Google AdWords: Best Platforms for B2B Ads

Introduction

B2B buyers don’t wake up thinking about your funnel. They wake up with problems to solve, and they go to Google, LinkedIn, and a handful of other places to figure out who can help them.

The numbers back it up. Roughly 67% of the buyer journey is now done digitally, and about 68% of B2B buyers say they prefer to research purchases online before engaging with sales. If your brand and your message aren’t showing up where and when that research happens, you’re playing from behind.

Paid media is one of the fastest ways to inject yourself into that digital journey. But in B2B, throwing money at "Google AdWords" (now Google Ads) is not a strategy. You need the right mix of platforms, the right expectations, and a tight connection between marketing and sales development.

In this guide, we’ll walk through:

• Why Google Ads is still the anchor channel for B2B advertising
• When Google Ads shines, and when other platforms are a better bet
• The best complementary platforms for B2B ads (LinkedIn, Meta, Microsoft Ads, review sites, and more)
• How to architect a revenue-focused paid strategy instead of a "traffic" strategy
• How to connect your ad spend directly to SDR productivity and pipeline

If you run B2B sales or marketing, think of this as the playbook you wish someone had handed you before you burned six figures on the wrong clicks.

Why Google Ads Still Anchors B2B Advertising

Let’s start with the obvious question: with so many ad platforms out there, why is everyone still talking about Google?

Because your buyers are.

Search is still the biggest digital ad channel. In the US alone, search ads drove $102.9 billion in revenue in 2024 and represented about 39.8% of all digital ad spending. Globally, Google’s ad network reaches around 90% of internet users. That’s not a "nice to have" channel; that’s the water supply.

On top of that, PPC in general converts better than organic traffic in B2B. One recent analysis found PPC traffic converts 50% better than organic, and about 64% of B2B professionals say their organizations use PPC advertising. When money’s on the line, marketers gravitate to what reliably produces results.

Why B2B Teams Lean on Google Ads

A few reasons Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is still the backbone for serious B2B teams:

1. High intent: Someone searching "best SOC 2 compliance software" or "warehouse automation platform pricing" is telling you exactly what they want. You’re not interrupting them; you’re answering a question.
2. Huge and diversified inventory: Search, Display, YouTube, Discovery, Performance Max, Google lets you reach the same ICP across multiple formats and stages of the journey.
3. Mature tooling: Bid strategies, audience lists, custom intent, conversion tracking, and integrations with CRMs and analytics platforms are all battle-tested. That matters when you’re optimizing for a long, multi-touch B2B journey.
4. Proven effectiveness for B2B marketers: In Content Marketing Institute’s latest B2B benchmark study, 84% of B2B marketers said they use paid channels, and among those, 64% use SEM/PPC. They also ranked SEM/PPC as the paid channel that produces the best results for their content marketing, ahead of social ads and sponsorships.

In other words: if you’re serious about digital pipeline, Google Ads should almost always be in the mix.

Google Ads Campaign Types That Actually Work for B2B

Let’s break down where B2B teams typically see the best ROI.

1. Core Search Campaigns (High Intent)

This is your bread and butter. Focus on:

• Problem keywords ("reduce cloud spend", "prevent warehouse injuries")
• Category keywords ("ERP for manufacturers", "B2B lead generation agency")
• Competitor and alternative searches ("Salesforce alternative", "vs" and "compare" terms)
• Branded terms (your company and product names)

Start with exact and phrase match on tightly grouped keywords and expand only once you know what actually converts into opportunities.

2. Brand Protection Campaigns

Like it or not, your competitors are probably bidding on your brand terms. Branded campaigns are usually cheap, high-CTR, and high-converting, and they protect your real estate on the results page.

3. Remarketing (Search, Display, and Discovery)

Buyers don’t convert on first touch, especially in B2B. Remarketing lets you stay in front of:

• Site visitors
• Pricing page and high-intent page viewers
• People who filled out content forms but didn’t request a demo

Use remarketing to promote stronger CTAs (assessments, demos, ROI calls) once someone has shown interest.

4. YouTube for Thought Leadership and Retargeting

YouTube is underused in B2B. You don’t have to produce Super Bowl-level creative. Simple, well-scripted explainer videos or customer stories in front of the right audiences can:

• Warm up cold accounts
• Reinforce your narrative from other channels
• Build familiarity before SDRs call or email

Keep YouTube targeting tight (custom intent, remarketing, placements) and measure success on engaged views and assisted conversions, not just last-click leads.

