How To Target B2B vs B2C With Google AdWords
A big challenge and common (and great) unanswered question: how to target businesses and not retail customers with AdWords.
One way is to target using keywords, such as “wholesale,” or “for business.” This helps assume it’s a business in the keywords search query. This simple method helps you segment out the market you’re targeting, which is one way to do it. However, it’s not always that simple.
There’s a challenge. For example, if you offer dog food on wholesale, someone searching “dog food” may be looking for retail; the keywords “dog food” can be both B2B and B2C. There are lots of other keywords like this that can’t be solved with implementing qualifiers like “wholesale” or “business” – they search for general queries and look for the best deal, which can be B2B or B2C; it’s hard to decipher.
The best way to qualify after the keywords is through the ads. For example, if a client does translation services for big business, small B2C translations are not relevant to them. If someone searches “document translation services,” you’re unsure if this search is for a large B2B client or a small B2C. We suggest having a headline reading “Document Translation Service,” but changing line one to differentiate B2C and B2B.
For example, writing “any document in over 40 languages” can bring in both B2B and B2C clients. If you spell out “for business only, $200 minimum” to target B2B only, all the B2C clients that don’t have the budget will be disqualified.
Before starting your B2B AdWords campaign, you should be made aware that there are much more searches for B2C, as there are lots more consumers than businesses. This will result in high impressions, but low clicks as this will disqualify many people, which will give you a bad CTR; many are afraid of this as it results in a bad quality score: this is inevitable. The alternative is getting a great CTR, but the resulting traffic having no value to you. So, take the hit on your quality score, CPC and CTR, but get the right people clicking on your ad; they are qualified traffic and are better off targeting the right people.