How to Qualify B2B Traffic When Keywords Also Target B2C

Scenario: you offer translation services for businesses. We’re 99% sure you wouldn’t want someone contacting you or clicking your ad looking to translate “I love you” to Japanese.

It’s a common issue for B2B businesses to qualify for certain keywords without simultaneously targeting B2C. B2B business often want to be in front of the general keywords and head terms that have a lot of traffic, but the main traffic from these general terms come from consumers. There is an answer and solution.

Drumroll, please…

Qualifying through the Ads. How to do this, you ask? Allow us to elaborate.

For example, if you sold widgets, write “widget for business,” and if you’re explicitly only for business, write “only for business” in the second line. Writing things like “widget for $899” can work well as consumers are likely unwilling to pay this. You can then write on line two that it’s only for businesses. A third option is writing something like “widget enterprise platform,” as this uses a jargon that enterprise or businesses would use. You can qualify them using the ads, which you usually want to do in the headline.

Be aware that you’re going to get lower CTRs, which is inevitable as higher CTRs come from consumers looking for consumer ads. When you qualify them, they won’t click your ad, which means lower CTRs will result in lower quality score. Some people panic as they don’t want a 2-3 quality score, but it’s more effective to deal with getting a lower quality score than get highly unqualified traffic clicking on your ad.

Recommendation: suck it up and optimize the ad as best as possible for business; this method will work more effectively than writing an ad targeting general consumers. It’s challenging, but this is how best to qualify ads for B2B traffic. Best of luck!