Harness the power of Search Engine Advertising for fast, measurable growth.
For B2B marketers with 3+ years experience
Join the 12-week B2B Growth Programme for marketers who want a compound, repeatable path to stronger pipeline without hiring more staff.
45min
video course
Understand the full growth engine in 45 minutes and spot the levers you can pull tomorrow.
Paid search—often shortened to PPC (pay-per-click)—is the practice of buying ads that appear in a search engine’s results when someone types a query relevant to your product or service. You bid on keywords; the platform shows your text ad, shopping card or call-only unit; and you pay only when a user clicks. CPC (cost per click) is the fee you pay for each of those clicks. Think of PPC as renting pole-position on Google, Bing or any other search engine so your offer surfaces precisely when a prospect is asking for it.
Although Google Ads dominates share of wallet, paid search is not a Google monopoly. Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) delivers surprisingly strong ROI in certain B2B niches—legal, manufacturing, senior decision-makers—because its audience skews older and desktop-heavy. Emerging engines such as DuckDuckGo and privacy-first platforms run smaller but often cheaper auctions. The unifying trait is intent: unlike paid social, where you interrupt scrolling users, paid search answers an expressed question (“best B2B CRM pricing” or “cyber-security audit UK”).
I built my first Google Ads account in 2010—back when exact-match meant exact and Quality Score felt like magic. Fifteen years and countless campaigns later, the core formula still thrills me: right message, right keyword, profitable click. Platforms have matured—AI bidding, audience layering, RSA copy rules—but the marketer’s job is unchanged: translate customer pain into keywords, craft compelling copy, and structure campaigns so data teaches what to keep and what to cull.
Article continues below.
Understand the full growth engine in 45 minutes and spot the levers you can pull tomorrow.
45 min
English
English, Dutch
Join the 12-week B2B Growth Programme for marketers who want a compound, repeatable path to stronger pipeline without hiring more staff.
See 12-week outlineFor B2B marketers with 3+ years experience
Organic SEO takes months; outbound emails catch prospects mid-task. Paid search hits now: a CFO types “reduce SaaS churn” because budget reviews loom. Your ad answers that need within seconds. No other digital channel marries timing and intent so tightly.
Turn the budget dial up and clicks appear within hours. Pause spend and costs stop—no long-term contracts. This elasticity makes paid search perfect for launches, seasonal pushes or filling pipeline gaps while slower channels (SEO, ABM) spin up.
Keyword reports reveal the language real buyers use. Copy tests show which hooks—cost reduction, compliance, speed—drive action. That intel feeds SEO strategy, landing-page messaging and even outbound subject lines. Paid search is the lab where hypotheses meet hard numbers fast.
Because every click carries a UTM tag, you can trace a deal from search term to revenue. Connect Google Ads or Microsoft Ads to your CRM and you know CPC, cost per MQL, cost per SQL and ROAS by keyword cluster. Those signals sharpen budgeting far beyond impressions or vanity clicks.
List the jobs-to-be-done your solution tackles, then translate each job into questions a prospect would search. “Automate SOC 2 reports” or “B2B podcast agency pricing.” Group by similarity; those clusters form ad groups. Intent first, syntax second.
A clean hierarchy prevents “garbage in, garbage out” reporting. If 50 keywords share one ad, you never learn which query resonates.
Manual CPC still has a place for low-volume, high-value keywords—give algorithms data they can learn from; hand-adjust the rest.
Layer remarketing lists or customer match to raise bids for previous site visitors and idle SQLs—paid search becomes a BoFu accelerant, not just ToFu.
Winning B2B teams run both: paid search captures demand today; SEO builds a moat for tomorrow.
Use paid social to create demand (new pain awareness) and paid search to harvest that demand when prospects Google for a solution.
Brand-bidding can work if your product offers a strong differentiator and the CPC is reasonable. Expect lower Quality Score and watch for legal restrictions on trademarks.
Enough to reach statistical significance. For low-volume niches that might be £500 a month; for broader markets, £2 – 3 k is a realistic floor to gather meaningful data within six weeks.
With modern AI-driven matching, broad can unlock hidden terms—but pair it with smart bidding and negative-keyword discipline. I start with phrase/exact for control, then layer broad once conversion data guides the algorithm.
Most engines auto-filter obvious fraud. Third-party tools monitor suspicious IPs, but focus first on Quality Score and keyword intent; wasted spend from poor structure dwarfs fraud in 90 % of accounts I audit.
Paid search is intent-driven advertising: you pay only when someone clicks an ad tailored to the words they typed. Its power lies in immediacy, scalability and data fidelity. Mastery comes from mapping jobs-to-be-done into keyword clusters, structuring campaigns for clarity, and layering audiences and bidding strategies to match funnel stage. Combine it with SEO for compounding reach and with paid social for demand creation, and you have a full-spectrum growth engine that has served me—and dozens of B2B teams—profitably since 2010.
Fill the top of the funnel with qualified intent. Positioning, channels, and campaigns that draw the right buyers to your site rather than chasing them.
See topicShow simple ads to your ideal buyers so they discover you early.
Re-target past visitors with capped, tailored ads to lift conversions.
Master CPM, CPC, CPA for smarter ad spend.
Spark conversations via tailored email, call or LinkedIn with prospects who match your ICP.
Improve rankings and organic visibility with actionable SEO techniques.
Attract and convert leads with educational, value-driven inbound marketing.
Craft CTAs that drive engagement and action across platforms.
Create high-quality content that drives traffic, builds authority, and converts.
Drive traffic and sales with partnerships through affiliate marketing.