High-performing B2B lead gen landing pages: design and information architecture
John Woods
October 3, 2024
High-performing B2B lead gen landing pages: design and information architecture
Running ads for your own brand terms in B2B paid search – yes or no?
In more than a decade of talking to customers and prospects about B2B paid search marketing, there are a handful of strategy questions that come up over and over again. Some of those questions are hard to answer! But one of the commonest is also one of the easiest: should you bid on your own brand terms – like your company’s name – in B2B paid search?
My answer: yes, you should. 100%.
Just to clarify here: I am talking about bidding on your OWN brand terms – your company’s name, and perhaps the trade name of your products. Bidding on third party brand terms, such as your competitors’ brand names, is a whole different game and beyond the scope of this article.
I know what you’re thinking here! Something along the lines of: “But we’re already in the top position for the natural search results for our own company name! Why should we pay for an ad as well?” But trust me, you should be doing own brand paid search. No question.
With most strategy questions I’m a big fan of “it depends”. So why am I so confident to give such definitive backing to own brand paid search? There are a few factors:
- Brand searches are really important B2B marketing touchpoints, and any strategy that gives you influence over the user journey at a key touchpoint is bound to be powerful.
- Search engines allow competitors to inject their own paid advertising messages into your brand search results. Bidding on your own brand terms makes it harder for competitors to interfere with these key touchpoints.
- Even in the absence of competitor ads, the natural part of the brand SERP often features content that doesn’t align with your desired marketing outcomes. Brand paid search allows you to push that content down the SERP and replace it with messages that are more supportive.
- B2B brand paid search doesn’t cost much money in comparison to other types of paid B2B digital activity. So even if the financial benefits are modest, it’s likely to have a high ROI.
Let’s unpick each of those areas.
Why brand searches matter
A search for your brand name is often a critically important B2B marketing touchpoint. Think about these types of user journey for example:
- A person has heard about your product by word-of-mouth and thinks it might meet their needs. They go to a search engine and search for your brand. The next screen they see is their first digital impression of your brand.
- A person has researched your product and is almost ready to contact your sales team to start a buying conversation. But first they want to check that your product fits with their budget. They search for “[your brand] pricing”. The next screen they see might make the difference between them becoming a sales lead or heading to a competitor.
- A customer is a little dissatisfied with your product and starting to think about switching to a competitor. They search for “[your brand] alternatives”. The next screen they see might determine whether they continue the switching process or decide to stay with you.
In their different ways those are all key “moments of truth” in your interaction with a prospective or current customer. Any strategy that can help you influence those interactions is worth strong consideration as part of your B2B digital marketing mix.
Do I need to worry about competitor search ads on my brand name?
The best way to answer that, as with so many things about B2B search marketing, is to eyeball the SERP.
Here’s an example of a SERP for the ABM software company Demandbase:
Note I’ve sized that screencapture so that it is representative of a typical laptop browser window – the sort of setup that most of your B2B prospects are going to be using when they search for product or supplier information. (This is a good habit to get into for any online research. Try to see things as the prospective customer will see them.)
See how the sponsored links for Demandbase’s competitors have taken over the top part of the SERP? Demandbase’s own website is at the top of the natural search results, sure. But that’s a long way below the fold of this typical browser window, so it’s missing from my screencapture. And a cunning competitor, 6sense, is taking full advantage of that by running an ad that positions itself directly against Demandbase. And what an ad! It dominates almost the whole visible part of the screen.
On a mobile device the situation is even more stark:
There isn’t a single link on that above-the-fold portion of the mobile SERP that points to a Demandbase-owned property, nor a single word of copy that Demandbase has written or even influenced. Every pixel belongs to a competitor.
I know what you’re thinking! “I don’t like what Google is doing here! It’s not right that a competitor can use my brand name in this way!”
I take your point. But you know the story about the conversation between the fly and the windscreen? If you don’t like this aspect of Google’s business model, I suggest you have your people speak to Google’s people. And I wish them the best of luck.
