Cost-Effective SEM for B2B Marketing

Improving your Marketing Returns with Efficient B2B SEM

Within the last couple of decades consumer behaviour has evolved drastically, transitioning from the days of telephone book advertisements to digital platforms such as social media and search engines. Today’s modern consumer is informed, savvy, and equipped with the means to research, compare and review alternatives almost instantaneously. 

The business to business (B2B) industry is no different. In fact, securing business has never been tougher. Phenomenon such as the internet and globalisation have blurred the lines between international borders, bringing greater opportunity albeit at the cost of increased competitiveness. 

Of the options available to market a B2B business, one channel stands out, and that is search engine marketing (SEM).

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing is a form of paid advertising that enables advertisers to showcase their products and/or services on the search engine results page. Google is the most popular search engine in the world and in Singapore, which is why the majority of marketers focus their SEM efforts on Google. 

It is interesting to note that the most common form of SEM uses the pay per click model, hence, ad impressions are free. This means that advertisers only pay when their ads are clicked.

Why SEM for B2B Marketing?

Every marketing channel has its strengths and weaknesses, and SEM is no exception. In fact, there are several factors that our digital strategists assess stringently before determining if SEM is a suitable marketing channel for a business. These factors include costs, competition, consumer behaviour, search demand, historical performance (such as cost per acquisition and conversion rates), and more.

As every brand, product and/or service has different circumstances, SEM may not always be the optimal marketing channel. The advantages of SEM are vast and these include increased brand awareness, speed, higher quality traffic and enquiries, and better long-term returns. 

If you are unsure of the marketing channel(s) that are optimal for your business, speak with our experienced SEM strategists today. Rogue Digital is a performance marketing agency with a positive track record in SEM campaign management.

Increased Brand Awareness

Through SEM, advertisers can drive brand awareness by placing advertisements on top of the search engine results page (SERP). Essentially, this enables advertisers to have greater visibility over competitors that don’t have a presence on search, resulting in increased brand awareness. Additionally, advertisers with a focus on dominating the search market share (i.e. appearing whenever someone searches for their products or services) can consider optimising their SEM strategy to place their ads on top of the SERPs. This gives them an edge over their competitors even if these competitors have already established their own presence on the search engines.

Speed

When it comes to the world of B2B marketing, speed is everything. Unlike search engine optimisation (SEO) which focuses on increasing a brand’s organic search presence albeit at a lower marginal cost – since search engines don’t charge for organic clicks – achieving results through SEM takes less time. 

To put this into context, setting up an SEM campaign can take anywhere from a couple of days to less than 2 weeks (depending on complexity) before you even see your ad listings on Google. Generating optimal results (sales, leads, store visits etc) can be achieved in as quickly as 1 month once your ads start hitting the road. SEO for new websites, on the other hand, could take months before your website reaches the 1st page of Google.

Higher Quality Traffic and Enquiries

Effective B2B marketing requires precision and strategy. While some B2B brands allocate a portion of their budget for social media marketing, website traffic and Enquiries generated through SEM have consistently driven higher quality returns. Although our team of digital agency strategists also manage B2B campaigns on marketing channels such as social media, most marketers we spoke with agree that leads generated through search engines have higher conversion rates, which results in greater chances of closing a sale. 

Logically this makes sense, since clients that reach you through search engines are likely to have developed an interest in your products and services. On the other hand, reaching out to potential clients via ads on social media or billboards may not always guarantee getting an enquiry that has ‘bought in’ since they could still be open to alternative solutions. 

However, this doesn’t mean that utilising SEM for B2B is always the most effective, since other channels such as social media lead generation ads and email marketing have proven to work for B2B businesses as well. What is certain is that every brand is unique. This is why no 2 brands can follow the exact same digital marketing strategy. In fact, when it comes to generating enquiries, some businesses prefer volume over quality.

Better Long-Term Returns

Most B2B businesses consider SEM an important instrument in their marketing arsenal. Why? A unique aspect of effective digital marketing is in its ability to collect, analyse and utilise data with high precision. Done correctly, your marketing return on investment (ROI) should grow over time. SEM is no exception. 

By identifying ads, audiences, demographics, geography, landing pages, keywords and search terms that convert effectively, a skilled SEM agency strategist would be able to minimise spending on ineffective ads, keywords and targeting within your campaign. This, in turn, allows you to focus your budget on areas that are effective, leading to better results without increasing your budget in the long run.

Effective SEM to Maximise B2B Marketing ROI

While SEM for B2B marketing can be cost-effective, successful campaigns rely on sound strategy. But what is a sound strategy? For starters, it considers the following components: goal setting, measurability, accuracy, analysis and optimisation. Without any of these components, your SEM efforts could be in vain, and in the worst case scenario, your ROI might even be negative. Of course, there are other factors that determine the failure or success of an SEM campaign. 

To begin with, there are the aspects that you can’t control and the aspects that you can. The seasoned and capable business leader knows this and is likely well-equipped with the skills and knowledge to navigate fluctuations in market conditions and economic cycles. But what about SEM? How does management make the right decisions to ensure success? How does one ‘run a tight ship’ when it comes to B2B SEM?

