London's B2B Google Ads: Find The RIGHT Expert

Let's be brutally honest. If you're a B2B tech company in London, you're in one of the most competitive, expensive, and sceptical markets on the planet. And you're trying to sell complex solutions to incredibly busy, smart people who have zero patience for marketing fluff. So when you decide to use Google Ads, you're not just playing with fire; you're playing with it in a warehouse full of dynamite.

The vast majority of Google Ads agencies in London are generalists. They might do a decent job for a local cleaning company or an e-commerce store selling tea towels, but they will get absolutely slaughtered trying to generate qualified leads for a SaaS platform or a high-ticket tech service. They don't understand your sales cycle, they don't get your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and they'll waste your money on rubbish keywords that attract students and tyre-kickers. Finding a reliable service that actually delivers a measurable return is a proper nightmare.

So why is finding a good B2B ads expert in London such a pain?

It's a perfect storm, really. First, the competition is fierce. You're not just competing with direct rivals down the road in Shoreditch; you're up against global players with massive budgets, all bidding on the same handful of high-value keywords. This drives up the Cost Per Click (CPC) to eye-watering levels. We're talking £20, £50, even £100+ for a single click on a top commercial term. A generalist agency sees that, panics, and starts bidding on cheaper, broader keywords that are completely irrelevant.

Second, your buyer isn't making an impulse purchase. They're making a considered, multi-stakeholder decision that could take months. They need whitepapers, case studies, webinars, and a whole lot of trust before they even think about talking to a salesperson. An agency that's used to selling £50 shoes doesn't have a clue how to build a full-funnel strategy that nurtures a lead from a simple informational search to a signed contract six months later. They just see "low conversions" and tell you "the channel isn't working".

And finally, there's the talent issue. A true B2B tech ads specialist is rare and expensive. Many London agencies just hire junior account managers, give them a quick Google certification, and let them loose on your account. They follow a generic playbook that completely misses the nuance of your business. This is why you need a framework to seperate the wheat from the chaff.

How can I tell if an agency's case studies are legit or just fluff?

This is where the vetting process really starts. An agency's case studies are their pitch. Most are designed to look impressive but contain no real substance. You need to dissect them properly.

Forget about impressions, clicks, and click-through rates (CTR). These are vanity metrics. I could get you a million impressions tomorrow by targeting the entire UK with a broad keyword, but it wouldn't generate a single qualified lead. It's meaningless.

You need to look for business metrics. Specifically:

-> Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): How much did it cost to get one qualified lead or one paying customer? This is the most important metric. I remember one B2B software client we worked with where we took their CPA from a painful £100 all the way down to just £7. That's a real result that transforms a business. If an agency can't tell you the CPA, they either don't know it or it was terrible.

-> Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) or ROI: For every pound they put in, how many pounds came out? This is more for e-commerce, but for SaaS with clear pricing or services with a fixed project value, it's still relevant. Anything less than 3:1 (or 300%) is often struggling to be profitable once you factor in your margins.

-> Relevance to YOU: Have they worked with a B2B tech company before? A SaaS platform? A company with a similar deal size and sales cycle to yours? Getting results for a B2C app is a completely different ball game to generating leads for an enterprise software solution. For example, in one Google Ads campaign for a software client, we acquired 3,543 new users at an average cost of just £0.96 each. That's the kind of specific, relevant experience you're looking for.

Don't be afraid to push them on the details. Ask them *how* they achieved those results. What was the strategy? What were the main challenges? A real expert will be able to walk you through their thinking. A charlatan will give you vague, jargon-filled answers. It can be a real minefield out there, so it's worth learning the ultimate framework for vetting a B2B ad agency in London before you sign any contracts.

What results are actually realistic? Let's talk numbers.

This is the million-pound question, isn't it? The answer is, of course, "it depends". It depends on your industry, your offer, the quality of your landing page, and a dozen other factors. But we can make some educated guesses based on real-world data.

In the UK, for B2B search campaigns, you can expect CPCs to be anywhere from £5 to over £50 for competitive terms. Let's be conservative and say the average is around £15. Now, your landing page. A decent, well-optimised B2B landing page might convert at around 5%. Many convert at 1-2%, especially if they have a high-friction "Request a Demo" call to action. Let's be optimistic and say 5%.

The maths is simple: To get one lead, you need 20 clicks (1 / 0.05). At £15 per click, that's a Cost Per Lead (CPL) of £300 (20 * £15). Now, is a £300 lead expensive? If you're selling a product with a £10,000 lifetime value (LTV), and you close 1 in 10 leads, then you're paying £3,000 to acquire a £10,000 customer. That's a fantastic 3.3x return. But if your LTV is only £2,000, you're losing money on every single customer.

This is why understanding your numbers is so important. Before you even speak to an agency, you need to know your LTV, your sales conversion rates, and therefore, the maximum you can afford to pay for a lead. Any expert worth their salt will ask you for these numbers on the first call. If they don't, it's a massive red flag. They're just guessing. I've put together a little calculator below so you can play with the numbers yourself and see how small changes can drastically affect your CPL.

What should my strategy actually look like? Ditch the "awareness" myth.

Here's a piece of contrarian advice that will save you a fortune: for a B2B tech company, "brand awareness" campaigns on Google Search are a complete waste of money. You are paying to show your ads to people who are not looking for a solution. It's like trying to sell steaks to a vegan convention.