5. Performance Max, With Guardrails

Performance Max can be powerful if you already have good conversion volume and well-structured asset groups. But for B2B, it often works best as a layer on top of solid search campaigns, not your first move. Feed it high-quality first-party audiences (customer lists, high-value leads, site engagers) and clear conversion goals.

Benchmarks: What Does “Good” Look Like?

Across industries in 2025, Google Ads campaigns are averaging around a 6-7% CTR and a 7.5% conversion rate, with an average cost per lead of about $70. B2B typically sits on the higher end of CPL due to higher deal values and competitive keywords.

The catch? Those are channel averages. A sloppy B2B setup will sit way below them, and a tight, focused account (good keywords, strong offers, dedicated landing pages) can beat them by a mile.

When Google Ads Works Best in B2B, And When It Doesn’t

Google Ads is powerful, but it’s not a magic ATM. There are plenty of B2B situations where it’s the hero, and some where it’s just not the right starting point.

When Google Ads is a No-Brainer

You’re likely to see strong performance if:

• Your buyers already search for your category. If terms like "penetration testing services" or "3PL warehouse software" show meaningful search volume, you can capture in-market demand quickly.
• You have clear, compelling offers. Live demos, assessments, pricing consultations, and calculators are all great conversion offers for B2B search.
• Your deal sizes can support higher CPLs. If your ACV is $20k+ and your win rate from qualified leads is solid, paying $150–$300 per qualified lead can still produce an excellent CAC.
• You can respond quickly. Paid leads decay fast. If your SDR or inbound team can respond in minutes instead of days, you’ll see radically better connect and meeting rates.

When Google Ads Alone Won’t Get You There

Google Ads will struggle if:

• You’re inventing a totally new category. If nobody has words for their problem yet, there’s not enough search volume to support your growth goals. You’ll need to start with demand creation (LinkedIn, content, events) and use search as a secondary channel.
• Your ICP is hyper-specific. Think "200 global pharma manufacturers" or "top 500 US banks." There, account-based platforms and outbound SDRs usually outperform broad search.
• Your deal sizes are low and competition is brutal. If you sell a $2k/year tool into a space where clicks are $30–$50, economics get ugly fast unless your funnel is absolutely dialed in.
• You don’t have landing pages or sales capacity. Sending traffic to generic pages and letting leads sit in an inbox for three days is how you turn a great channel into a write-off.

In those cases, Google Ads still has a role, usually for remarketing, branded protection, and harvesting whatever bottom-of-funnel demand exists, but it shouldn’t be your only or even primary bet.

The Best Complementary Platforms for B2B Ads (Beyond Google)

If Google Ads is your demand-capture engine, what should you pair it with to actually grow faster than your competitors?

Let’s walk through the usual suspects and where they shine.

LinkedIn Ads: The B2B Powerhouse

LinkedIn is the professional watering hole. The stats are hard to ignore:

• Roughly 80% of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn.
• Around 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing.
• It consistently ranks as the social platform B2B marketers say delivers the best value for their organization.

Where LinkedIn shines versus Google Ads:

• Precision targeting: Titles, seniority, company size, industry, skills, groups, and even specific account lists.
• Demand creation and education: Thought leadership, POV content, frameworks, and webinars that shape how your market thinks before they ever search.
• Buying committee coverage: You can target not just the economic buyer, but influencers and adjacent roles across the same account.

Common high-performing LinkedIn plays for B2B:

• Always-on thought leadership campaigns to your ICP
• Lead-gen form ads for webinars, reports, and events
• Account list campaigns aligned to your sales or SDR target account lists
• Retargeting site visitors and video viewers with stronger CTAs

Meta (Facebook & Instagram): Cheap Reach and Remarketing

Meta isn’t the first platform most B2B leaders think of, but used correctly it complements search and LinkedIn nicely.

Pros:

• Massive reach and relatively low CPMs
• Strong lookalike capabilities based on your customer and high-value lead lists
• Great for remarketing, especially to smaller buying committees that might not live on LinkedIn

Use cases that tend to work:

• Retargeting website visitors, free-trial users, and high-intent content consumers
• Promoting on-demand webinars and case studies to warm audiences
• Running lookalike campaigns off closed-won customers to feed the top of the funnel

The key is to avoid broad "spray and pray" B2B campaigns here. Anchor Meta usage around audiences sourced from your CRM and site behavior.

