By: Aldwin Neekon, Founder, Inquisitive Marketer
If your B2B Google Ads campaign is failing and you can’t figure out why, it might be because you are doing everything right.
I realize that sounds like a contradiction. How can doing things "right" lead to failure?
I have worked with some incredibly difficult Google Ads accounts over the years. These companies had cycled through several agencies and in-house experts, and everyone was mystified about why the campaigns were flopping. When I looked under the hood, I noticed something surprising about all of them. In every single case, they had implemented standard marketing best practices - the kind you read about in blogs and hear about at conferences.
The problem? These best practices almost always work in a B2C (Business to Consumer) situation. But when applied to a B2B (Business to Business) context, these same "rules" were sabotaging their success.
If you are a B2B marketer or business owner scratching your head over low conversion rates despite a "perfect" account structure, this post is for you. We need to stop blindly applying B2C logic to B2B problems.
Here is what we will cover in this post:
Defining the "B2B Situation": Why your environment is fundamentally different from consumer retail.
The Trap of A/B Testing: Why waiting for data in B2B is often a waiting game you can't win.
The "Beautiful Content" Mistake: Why high production value might be hurting your conversion rate.
The Keyword Volume Illusion: Why chasing high-intent keywords can drain your budget on the wrong leads.
Before we dive into the specific traps, we need to define the context. When I say a "B2B situation," I’m not just talking about who pays the invoice. I am talking about three specific characteristics that change the physics of your ad campaigns:
The Target Market is Tiny: You aren't selling sneakers to millions of people. You are targeting a very specific group of decision-makers. This means your traffic volumes will naturally be lower.
The Offering is Complex: Especially in B2B tech, the market often doesn't even know what to search for. Your category might not exist yet, or your innovation is so new that standard keywords don't apply.
High Price and Long Sales Cycles: Expensive things take longer to buy. In a business context, this means buying committees and approvals. You rarely get an impulse buy on a $50,000 software contract.
In this context, standard advice fails. Here are the three specific traps to watch out for.
One of my first Google Ads clients hired me right before the pandemic hit. Suddenly, long-term strategy went out the window, and the CEO told me, "Aldwin, forget the strategy work. We need leads now."
I suggested running Google Ads. His response? "We've done it. It doesn't work for us."
I had to investigate why. It turned out that they had spent months running rigorous A/B tests on their ad copy and landing pages. They were waiting for "statistical significance" - the gold standard of data analysis - before making any changes.
The Problem: In a B2B situation, you might only get a dozen clicks a day. If you wait for statistical significance with that volume, you will be waiting months, or even years, to make a single decision. My client had been paralyzed by their own adherence to best practices.
The Solution: You cannot afford to wait. You need to operate with an "educated gut."
Give Google Ads enough time to adjust when you change a budget or a bid strategy, but then you need to make a call and move on. Don't let the lack of massive data sets freeze you.
To help with this, I recommend using tools like Microsoft Clarity. This allows you to watch session recordings to see exactly what each visitor is doing. Even with very low traffic, watching five users struggle with a form tells you more than a month of waiting for a split-test to resolve.
A lot of B2B CEOs and marketers suffer from "B2C brand envy." They look at Nike or Apple and want to create that same kind of emotional, polished, cinematic content.
I had a client who hired a top-tier creative agency to make a YouTube ad. It was stunning. It had intriguing music, cinematic shots, and a mysterious vibe. It racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
It also generated zero conversions.
The Problem: The ad was designed like a prestige B2C commercial. It was beautiful and intriguing, which meant it drew everybody in. It didn't filter anyone out. The viewer watched it, enjoyed the music, and had no idea if the product was actually for them.
The Solution: In B2B, your content needs to do two things simultaneously:
Attract your specific audience.
Repulse everyone else.
You need to be immediately clear about the problem you solve and who you solve it for. If you are selling enterprise-grade cybersecurity for financial institutions, your ad should probably be boring to a teenager or a bakery owner.
You don't have to be dry, but you must be precise. Sometimes, that means you can't afford to be "beautiful" in the vague, artistic sense. You need to be effective.
If you ask a PPC beginner what the goal of Google Ads is, they will likely say, "To bid on high-volume, high-intent keywords."
Usually, they are right. But in B2B, this can be a budget killer.
The Problem: Let’s look at an example. Imagine you are an enterprise software company. Your solution bundles a new, innovative technology with several standard "point solutions" (features that solve one specific task).
A marketer looking at the data might see massive search volume for those point solutions. They get excited. "Look at all this traffic! Look at all these clicks!"
But those searchers are looking for a cheap, single-feature tool. They are not looking for your expensive, holistic enterprise ecosystem. You end up paying for clicks from people who will never buy, and your sales team wastes hours trying to qualify leads that simply wanted a $10/month tool, not a $50,000 integration.
The Solution: You have to be disciplined enough to avoid the high-volume traps.
Identify the "Point Solution" keywords and aggressively add them as negative keywords.
Step outside of Search. If people don't know your holistic solution exists, they won't search for it. You need to use other channels to generate awareness and educate the market about your new category. Once they understand the innovation, then they will know how to find you.
If your B2B Google Ads campaigns have been falling flat, I challenge you to audit your strategy - not for errors, but for "best practices."
Ask yourself: Are these tactics appropriate for our business reality, or are they actually sabotaging our success? Are we waiting for data that will never come? Are we making art instead of sales assets? Are we chasing traffic instead of revenue?
Sometimes, to succeed in B2B, you have to break the rules that were written for B2C.
Aldwin Neekon is the founder of Inquisitive Marketer.
You can find him on LinkedIn and at InquisitiveMarketer.com