Your entire Google Ads budget should be laser-focused on capturing intent. You need to find the people who have a problem, know they have a problem, and are actively searching for a solution. These are your bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) and middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu) keywords.

A proper B2B strategy is built in layers, starting with the highest intent first:

1. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - "I want to buy now": These are keywords with strong commercial intent. Think "best crm for small businesses uk", "[competitor name] alternative", or "b2b data enrichment platform pricing". These people are ready to make a decision. Your ad copy should be direct, highlighting key benefits and your unique selling proposition (USP), and the landing page should make it incredibly easy to take the next step.

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - "I'm comparing solutions": These users are problem-aware but not yet solution-aware. They search for things like "how to improve sales team productivity" or "gdpr compliant data storage". Here, you don't go for the hard sell. You offer value. Your ad points to a high-value piece of content like a detailed guide, a webinar, or a free tool. You capture their email address and nurture them through your sales funnel.

3. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - "I have a symptom": This is the broadest level, and you should only approach this once you've maxed out BoFu and MoFu. This is where you might use Google Display or YouTube to get in front of specific job titles in specific industries. But even here, the goal isn't just "awareness"; it's to drive them to a valuable piece of content and pull them into your funnel. Getting this right is tricky and is often where people start wasting money on Google Ads without a proper framework.

A good agency will present a strategy that reflects this structure. They'll talk about starting with a small, highly-targeted BoFu campaign to get some quick wins and data, then gradually expanding into MoFu as you learn what works. If they just talk about "driving traffic" or "increasing brand awareness," they don't get B2B.

What questions will expose a weak agency on the first call?

You've reviewed their case studies, they seem to pass the initial test, and now you're on a call with them. This is your chance to really probe their expertise. Don't let them control the conversation with a generic slide deck. Here are some killer questions to ask:

-> "Based on our LTV of £X and our sales conversion rate of Y%, what would you suggest as a starting target CPA? Walk me through your maths."
This immediately tests if they think commercially. A good consultant will be able to do the back-of-the-envelope calculation we did earlier. A weak one will waffle and say "we'd have to see the data".

-> "What's your process for keyword research and selection for a niche B2B product like ours?"
Listen for words like "intent", "buyer journey", and "negative keywords". If they just say "we use Google Keyword Planner", it's a red flag. That's a basic tool. An expert will talk about analysing competitor strategies, looking at forum discussions like on here, and thinking creatively about problem-based keywords, not just obvious solution-based ones.

-> "Our sales cycle is about 6 months long. How will you measure and report on the success of the campaigns in the first 30-60 days?"
This is a critical question for any B2B company. The answer should involve tracking leading indicators: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), demo bookings, content downloads. They should talk about integrating with your CRM to track leads through the entire funnel. If they just talk about leads generated, they don't understand that not all leads are created equal.

-> "Talk me through your approach to landing page optimisation. What would you change on our current demo request page?"
An ad campaign is only as good as the page it sends traffic to. A true expert won't just run the ads; they'll provide concrete, actionable advice on improving your conversion rates. They should immediately spot issues with your headline, your call-to-action (that dreaded "Request a Demo" button), and your social proof. If they say "the page looks fine", they are not a performance marketer.

The answers to these questions will tell you everything you need to know. You're looking for someone who sounds less like a salesperson and more like a strategic partner who is genuinely interested in your business model. For anyone serious about this process, I'd recommend reading a guide to finding Google Ads experts specifically for London B2B SaaS, as it goes even deeper on the vetting criteria.

So, should I hire an agency or an in-house person?

This is a common dilema. Hiring an in-house PPC manager in London is expensive. A good one will cost you £60k+ per year, plus benefits. And that's just for one person. You don't get the benefit of a team's collective experience, nor the exposure to what's working across multiple B2B tech accounts.

A specialist agency or consultant gives you access to a huge amount of expertise for a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. We've seen hundreds of B2B accounts. We know the benchmarks, we know the common pitfalls, and we can get you up and running much faster than someone learning on the job. The key word, however, is 'specialist'. A bad agency is worse than no one at all.

The fee structure is also important. Most good agencies will charge a monthly retainer or a percentage of ad spend (usually 10-15%), often with a minimum fee. Be very wary of agencies that charge a very low flat fee. They usually make their money by having one account manager look after 30+ accounts, meaning yours gets almost no attention. You get what you pay for. A higher fee for a specialist who can actually move the needle on SQLs and revenue is a much better investment than a cheap fee for someone who just reports on clicks.

Ultimately, finding the right Google Ads partner is one of the most important marketing decisions a London B2B tech founder can make. Get it right, and you build a scalable, predictable engine for generating high-quality leads. Get it wrong, and you'll burn through tens of thousands of pounds with nothing to show for it but a fancy dashboard full of useless metrics.

The process of finding a true expert takes time and effort. You have to do your homework, ask tough questions, and be sceptical of anyone promising the world. But the payoff is immense. A real specialist becomes an extension of your team, a strategic partner dedicated to your growth.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a final checklist:

This whole process can feel overwhelming, especially when you're also trying to build a product and run a company. If you've read this far and feel like you'd rather have an expert guide you through it, that's what we're here for. We offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session where we'll look at your business, your goals, and give you an honest assessment of whether Google Ads is a good fit for you. We'll even give you some actionable ideas you can implement yourself. If you'd like to book one in, please get in touch.