Microsoft Advertising (Bing): Underrated in B2B

Microsoft Ads doesn’t get nearly as much hype, but for B2B it can quietly deliver strong ROI:

• It reaches a slightly older, more professional demographic, including heavy desktop and Office users.
• CPCs are often materially cheaper than Google for similar keywords.
• You can import Google Ads campaigns directly and then fine-tune.

If your buyers skew toward enterprise, government, or industrial segments, testing your top-performing Google search campaigns on Microsoft Ads is usually an easy win.

Review and Marketplace Platforms (G2, Capterra, etc.)

In many software categories, buyers use comparison and review sites as a core part of their research. Some B2B data suggests buyers review an average of 11-13 pieces of content before contacting a vendor, including third-party sources.

Places like G2, Capterra, and Software Advice let you:

• Capture in-market buyers who are literally comparing vendors
• Showcase social proof (ratings, reviews, customer logos)
• Run sponsored listings or display ads directly in category pages

These placements are usually more expensive on a CPL basis than generic search, but conversion-to-opportunity is often much higher because of the strong purchase intent.

Programmatic & Niche Display

Programmatic display gets abused in B2C, but in B2B it has a place when used with discipline:

• Account-based display: Serving ads only to specific companies and roles using ABM platforms.
• Contextual placements: Ads on niche industry publications and newsletters where your buyers actually hang out.

Measure success here on account engagement and influenced pipeline rather than last-click conversions.

Building a Revenue-Focused B2B Paid Strategy (Not a Traffic Strategy)

Most underperforming B2B ad accounts have the same root problem: they’re optimized for marketing metrics, not for pipeline.

Clicks, CTR, impressions, and even top-level form fills matter, but they’re just milestones. Your CFO and VP of Sales care about:

• Sales-qualified leads (SQLs)
• Opportunities created
• Pipeline value
• Closed-won deals
• CAC and payback period

Here’s how to architect your paid strategy around those outcomes.

Step 1: Start With Real Revenue Math

Before you turn on a single campaign, answer a few questions:

• What’s your average deal size (or LTV)?
• What’s your current lead-to-SQL and SQL-to-close rate?
• What’s your target CAC and payback window?

From there, back into your max acceptable CPL and cost per SQL. If your average deal is $40k, you close 20% of SQLs, and you’re comfortable with a 3x CAC-to-LTV ratio, you can do some quick math to see what you can afford to pay for a qualified lead.

That beats chasing industry-average CPLs that may or may not fit your economics.

Step 2: Map Campaigns to the Funnel and Buying Committee

Rather than "We need search and LinkedIn," sketch out:

• Top-of-funnel: Who are we educating? What problems are we helping them define?
• Mid-funnel: What proof and depth do they need (case studies, ROI, technical content)?
• Bottom-of-funnel: What does a high-intent hand-raise look like (demo, trial, consultation)?

Then design campaigns and offers against that map.

Example:

• LinkedIn: Thought leadership and webinar promotion to target accounts and ICP titles.
• Google Search: High-intent category and problem keywords driving to demo/assessment pages.
• Remarketing (Google + Meta + LinkedIn): Serve case studies and ROI content to everyone who engaged with your earlier campaigns or key site pages.

Make sure you’re not only targeting the economic buyer. Use LinkedIn and display to reach influencers (architects, managers, practitioners) while search and SDRs focus on whoever actually fills out the forms.

Step 3: Wire Up Full-Funnel Tracking and Offline Conversions

In B2B, the most important conversion events live outside your website:

• Meetings held
• Opportunities opened in the CRM
• Stages progressed
• Deals closed

Set up a feedback loop so those events get pushed back into your ad platforms. For Google Ads and LinkedIn, that usually means:

• Setting up offline conversion imports from your CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.)
• Mapping CRM fields to conversion types (e.g., "Opportunity, Stage 2" as a conversion)
• Using value-based bidding where possible (e.g., optimize for pipeline value, not just raw lead count)

This lets Google’s and LinkedIn’s algorithms optimize toward the types of clicks that tend to become real opportunities, not just cheap leads.

