A B2B lead generation campaign is judged differently from one for a store. The buyer is a company, the decision is made by several people, and a long time often passes between the first form and the contract. A lead (an enquiry from a potential buyer, with contact details) is worth nothing in itself: it is worth something only if it becomes a quote and then an order.
Companies looking for this service usually have one of two complaints. Either they get no enquiries at all online, or they get plenty of poor ones: students asking for documentation, private individuals who want a single item. The sales team wastes its time and ends up losing faith in campaigns.
Searches with clear intent and searches that only look like them
In business-to-business sales, search volume is small and precious. Someone who types “custom cardboard packaging manufacturer” or “catering equipment supplier” wants to buy. Someone who types “what is secondary packaging” is learning. The search campaign is built around the first group and firmly excludes the second.
The words that show intent are usually role words (manufacturer, supplier, distributor, importer), transaction words (quote, price, wholesale) and the technical specifications that only someone in the trade would write.
- Exclusion lists: jobs, courses, definitions, “pdf”, “second hand”, household quantities.
- Ads that screen through their wording: “businesses only”, the minimum order, the sectors served.
- Pages by product or by application: each group of searches leads to the page that answers that need.
The B2B lead generation form, designed as a filter
The usual advice is to ask for as few fields as possible. Between businesses, that advice is half wrong: a form with a name and an email collects anything, whereas one that asks what quantity, for what application and by when loses a few submissions but gives the salesperson something to work with from the first call.
The fields are chosen together with the people who answer the enquiries: what do they need to know to prepare a quote, and what would make them say no from the outset?
- Company name and tax identification code: these separate registered businesses from the merely curious.
- Estimated quantity or value: with bands to choose from, not free text.
- Role in the company: shows whether you are talking to the person who decides or to the one collecting quotes.
- Consent to data processing: worded together with your data protection officer.
Signed contracts go back into the platform
Left to optimise for “form submitted”, the platform finds people who submit forms easily. They are not necessarily the ones who sign. To learn the difference, it has to find out what became of each enquiry.
Every click on an ad carries an identifier. If the visitor has accepted measurement for advertising purposes, we save it, through a hidden form field, in the CRM (the software in which the sales team keeps track of enquiries). When the enquiry is marked as qualified, quoted or won, the CRM sends the identifier, the stage and, where possible, the value back to Google Ads. The operation is called offline conversion import.
The limit is volume. If you sign few contracts, the algorithm does not have enough examples, so we optimise for an earlier stage, for example “enquiry accepted by sales”. And someone on your team has to mark the status of every enquiry consistently.
LinkedIn, as an option for narrow audiences
Search only catches those who are already searching. When the product is new, or the buyer does not know they have a problem, you have to reach them yourself. LinkedIn lets you choose the audience by job title, industry and company size, something the other platforms do only approximately.
The price of this precision is a click that usually costs more than on other networks. It is worth it when the value of a contract is high, when the buyers can be described by a short list of job titles and when you have something to offer before the quote: a technical guide, a calculator, a demonstration. For cheap products or broad audiences, the budget belongs in search.
What we track month by month and what is down to your team
The report does not stop at cost per enquiry. We track how many enquiries are accepted by sales, how many receive a quote and which campaigns and keywords bring in the ones that are won. A campaign with expensive but good enquiries stays; one with cheap, useless enquiries is stopped.
Part of the result does not lie in the ads. An enquiry answered the next day goes cold. That is why we agree from the start who picks up the enquiries, how quickly, and how feedback on their quality gets back to us.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take for the first contracts to come from the campaigns?
It depends on how long your sales cycle is: if a long time usually passes between enquiry and signature, the same goes for enquiries that come from ads. The first signs show sooner in the quality of the enquiries than in contracts.
Do we need a CRM to run campaigns?
It is not essential for getting started; enquiries can arrive by email and go into a spreadsheet. Without a record of the status of each enquiry, though, we cannot tell the platform which ones are good. A simple CRM, used consistently, is enough.
Do Facebook ads work for business-to-business sales?
They can work in a supporting role: to stay in front of people who have visited the website, or to promote a useful piece of content. Targeting by job title is weaker than on LinkedIn, however, and the enquiries need careful screening.
This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.