Goal Setting

The first step towards optimising and maintaining an effective SEM campaign would be goal setting. But goal setting for B2B could look very different from goal setting in a business to consumer (B2C) environment, much less from a search engine perspective. The latter requires one to be familiar with the jargon and technical considerations that are intertwined with the very platform that’s designed to meet your search marketing objectives.

For instance, your marketing objective(s) could be any one of the following: 

• Brand Awareness
• Market Share
• Website Traffic 
• Client Engagement
• Lead 
• Sales 
• Showroom / Store Visits

In the world of SEM, objectives could look different. Here’s a quick breakdown of each objective/metric: 

• Impressions
  Impressions indicate the number of times your ads are seen. Businesses focused on building brand awareness could have a goal of garnering a target number of impressions in a given campaign or time period.

• Clicks
  Clicks happen when a user clicks into your ad listing. Some brands prefer to measure the number of website visitors they receive by setting a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) on the target number of clicks in a given campaign or time period. 

• Search Impression Share
  The percentage of impressions your ads received out of the total impressions that your ads could have garnered. A business leader could, for example, set a KPI of maintaining a search impression share of 75%. This means that out of every 100 searches, your ads should appear 75 times to meet this objective.

• Click Share
  The number of clicks you received out of the total clicks your ads could have garnered. Similar to search impression share, click share measures the number of clicks instead of impressions.

It is important to note that the total clicks are estimated, since no SEM platform can guarantee the total number of clicks that you could have received. For example, if a potential client clicked on a competitor’s ad without clicking on yours and the SEM platform may count that click as a ‘missed click’. However there is no guarantee that the same SERP user would have clicked on your ad instead even if they didn’t click on your competitor’s ad. In fact, not every search would result in a click.

• Conversions
  An action that a user takes. Conversions are usually tangible actions, however, intangible actions can be measured as well. Examples of tangible actions include: phone call or online form submission (Lead Generation) and online sales (eCommerce) etc. Examples of intangible actions include page views, button clicks etc.

• Conversion Value
  The value of your conversion actions. In most cases, this is tied to sales. For example, if you integrate your customer relationship management (CRM) system with Google Ads, the sales revenue captured from your CRM can be reflected on the Google Ad dashboard. B2B businesses with eCommerce websites can also measure sales generated against their SEM campaign.

• Cost per Conversion / Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
  How much it costs per conversion. For example, if you spent $5,000 to generate 100 enquiries, your CPA would be:

$5000 / 100 = $50

• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
  ROAS indicates how much revenue was generated compared to your advertising budget. For example, if you generated $20,000 of sales revenue and spent $2,500, your ROAS would be:

$20,000 / $2,500 = 8 Times

Note: A ROAS of above 1 indicates a positive return, while a ROAS that is below 1 indicates a negative return. Other costs are not included when tabulating ROAS. Taking the example above, if all other expenses (e.g. logistics, sales commissions, product costs etc) added up to $2,500, your return on investment would be:

$20,000 / $5,000 = 4 Times

While some of the SEM jargon might sound technical, understanding what they mean is essential to make informed business and marketing decisions.

Based on your business’ marketing objective, you’ll have to select the corresponding SEM objective. If you want to generate interest in your products or services, consider setting a goal to maximise impressions and/or clicks. 

For performance marketing oriented objectives, consider driving as many enquiries or sales as possible. Or perhaps you’d like to increase the cost-efficiency of your digital marketing campaigns instead. In this case, consider setting a target CPA so that your team doesn’t overspend to capture each marginal conversion. 

Regardless of your objectives, your goals are likely tougher to accomplish without measurability and accuracy.

Measurability

In digital marketing, measurability is a series of actions or processes that quantifies results. By default, every digital marketing platform is able to measure and report basic metrics such as impressions and clicks. SEM is not exempted. However, the measurability here focuses on the team and platform’s to track actions beyond the default metrics that native SEM platforms record automatically, a term referred to as conversion tracking. 

As outlined above, conversions are the actions that users take. In most cases these conversions occur on your website or app where SEM is concerned. For instance, with conversion tracking, you can measure the number of times a chat message enquiry was initiated on your website. 

Conversions can be measured outside of your website as well. Take the Google Ads lead form extensions as an example, with lead form extensions, conversions can be captured without a website or app visit.

Why is Conversion Tracking Important for B2B SEM?

An essential ingredient in performance marketing, SEM campaigns equipped with conversion tracking have the potential to achieve a better ROI in the long term. This is because conversion tracking allows your SEM agency or strategist to eliminate cost-inefficiencies such as non-performing keywords or landing pages. B2B SEM takes conversion tracking to another level, since most B2B brands utilise a CRM system, being able to integrate these platforms is essential for measurement.

Secondary Conversions for B2B SEM: Button Click Tracking

When it comes to SEM for B2B businesses, online form submissions and emails usually make up a larger portion of enquiries as opposed to phone calls or walk-ins. This is why B2B marketers should also consider tracking email button clicks.