Step 4: Align SDRs and Sales Around Paid Leads

This is where a lot of B2B programs fall down.

You can have perfect campaigns and landing pages, but if leads go into a black hole or get a bland "Hey, just circling back" email three days later, nothing else matters.

At minimum, you need:

• Clear SLAs: E.g., hot leads (demo/pricing requests) contacted within 10-15 minutes; content leads within 24 hours.
• Campaign-aware outreach: SDRs see which campaign and offer generated each lead and reference it in their opener.
• Consistent sequences: Different follow-up cadences and messaging for hot vs. warm vs. cold leads.

This is exactly where many teams decide to bring in an outbound partner like SalesHive-to ensure every paid lead gets fast, professional, context-aware follow-up.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

Let’s bring this down from strategy-land to what it actually means for your SDRs and AEs.

1. Better Context = Better Conversations

When Google Ads and other platforms are integrated with your CRM, SDRs should see:

• The keyword or audience that generated the lead
• The ad copy or asset they engaged with
• The landing page they converted on

Opening with "You downloaded our warehouse safety ROI calculator after searching for fall protection solutions" is a very different conversation than "I saw you visited our website."

That context makes calls warmer, shortens small talk, and earns you a little more time to diagnose the problem.

2. Prioritize Leads by Intent and Source

Not every lead deserves the same intensity of follow-up. Paid search demo requests should sit at the top of the pile, while a top-of-funnel content download from a display campaign might be a slower-burn nurture.

Build a simple lead scoring model that heavily weights:

• High-intent form types (demo, pricing, talk to sales)
• Source (Google Search brand/non-brand vs. display vs. social)
• Behavioral signals (pages viewed, repeat visits, event attendance)

Then align SDR time accordingly.

3. Close the Loop With Marketing (For Real)

Your SDRs are sitting on a gold mine of insight that can make your ads better:

• Which prospects mention competitors most often
• Which objections keep coming up
• Which use cases make buyers perk up

Create a simple monthly feedback loop:

• SDRs bring call snippets and email examples to a shared meeting
• Marketing brings campaign performance by keyword, audience, and offer
• Together, you decide what to double down on and what to kill

This is how you get from "meh" Google Ads performance to genuinely dominant ROI over time.

4. Use Outbound to Amplify Paid, Not Compete With It

The best B2B engines don’t treat paid and outbound as separate universes.

Examples of tight integration your team (or a partner like SalesHive) can run:

• Build outbound target lists based on companies who have clicked your ads or visited key pages but never converted.
• Trigger SDR sequences to specific accounts as soon as they show intent signals (multiple visits, high-value content consumption).
• Use call scripts that reference the exact content or offer the account engaged with.

This way, your ad dollars don’t just produce leads; they also make outbound smarter and more efficient.

Conclusion + Next Steps

B2B advertising used to be simple: buy some trade pub placements, maybe dabble in AdWords, and hope something sticks. Those days are gone.

Today, your buyers are:

• Researching independently across search, social, and review sites
• Consuming double-digit pieces of content before talking to sales
• Expecting fast, relevant, human follow-up when they finally raise their hand

Google Ads is still the workhorse channel for capturing that in-market demand. It holds the lion’s share of search advertising and is rated the most effective paid channel by B2B marketers. But it works best when:

• You pair it with platforms like LinkedIn, Meta, Microsoft Ads, and review sites
• You optimize to opportunities and revenue instead of just form fills
• Your SDR team has the capacity, context, and process to turn clicks into conversations

If you want a concrete next step, here’s a simple 30-60 day plan:

1. Audit your Google Ads account for B2B fit: cut junk keywords, tighten match types, and ensure every core campaign has a dedicated, relevant landing page.
2. Wire up offline conversions from your CRM into Google Ads and LinkedIn so you can see which campaigns actually generate pipeline.
3. Launch or refine LinkedIn campaigns aimed at your ICP with ungated content and lead-gen forms, then retarget engagers via search and display.
4. Set SLAs and scripts for how SDRs will handle paid leads differently from other leads.
5. Consider bringing in a specialized SDR partner like SalesHive to make sure no good lead gets wasted and to run outbound into lookalike accounts.

Do that, and you’re not just "running Google AdWords" anymore. You’re building a B2B revenue engine where ads, SDRs, and your CRM all pull in the same direction, toward pipeline you can actually close.