Guide to Google Ads Optimization for B2B eCommerce

Optimize Product Titles

Many marketing agencies and representatives face the issue that product feeds are often in poor condition when initially retrieved from the client or the backend of the website. It is strongly advised to make changes to these feeds by changing existing data or adding additional information in order to maximize the impact the Shopping ads will have on the Google results page. 

B2B selling is generally considered to be more challenging than B2C because the consequences of a purchase decision in a business setting are typically greater. B2B buyers are often more cautious and do more research before making a purchase. They may also be more specific in their search criteria, such as looking for a specific brand or model of a product. This is why it is important to include detailed product information, such as GTIN codes, in product titles and listings to make it easier for B2B buyers to find the products they are looking for. 

Additionally, B2B buyers may also be looking for products that meet certain industry standards or certifications, so it’s also important for agencies to highlight any relevant certifications or compliance information in their product listings. Overall, B2B selling requires a different approach and more detailed product information than B2C selling to appeal to these more discerning, high-stakes buyers.

According to the Feed Marketing Report 2022 by DataFeedWatch, 20% of marketer apply great changes to their product attributes before submitting them to ad platforms, and 14% of all changes are, in fact, related to product titles. These in-depth edits are either a completely new version of the product name or a serious revision to it with the replacement of multiple words.

Benefits come in a wide variety of forms when product titles are re-optimized. These include increases in the following:

• overall impressions (views of the ad)
• likelihood of clicks (CTR) 
• likelihood of a website user making a purchase (conversion rate)

Source: Feed Marketing Report 2022 | DataFeedWatch

As a good starting point, we advise using a structural template in order to get a feel for how to rewrite your product titles. It is important to be competitive and therefore have an insight into industry-set standards for different product categories.

Here are some examples of title structures used for a few B2B product categories that may be seen on Google Shopping:

• Industrial equipment: {Brand Name} Heavy Duty Drill Press – GTIN 123456789
• Office supplies: {Brand Name} Executive Leather Office Chair – GTIN 987654321
• IT products: Brand Name Enterprise-Grade Network Router – FCC Approved – GTIN 222222222

(Please note that these are not real brand or GTIN codes.)

For high-level product title optimization, we recommend using performance analysis to enable you to find niche changes to create product titles. The Google Search Terms Report is an excellent way to identify keywords that have a high purchase intent. Ahrefs and SEMrush are also recommended.

Exclude Items with Low Profitability Potential

Source: Feed Marketing Report 2022 | DataFeedWatch

An outstanding 64.74% of advertisers eliminate poor performing products from their ads in order to increase the return on their ad spend. The most significant factor which encourages almost 16% of eCommerce businesses to cut their products out of ads is the price; however, for B2B businesses, a more relevant factor may be product availability, which comes in third at 14.70%. 

In B2B, it is common for clients to purchase products in large quantities, so their low availability can be a significant issue. To address this, one strategy is to exclude low-availability products from your advertising efforts.

One way to do this is to use an external automation tool, such as Feed-Driven Text Ads, to filter out products with low availability from your Google Search ad campaigns. A tool like this can be used to only run ads on products in your feed that are currently available, and exclude products that are out of stock or have low inventory levels. This can help reduce the chances of wasted ad spend and disappointed clients.

Another way to do this is to monitor your product inventory levels regularly and manually exclude products with low availability from your ad campaigns. This can be done by pausing or disabling ads for specific products. This approach requires more manual effort but it allows you to have more control over the specific products that are being advertised.

Run Split A/B Testing

A/B testing is a valuable tool for B2B eCommerce as it allows businesses to experiment with different elements of their website or advertising campaigns to see what works best for their target audience. 

The following are a few A/B testing examples and actionable tips that can be beneficial for B2B eCommerce businesses:

• Landing page testing. Test different versions of your landing page to see which one performs better in terms of converting visitors into leads or clients. For example, you can test different headlines, images, calls-to-action, or pricing models, no matter your niche. Try to make small changes at a time and measure the impact of each change individually.
• Ad copy testing. Run tests for different kinds of ad copy to see which one resonates more with your target audience. Use the data you garner from the ad copy testing to optimize the ad copy for your website pages as well.
• Email testing. Testing email campaigns to see which one generates the most opens, clicks, or conversions is also a relevant testing point for B2B businesses. For example, you can test different subject lines, layouts, or CTAs. Another idea is to test different times and days for sending emails to see which time window works best for your desired audience.
• Product pricing testing. You should always test various pricing strategies for your products to see which one generates the most sales. For example, you can test different prices, discounts, or bundle options — and for this, it’s useful to take a peek at what your competitors are doing, too. In addition, you should test pricing strategies for different customer segments to see if there is a difference in their behavior.