Even though conversions recorded from button clicks don’t necessarily mean that potential clients would ultimately send an enquiry, such conversions can be classified as secondary conversions. Secondary conversions provide additional context to business decision makers, allowing them to better understand post-click engagement, i.e. how potential customers interact with their website or app.

Accuracy

You’ve outlined your business goals and established a measurable SEM campaign. So, what’s next? Before you activate your SEM campaign, consider if your conversions are measured accurately. This can be done by minimising double-counting and attributing data to your ad account.

For instance, if your goal is to drive enquiries, make sure that you set the conversion action to only be ‘counted once per user’ instead of being ‘counted every time the action is triggered by the same user’. If you are measuring conversion value, ensure that your conversion value is accurate and that there are no discrepancies. 

To attribute data (for example, sales recorded in your CRM system or eCommerce website) to your SEM platform, consider linking your SEM ad account with the platform that you are using.

What Happens with Inaccurate B2B SEM Tracking?

All that glitters is not gold. This is why ensuring the accuracy of your data is an important aspect of digital marketing, something that even established agencies could miss. The result of inaccurate tracking? Inflated conversions are a red herring. They result in inaccurate reporting, leading to ineffective optimisation and misinformed marketing decisions.

Additional discrepancies could occur if your CRM system or eCommerce website isn’t synced with your SEM ad account correctly as well, leading to inaccurate data analysis. In short, accuracy is critical.

Analysis

When it comes to B2B SEM, reliable data is everything, but only if you know how to use it. As your SEM campaign accumulates more data, the number of complexities increase. This is especially true in marketing since buying cycles tend to be longer in general, due to multiple layers in the approval process.

Avoid data fallacies such as the sampling bias, Simpson’s paradox or the observer effect. Data fallacies can and will occur if one doesn’t know how to slice the data accurately to yield information needed for optimisation. 

That’s why it’s important to engage an experienced SEM agency or strategist that has a positive track record. An experienced strategist is able to avoid pitfalls in data analysis while quickly identifying areas of improvement within your campaign, allowing you to cut cost-inefficiencies and maximise your ROI in the shortest possible timing.

Optimisation

Ensure that your campaign is structured to meet your objectives, since different campaign structures can, for better or worse, result in different outcomes. Keep a close watch on areas such as bidding strategies, advanced location options, keyword match types, negative keywords, search terms and landing pages. 

Like the multitudinous layers of a Kueh Lapis, SEM is a complex platform with multi-faceted layers of insights and statistics. Even with accurate data, one needs the ability to navigate the treacherous waves of mis-information to make informed choices for maximum efficacy. 

Your SEM strategist must be as sharp as a needle, someone able to navigate the intricacies and complexities that B2B marketing requires.

Considerations for Selecting a B2B SEM Agency

B2B Marketing Track Record and Capabilities

The right B2B SEM agency should have a positive track record running B2B campaigns, and have the capability to integrate your CRM and eCommerce platforms with your SEM ad account.

A Competent B2B SEM Agency Should be Proficient in SEM and SEO

If you are looking for a more holistic strategy, consider the specialisation of your digital agency. A digital marketing agency skilled in both SEM and SEO is likely a better fit, even if you are only going for either of these channels. Why? Agencies that specialise in both aspects of search marketing, are likely armed with the right strategies that can help you drive the best returns. 

Take the keyword ‘manufacturing ERP software‘ for example. Based on the forecasts from the Google Ads Keyword Planner, we can see that the average search volume per month is low and the cost per click is high. However, this keyword is extremely specific, meaning that its likely potential clients would be the ones clicking into your website. This also means that SEO may not be the best channel for this keyword, since cost-effective SEO relies on high search volume keywords.

The keyword ‘corporate gifts’ on the other hand, has a high search volume and a moderate cost per click. This means that SEO might be the better option for this keyword if your budget is limited. On the other hand, brands that are more aggressive might opt to go for both SEM and SEO as the cost per click is relatively affordable for keywords within the corporate gift sector.

Engage a B2B Agency that Understands the Local Market

Whether you’re targeting your local homeground or a new market, the B2B agency of your selection should be familiar with the preferences, lingo and behaviour of your target market.

Work with Agencies Proficient in Content Writing

Capturing the attention of prospects and converting website visits into actual enquiries are key elements necessary for SEM success. Amongst the myriad skills and qualities necessary to achieve a positive ROI, your agency cannot do without a profound understanding of your target audience, the language they speak and what makes them tick. This isn’t possible without a team of veteran writers that are capable of speaking to your prospects, not with flamboyant and flashy words, but with a message that your audience can truly resonate with.

To Conclude

The bottom line? Collecting accurate data, coupled with effective optimisation allows you to drive cost-effective B2B SEM campaigns, and over time, your returns will increase. Of course, there are other factors to consider, such as suitable goals and an agency or strategist that’s a good fit.

Seeking a B2B SEM Agency?

Rogue Digital is an SEM agency in Singapore, with skilled strategists managing a diverse range of B2B campaigns. Book a consultation with an experienced digital marketing strategist today.

Interested to know more about how SEM works? Click here.

Read more about the tips and tricks on how to craft content that drives impactful results here.