Hi there,
Thanks for getting in touch. Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on your situation. It's a very common problem, especially in B2B tech. Your in-house team is probably brilliant at what they do, but Google Ads for a technical B2B product is a completely different beast to most other marketing, and it’s very easy to burn through cash without seeing real results.
The core of the issue, from what I've seen running countless campaigns for B2B software companies, is that most people (and a surprising number of agencies) focus on the wrong things. They get obsessed with vanity metrics like clicks, impressions, and even the number of leads (CPL). They'll present a lovely report showing a low cost per lead, and on the surface, it looks like success. But then your sales team gets the leads and quickly finds out they're mostly students doing research, job seekers, or competitors kicking your tyres. It's a massive waste of time and money, and it completly sours the relationship between marketing and sales.
The goal isn't just to get leads; it's to generate qualified pipeline and, ultimately, revenue. Everything in the Google Ads account needs to be geared towards that single objective. It requires a much more nuanced and frankly, ruthless, approach than just throwing up some ads with broad keywords.
We'll need to look at your current keyword strategy...
This is almost certainly where a huge chunk of your wasted spend is going. When a team is streched thin, the easiest thing to do in Google Ads is to use broad match keywords. You put in something like "business software" and let Google do the work. The problem is, Google's main goal is to spend your budget. It will match that term to an incredibly wide array of searches, most of which have zero commercial intent.
Someone searching for "free business software for students" or "business software developer jobs" could easily trigger your ad. You pay for the click, they land on your page, realise it's not for them, and leave. This happens thousands of times a month for accounts that aren't managed properly. It’s death by a thousand cuts.
A proper B2B tech strategy requires a complete reversal of this thinking. You need to be incredibly deliberate and restrictive.
-> Match Types: I’d wager more than 80% of your budget should be on Phrase and Exact match keywords. This gives you control. You're telling Google, "only show my ad if the search includes this specific phrase, or is very, very close to it." It limits your reach, yes, but the traffic you do get is infinitly more relevant.
-> Keyword Intent: You have to think about the commercial intent behind the search. Someone searching "what is CRM software" is in research mode. Someone searching for "salesforce alternative for small business" is in buying mode. You want to bid aggressively on the second one and probably not at all on the first. This involves deep thinking about your customer's journey.
-> Negative Keywords: This is the single most important, and most neglected, part of B2B Google Ads management. A good agency should be obsessed with your negative keyword list. It should be reviewed weekly, if not daily at the start. Every single irrelevant search term that triggered an ad needs to be added as a negative. Words like `jobs`, `career`, `salary`, `cv`, `resume`, `university`, `course`, `tutorial`, `free`, `example`... the list is endless. Building a powerful negative keyword list is the fastest way to stop wasting money.
This level of granular control takes time and expeirence, which is likely what your team is lacking right now through no fault of their own. It's a specialist skill.
I'd say you need to be brutal with your ad copy and landing pages...
Once you've got the right people seeing your ads, the next step is to convince them to click, and then to take action. But here's a counterintuitive point: good B2B ad copy should also *deter* the wrong people. You want to pre-qualify them before you even pay for the click.
Don't be afraid to be specific to the point of being exclusionary.
-> Mention your price point or pricing model: "Plans starting from £200/month". This will immediately scare off anyone looking for a cheap or free solution.
-> State your target customer clearly: "The #1 Accounting Software for UK Construction Firms". If you're not in construction, you're not going to click.
-> Highlight key integrations: "Natively Integrates with SAP & Oracle". This signals you're an enterprise-level product.
This approach lowers your click-through rate (CTR), which can feel scary. But the clicks you *do* get are from people who have self-identified as being in your target market. Your conversion rate from click-to-lead will be much higher, and your cost per *qualified* lead will plummet.