Use custom_labels for Bidding Optimization

When it comes to optimizing key product feed attributes, it is highly recommended to use custom_labels in the B2B landscape. As found in a 2022 research by DataFeedWatch, a notable 2 out of 5 online shopping advertisers utilize custom_labels in order to increase the ROI on their pay-per-click campaigns. 

Ultimately, this field provides a ‘blank label,’ which marketers can utilize to create any relevant attribute categories which may be helpful for their business strategy. 

Custom labels allow businesses to include additional product information that is not typically included in the standard product feed. For the B2B sphere, using relevant custom labels product feeds can also help optimize Google Shopping ad campaigns by segmenting and targeting specific groups of products within an ad campaign.

 Strategic custom_labels to consider for Google Shopping

For each account you have, Google allows you to add up to five relevant custom_labels. As Google does not enable you to bid on keywords in the advertisement of your shopping products, custom_labels, hand-in-hand with negative keywords, are a strong tool to maximize your marketing outcomes.

For B2B eCommerce, custom_labels can be used to focus on the following three elements:

• Profitability – custom_labels can effectively help distinguish between products that have high profit margins and those that have lower profit margins. This information can then be used to segment products and target specific groups of products within an ad campaign, which, in turn, helps ensure that the ad spend is focused on the products that have the highest potential for profitability.
• Product availability – as previously mentioned, using custom_labels to segment products with low availability can be an effective strategy for B2B eCommerce businesses
• Purchase quantity type – another good example of using custom_labels is to identify and segment products that are designed to be purchased in bulk, as opposed to single purchases. This information can be used to create ad campaigns that are specifically targeted at businesses looking to purchase products in large quantities.

Ultimately, by focusing on key attributes relevant for B2B, agencies can help them create more effective campaigns that are better targeted at the specific needs of their audiences.

Use Dynamic Remarketing

Google has enabled business owners to efficiently reach internet users that have shown an interest in their brands, and browsed their websites, by targeting them with secondary ads. Dynamic remarketing ads take this even further, and allow marketers to reach those users with the specific products and services they viewed.

With dynamic remarketing, B2B businesses can tailor their messages and ads to reach a highly interested audience and bring customers back to their website or app. 

Using dynamic remarketing ads for B2B eCommerce businesses involves the following steps:

1. Install the Google Ads remarketing tag on your website. The remarketing tag is a piece of code that you will need to install on your website in order to track visitors and collect data for your dynamic remarketing campaign.
2. Create a dynamic remarketing campaign in Google Ads. To do this, select “Dynamic Remarketing” as the campaign type.
3. Create audience lists based on specific actions or pages viewed on your website. For dynamic remarketing ads, you should create an audience list of people who viewed a specific product or service on your website.
4. Create customized ads that feature the products or services that the audience viewed on your website. Use the product data feed to create ads automatically.
5. Use the audience lists you created to target your dynamic ads to the specific groups of people who have shown interest in your products or services.
6. Continuously monitor and optimize. Analyze the performance data of your dynamic remarketing campaign and make changes as needed to optimize it for better results.

Additionally, Google designs ads by providing a range of recommended dynamic layouts, in order to run ads that will perform the best for the specific person, platform and placement. This means you can upload multiple variations of images, headlines, and others, and Google will automatically do testing in order to collect data on the most effective strategy.

Supply Additional Product Information Through Secondary Data Sources

Providing your feed with further product data sources helps to enrich your product feed information, and is a method utilized by 12.32% of marketers. This equates to 1 in 10 advertisers uploading additional product information, alongside their primary feed, via secondary feed sources.

Image source: Feed Marketing Report 2022 | DataFeedWatch

There are three main objectives when looking into why advertisers may be using supplemental feeds:

1. Fulfilling requirements of advertising vis-a-vis the ad platform. This is most helpful when essential data is absent from the original source, such as the website’s product inventory.
2. Improving sales. This assists in enhancing your profit margin, due to the potential opportunity to reach a larger audience within a relevant market. By providing a surplus of data, algorithms can refine targeting in more depth. Additionally, more context is provided to B2B targets who may be more likely to buy from your company. 
3. Boosting campaign performance. Additional data enables the use of a wider variety of actionable strategies within a marketing campaign. For example, increased segmentation of targeting can occur, as well as in-depth modification.

Include Additional Images in Ads

Images play a crucial role in product feeds for Google Ads optimization, and this is also true for B2B businesses. Images are the first thing that potential clients see when browsing through products on Google Shopping, and can be the deciding factor in whether or not they click on a product listing. 