If it makes you feel any better, your competitors are paying a high price for these ads. The ads have low relevance for the average person, so Google’s algorithm will penalise them with low “quality score” metrics and therefore the cost-per-click will be very high.
Like it or not, Google is allowing this sort of competitor brand bidding. Your prospects are using Google to find information about your product and your competitors are jumping in. If you want to reduce your competitors’ influence on those critical marketing touchpoints, you need to buy search ads on your own brand terms. Running your own ads will push your competitors’ ads down the SERP and reduce their harmful effects.
I’m not worried about competitor ads, so why bother with my own brand ads?
Again I say eyeball the SERP.
Take a look at this example for facilities management giant Aramark:
This time I’ve deliberately captured a much deeper screencap so you can see what’s below the fold. Skim down the screencap. Who is this information for?
I think you’ll agree that a lot of content on this page is for Aramark’s workers and for people looking for a job with Aramark. Featured sections include “Search Jobs” “Careers” “Jobs at Aramark” etc.
There is a little bit of content that might be relevant for a prospective customer, but it’s not exactly compelling. There are mixed messages – the first set of links (from aramark.com) and the LinkedIn snippet lower down talk about education, sports teams, healthcare and so on, while the UK Home page talks specifically about the offshore industry. If I’m in the UK healthcare industry, should I be considering Aramark as a potential supplier or not? And the intriguing snippet “Aramark Launches First AI…” (sic) doesn’t really do justice to the value proposition for, erm, whatever that AI thingy is.
This isn’t surprising. Aramark is a huge company with a lot of employees and relatively few clients. The average user of Google is much more likely to be an employee or a job seeker than a prospective customer. So Google has prioritized the information which is likely to be useful to the average person. And without sufficient confidence about my geographic interest, Google is covering its bases by mixing content from multiple country sites. But the end result is a confusing mess that won’t create a good impression with a B2B prospect.
In comparison, see how Intel has used an own brand ad to take control of this SERP:
The natural search results towards the bottom of my screen capture have links that will appeal to large numbers of people – driver downloads, career information and stock market info. The paid ad at the top features brand-related content that will appeal to prospective B2B customers and partners – case studies and information about future product directions. In combination, the paid and natural listings dominate the SERP – competitors are barely to be seen here – and cover both B2B and B2C use cases.
We’re not all huge brands like Aramark and Intel, but the same issues apply. A brand ad is an opportunity to bring out the messages that are the most valuable to you, instead of the ones that Google thinks are the most useful for the average person.
Go ahead and eyeball your brand SERP. Anything there you’d like to improve? A brand ad is the easiest way.
Isn’t this EXPENSIVE?
Less expensive than you’d think.
When you’re bidding on your OWN brand terms, Google will give you a high quality score – because your ads are highly relevant to the people who are searching – and so your cost per click will be low. (Remember that the reverse applies to competitors bidding on your brand – they get a quality score penalty and a much higher cost per click.)
The costs vary, but typically the B2B clients we work with are spending around 5% to 10% of their media budget on own brand search. And because brand search is impactful at critical points of the buyer journey, they can have high confidence in excellent ROI from that small fraction of their budget.
Own brand paid search is relatively simple to set up and manage, too, so the admin costs are low.
Making it happen
I know what you’re thinking! You’d like to give own brand paid search a try.
If you already use Google Ads, you just need to set up a new campaign. (Don’t mix and match brand terms with other keywords. That’s a subject for another blog, but for now just trust me!)
If you don’t use Google Ads yet, it’s perfectly possible to set up a new Google Ads account that’s only used for own brand search. And because the setup is relatively simple, the time and cost requirements are very affordable.
Other search engines are available
Everything above applies equally well to Microsoft Ads. Usually the search volumes will be lower on Microsoft than Google, so the media costs will be even lower. It’s a great idea to set up brand search on both search engines at the same time, as you can use more or less the same setup on both.
If you’re operating in geographic markets where other search engines have a strong position (like Baidu in China) you may wish to consider those as well. Similar considerations apply to own brand search.
I hope I’ve convinced you to think seriously about own brand paid search for B2B marketing. Feel free to get in touch if you’d like our help with it!
