a small number of clicks and conversions for measurement. This makes it difficult to measure results and spot trends.
High Cost: There is generally a very small, focused niche of keywords, on which competitors are aggressively bidding and driving up costs. For example, 360Partners has clients that regularly pay $10-$15 per click for some of their terms.

This environment offers small room for error, and one can see how a firm can get burned by a poorly targeted search campaign.

However, with some appropriate strategizing, many of these problems can be avoided. The key is to be highly focused and conservative at the outset of a new campaign and to look at metrics inside of the sales funnel for optimizing search efforts. 360Partners has successfully implemented some of the following strategies for our own BtoB search clients:

Start with a Small, Focused Set of Keywords: Marketers in less competitive niches with less expensive and higher trafficked keyword terms have the luxury of experimenting with a broad set of keywords to locate new, relevant terms. Unfortunately, for a BtoB marketer with expensive keyword terms, budgets can be overspent quickly. We recommend starting with a smaller set of focused terms and gradually expanding the account over time.
Advertise Where Your Clients Are Searching: Google and Business.com are the most favored networks for a business audience, and are the best outlets for a new BtoB campaign. Proceed with caution on search engines that skew towards consumers—you can get a lot of unqualified clicks from these sources.
Advertise on the Google Content Network: 360Partners has found the Google Content Network to be a great source of BtoB leads. Again, we suggest starting with conservative bids and a targeted keyword list and/or a focused list of placements (remember to add site exclusions!).
Determine Your Call to Action: You cannot measure the success of a campaign without first defining what constitutes success. What do you want prospects to do when they get to your site? Do you want them to submit contact information, to view online demos, download a white paper, or read content and learn more about your products and services? Consider also segmenting your traffic from your paid search campaigns. Customers searching on more specific terms, such as your brand name, are likely to be further along in the buying process, and will need to be engaged in a different way than customers that are using more general search terms. By segmenting your search terms, you can direct users to actions that are attuned to their stage of the buying cycle.
Use Short-Term Metrics to Measure the Success of Paid Search: There are many possible stages within the buying cycle prior to the final sale where conversion can be measured and many possible metrics for representing customer engagement: page views, time on site, number of white paper downloads, newsletter signups, lead form signups, etc. The solution lies in determining which of these actions is valuable to you and relating each type of action to final sales numbers to estimate a value for each action type.

Flourish or Fizzle? It's All About Building Relationships

To recap some of the ideas I've suggested here: Begin modestly and grow the account as you learn more about what motivates your target customers. Your marketing plan needs to be focused on more than an immediate conversion. Lose the notion that a click upon one’s ad must immediately end in a sale. The truth is that the initial click is the beginning of a relationship, which can flourish or quickly fizzle depending on how you handle the traffic once it reaches your Web site.

The BtoB sales cycle is all about building a relationship over the long-term, and paid search, when leveraged properly, can play a valuable part in initiating and nurturing client relationships. Approaching paid search with relationship-building in mind is key to making effective use of it.

Make Paid Search Work for You

If you would like to learn more about using paid search as a part of a complex buying cycle, we'd like to share more of our insights. We can use our proprietary 101-point checklist to take a deep dive into your account and offer you suggestions. Contact us today at searchmarketing@360partners.com for a free evaluation.

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Jim McKinley is the founding partner of 360Partners.

About 360Partners: 360Partners is an ad agency which specializes in online lead generation. The company focuses on pay-per-click search engine advertising and website conversion optimization. The company is located in Austin, TX.

Marketing Watchdog Journal is a monthly newsletter from Bulldog Solutions, a lead optimization and lead management company dedicated to helping our clients generate more, better leads and turn them into revenue. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter's content and design, and encourage you to share your ideas for topics you would like us to cover in future issues. Please send your comments or questions about Bulldog Solutions to Amy Bills, director of Field Marketing.