B2B PPC
B2B PPC that reports pipeline, because leads are where B2B budgets go to die
Google and Microsoft Search for UK B2B companies with a sales cycle: SaaS, technology, professional and industrial services. The difference from consumer PPC is the feedback loop. Your CRM stages go back to the platforms, so the bidding learns from opportunities and closed business, not from whoever filled a form.
Why B2B PPC goes wrong
Optimising for the form fill
A student, a competitor and a buying director all count as one lead. Smart Bidding finds more of whichever is cheapest, which is never the director.
Search volume that is not there
Many UK B2B categories have a few hundred searches a month. Broad match fills the gap with irrelevance. Sometimes the honest answer is that another channel, or content, carries more of the load.
Attribution that stops at the click
Ninety-day sales cycles judged on last-click, weekly. The board asks why PPC "does not work" while it quietly sourced half the pipeline.
How it is run here
- Google Search on high-intent terms only. Exact and phrase match, competitor terms handled deliberately, no broad match until the offline data can steer it.
- Microsoft Advertising for the professional audience. Search on work devices, with LinkedIn profile bid adjustments by company, industry and job function that Google cannot offer. LinkedIn Ads itself can be added when a named-account campaign is worth the click price; it is not the core of the work.
- Microsoft Advertising alongside Google. Cheaper clicks and an older, more corporate audience. Free reach for a B2B account.
- Offline conversion import. MQL, SQL, opportunity and closed-won pushed back to Google and Microsoft from HubSpot or Salesforce, so the platforms bid towards revenue. How it is built →
- Landing pages per offer. Not the homepage. A page for the demo, a page for the benchmark, a page for the comparison against the incumbent. Detail →
- Reporting in pipeline. Cost per opportunity and cost per closed deal, by channel and campaign, over the real sales cycle. Leads are shown, but nobody is managed to them.
Who this fits
UK and Irish B2B companies with a deal size that justifies £5 to £15 clicks and a CRM that records stages: SaaS from seed to Series B, technology and professional services firms, industrial and engineering companies with a defined buyer. Marketing managers who need one senior person to own paid acquisition alongside the SDR team, and founders who are the marketing team for now.
Questions people ask before hiring
Do you work with in-house B2B marketing teams?
Yes. Often as the paid specialist next to a content or demand team: I run the accounts, build the measurement and report in the team's pipeline numbers. Advisory-only arrangements for teams that run their own accounts are also available.
What CRMs can you connect for offline conversions?
HubSpot and Salesforce natively, most others through Zapier, Make or a scheduled upload. The requirement is that stages are recorded consistently; the integration is the easy part.
How do you report on a 90-day sales cycle?
Cohorts. Spend in a month is judged against the opportunities and revenue that month's leads produced over the following quarter, not against the same month's closed deals. It takes a quarter to see clearly and the reporting says so.
Related services
Tell me about the account
Spend band, site and what is not working. You get a straight answer on whether I can help, what I would do first and a price range. No proposal deck, no sales follow-up sequence.