Are you running ads on just one platform for your B2B clients? If so, you might be leaving valuable leads and opportunities on the table.
Think about it: B2B sales often take a while and involve multiple touchpoints.
Consistently showing up during the decision-making process boosts visibility and the chances that the prospect will engage with your ad and offer.
The solution? Combining Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads.
These are two of the most effective B2B advertising channels and while they both have their strengths, they complement each other exceptionally well to serve every part of the marketing funnel.
The individual strengths of Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads
Before combining these platforms, it’s important to understand their individual strengths:
- Google Ads
- Excels at capturing existing demand.
- Ideal for reaching users actively searching for a solution.
- Think of it as “what” targeting – focused on specific keywords and content.
- LinkedIn Ads
- Highly effective for targeting professional audiences.
- Better for reaching the right person based on attributes like job title, industry, and seniority.
- Think of it as “who” targeting – centered on audience-specific criteria.
So, why should you combine both for B2B advertising?
- Diversify your approach and messaging: Use bottom-of-funnel messaging for Google Ads search campaigns while taking advantage of LinkedIn Ads’ visual components and greater character limits.
- Combine “what” targeting with “who” targeting: Create a more holistic PPC approach by blending intent-based and audience-based targeting.
- Reach your ideal audience anytime: Connect with prospects wherever they are in their decision-making journey.
For example, say you’re working with a B2B SaaS client.
They are in an up-and-coming sector, and you’re not seeing much traction with your Google Ads search campaigns.
This is likely because prospects don’t know they have a need yet, much less have a defined search vocabulary they can use for a Google search.
In that case, relying solely on capturing demand isn’t a viable strategy because there isn’t a lot of demand to capture.
That’s where you can leverage LinkedIn Ads to fill the gap.
Since LinkedIn advertising campaigns are built around audience criteria, you can generate demand by getting your product or service’s message in front of the right person.
As long as you’re clear on who your ideal customer is, you’ll be able to get more traction with this approach than leveraging Google Ads alone.
Dig deeper: 4 B2B paid media strategies to stay ahead of the curve
Practical combination strategies
Here are some ways you can combine Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads to create a more comprehensive approach to PPC:
LinkedIn Ads lead generation + Google Ads direct response
This approach provides full-funnel coverage, with the added benefit of generating leads at the top of the funnel.
- LinkedIn Ads: Top-of-funnel
- Acts as the entry point by targeting your ideal customer based on attributes like job title, industry, or seniority.
- Offers value through lead magnets such as ebooks, whitepapers, or webinar replays in exchange for prospect information.
- Google Ads: Bottom-of-funnel
- Focuses on high-intent, long-tail keywords that indicate serious interest in your product or service.
- Encourages direct-response actions such as scheduling a demo, creating an account, or making a purchase to convert qualified prospects into customers.
Since the search volume for your bottom-funnel keywords is likely to be lower, you might spend less on the keywords in your budget split and more on LinkedIn Ads.
However, you can still capture a prospect’s information by offering a lead magnet on LinkedIn Ads.
From there, they can be entered into a sales sequence and added to a retargeting list.
Cross-channel audience targeting
This is a good example of being where your customers are.
With this approach, you would leverage LinkedIn Ads audience targeting criteria such as job title, company, company size, industry, and member skills to create awareness campaigns.
If you were to send that traffic to your website, you could then retarget that traffic via Google Ads.
This tactic is great for aligning and reinforcing messaging.
For example, if the original LinkedIn ad promoted an ebook download and a user clicked the ad without downloading, you could either provide a complementary offering via the Google retargeting campaign or serve them the ebook offering again.
Dig deeper: 7 LinkedIn Ad settings and tactics you didn’t know you needed
Customer match and matched audiences
This combined approach allows you to target customer lists on both platforms.
LinkedIn Ads
- Use Matched Audiences to target CRM-based customer lists, along with any type of ad unit.
- Single-image ads, document ads, carousel ads, or even video ads would work.
Google Ads
- Use Customer Match to upload a list of email addresses (in compliance with the Customer Match policy) and serve ads across Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Display.
- Zapier has a Customer Match integration, which makes having up-to-date Customer Match lists much easier.
In terms of segmentation, it’s best to target a list of contacts who:
- Have downloaded lead magnets and attended webinars or events.
- Given you their information in some capacity, but are not currently customers.
This approach could also be helpful for a win-back campaign targeted at your former customers.
Having aligned messaging across platforms would be valuable with this tactic since you’re looking to reinforce the next step that the contact can take on their customer journey.
Tip: Take inspiration from sales outreach to understand how they communicate with this audience, or craft something new. Either way, ensure alignment with sales on the core offering to avoid confusing your prospects.
Make the most of your B2B paid media spend
This is the biggest benefit of combining and testing different platforms.
By creating campaigns that complement each other across channels:
- Your ad investment is more diversified.
- You learn more about your audience.
- You can serve users with relevant content at every step of their journey.
A prospect might download an ebook through a LinkedIn Ads lead gen form and later book a demo via a Google search ad.
This cohesive, multi-channel approach helps drive more prospects into your pipeline and convert more leads into customers.
Dig deeper: B2B audience targeting: Meta Ads as an alternative to LinkedIn
source https://searchengineland.com/combine-google-ads-linkedin-ads-b2b-campaigns-450869
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