Over 27% of eCommerce businesses upload additional images to their data feeds. This equates to over one quarter of marketers using multiple images, above the minimum required single image. On average, this equals 2.2 additional images or photographs.

Using more than one professional photograph often helps reveal different perspectives and angles of the products, with the goal being to provide clients with the closest representation of what it is they’re looking to pay for, as well as the products’ unique benefits. Conversion rates are often improved as clients feel more acquainted with what they’re browsing for online.

We also advise regularly switching up the images in order to prevent ad fatigue. Ad fatigue reduces the efficiency of ads over time, particularly when they’re utilized on social media platforms.

Of course, high quality images are essential, and are the starting point for the B2B business to begin to relate to its potential clients, building a sense of trust and credibility. Google’s requirements include uploading an image with a minimum of 100 x 100 pixels; however, a minimum of 800 x 800 pixels is recommended for the best user experience online. 

Use Facebook Ads to Push Google Ad Campaign Results

A cross-channel approach is often advised in today’s digital marketing landscape, and this means advertising across multiple platforms. The more touch points a brand has with its customers, the more likely it is to be remembered, and the deeper the connection and brand loyalty with that person will become.

Using social media to back-up your Google Ad results is a well-known technique utilized by many marketeers. 

Build brand recognition through paid social. This strategy runs alongside your paid Search ads which advertise on a Search results page, and enable you to target a wider audience and encourage a first point of contact. 

Lookalike audiences are a fantastic way to reach an audience similar to a list of contacts you update thereby reaching a wider market of potential customers. Facebook’s algorithms optimize the targeting on your behalf, reaching a wide range of individuals.

Research demonstrates that paid social campaigns utilizing Facebook generated a 34% increase in search queries for brand names on Google. This also encourages users to search for your brand themselves, possibly clicking on an organic link of your brand name, and thereby saving you money on branded ad clicks.

Bid on Product SKUs, Part Numbers, and Model Numbers

In order to maximize revenue and profitability, it is highly recommended to bid on more than product names in your Google Search ads.

60% of Google shoppers generate a loss online, so it’s extremely important to carefully consider your tactics and place your marketing budget in niche yet profitable areas.

B2B clients who are able to search for product SKUs, part numbers and model numbers, are highly relevant clients with an extremely strong purchase intent. They have already done the necessary research, know which item it is they want, and are therefore of great value to your business. 

While the search traffic for these items may not be huge, these unique identifiers can help businesses target specific products within their ad campaigns, which can lead to more effective targeting and higher ROI. 

In addition, unique identifiers like SKUs and model numbers can help B2B businesses better measure the performance of their ad campaigns by tracking the performance of specific products and identifying which of them are performing well and which ones are not.

Here are some simple guidelines for constructing your SKU naming system:

• Keep the SKU length between 8 and 12 characters
• Start the SKU with a letter, e.g. the first letter of the supplier or brand name
• Avoid using numbers or special characters
• Develop a unique and clear format
• Prioritize the most sought-after product characteristics in the beginning of the name

Utilize Performance Max Campaigns

Performance Max is a new campaign type from Google Ads that combines smart bidding and targeting features into a single goal-based campaign across the entire Google Network (including YouTube, Display, Search, Shopping, Discover feed, Gmail, and Maps). 

The main objective of Performance Max is to help advertisers boost their presence and conversions by using AI-driven automated bidding technology called Smart Bidding. It optimizes ad performance in real-time by adjusting ad formats depending on what works best at a particular time and place.

Benefits of using Performance Max campaigns for B2B eCommerce include the following:

• Increased reach — a Performance Max campaign reaches the full range of Google’s advertising channels, which allows businesses to target a wider B2B audience and increase brand visibility.
• Real-time optimization — Performance Max optimizes ad performance in real-time using automation technology, which can help achieve better results compared to manual optimization.
• Better targeting — Performance Max combines smart bidding and targeting features, which allows you to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message.
• Better performance — as opposed to static ad formats.
• Improved ROI — Performance Max campaigns are designed to increase conversions and reach, which can help B2B eCommerce companies achieve a higher return on investment for their advertising spend.
• Greater efficiency — Performance Max allows you to automate the process of creating ads, which can save time and resources compared to manually creating ads for each product or service.

As automation in digital marketing continues to evolve, it is important for advertisers to strike a balance between utilizing automation and maintaining a level of informed human input. Performance Max campaigns offer a unique solution to B2B eCommerce companies by providing an effective method to achieve better ad results while also retaining control over the process.

Conclusion

In conclusion, optimizing your Google Ads campaigns in the ways we’ve outlined above is crucial for success in today’s online B2B marketplace. By following our actionable tips, you can increase your reach and drive more sales for your B2B eCommerce company.