The landing page then needs to perfectly mirror this promise. The messaging must be consistent, and the call-to-action (CTA) has to be strong and clear. "Contact Us" is one of the weakest CTAs you can have. People are hesitant to fill out a generic form because they know it means they're going to get a sales call. You need to offer them real value. I’ve seen massive success for B2B SaaS clients by changing the offer. I remember for one medical job matching SaaS client, we helped reduce their Cost Per Acquisition from over £100 down to just £7, and a big part of that was optimising the offer and the funnel. Similarly, for another B2B software client, we generated 1535 trials using Meta Ads simply because the 'free trial' offer was so compelling. For B2B tech, the best offers are usually:
-> A completely free, no-credit-card-required trial.
-> A live demo they can book directly into a calendar.
-> A valuable resource, like a bespoke industry report or a tool, in exchange for their details.
You probably should focus on what actually matters: tracking revenue...
This is where most agencies fail B2B clients. They don't have the patience or the technical know-how to track what really matters. A lead is not a sale. In B2B tech, the sales cycle can be months long. An ad someone clicked today might not turn into revenue for six months. How do you attribute that sale back to the right campaign?
It's dificult, but not impossible. It requires proper integration between Google Ads, your website analytics, and your CRM (like Hubspot, Salesforce, etc.). You need to be able to pass tracking information from the ad click all the way through to the final deal in the CRM. Once you can do that, you can start optimising for what actually drives revenue, not just what drives form fills.
You can see which keywords, ads, and campaigns are generating not just leads, but Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), and ultimately, paying customers. This data is gold. It allows you to confidently allocate budget to the channels that are actually making you money, even if their initial CPL looks higher than other, less effective campaigns.
An agency that doesn't immediately start asking questions about your sales cycle, your lead qualification process, and your CRM setup is not a specialist B2B agency. They're generalists who will apply a B2C mindset to your B2B problem and burn your cash.
You'll need a clear, actionable plan...
Putting it all together, improving your lead quality and reducing wasted spend isn’t about one single fix. It's about implementing a rigorous, disciplined system across your entire Google Ads account. It's about shifting the mindset from volume to value. I've seen this approach work time and time again. One campaign we ran for a B2B software client achieved a $22 Cost Per Lead for high-value decision makers on LinkedIn by being incredibly specific with targeting and messaging, and the principles are the same for Google Search.
This is the main advice I have for you:
| Area of Focus | Common Problem | Recommended Action |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword Strategy | Using broad match keywords attracts irrelevant traffic (students, job seekers), wasting budget. | Shift 80%+ of budget to Phrase/Exact match. Focus on high-intent, long-tail keywords. Build a ruthless and ever-growing negative keyword list. |
| Ad Copy & Messaging | Generic copy attracts everyone, leading to low-quality clicks and high costs per qualified lead. | Write specific, exclusionary copy that mentions price, target industry, or key features to pre-qualify clicks before you pay for them. |
| Landing Page & Offer | Weak "Contact Us" CTA and a page that doesn't deliver on the ad's promise results in high bounce rates. | Ensure message match between ad and landing page. Replace weak CTAs with high-value offers like a free trial, live demo, or valuable content download. |
| Tracking & Measurement | Only tracking form-fills (leads) gives a false sense of success and makes true ROI calculation impossible. | Integrate Google Ads with your CRM to track leads through to MQL, SQL, and closed-won deals. Optimise for revenue, not leads. |
I know this is a lot to take in, and it's frankly a lot of work to implement and maintain. This is why many B2B tech firms ultimately decide to work with a specialist agency. You're not just paying for someone to manage your ads; you're paying for the accumulated expeirence of what works, the discipline to execute a rigorous strategy, and the focus to stay on top of a platform that is constantly changing.
Your team can then focus on the bigger picture strategy, while the agency handles the day-to-day trench warfare of optimising the campaigns. If you'd like, I'd be happy to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation call where we could actually go through your account together. It would allow me to give you far more specific recommendations and give you a better sense of how we approach things.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
