Generating High-Quality B2B Leads from Google Search Ads Using Primer Audiences

Overview

This guide focuses on generating high-quality B2B leads from Google Search campaigns using Primer, a B2B audience generation platform that syncs custom audiences into Google Ads. This guide will help B2B marketers optimize their Google Search campaigns by leveraging Primer’s custom audience targeting, optimizing bidding strategies, and refining campaign performance to drive both high-quality traffic and B2B lead conversions.

Key Metrics for Success

When running Google Search campaigns using Primer audiences, success is most often measured using the following key metrics:

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): B2B leads that meet your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) criteria and show high engagement with your website.
• Cost per Lead (CPL): The cost associated with generating each MQL from Google Search Ads.
• Click-through Rate (CTR): The percentage of users who click on your search ads after seeing them.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who complete a desired action (e.g., form submission, download, or sign-up) after clicking on your ad.

3 Strategies to Test

Strategy 1: Running Search Ads Directly to Primer Audiences

To start, let’s explore running search ads targeted specifically at your Primer Audience. Generally, a Primer Audience will result in approximately 20-30% of its size being matchable in Google Ads. For example, if you create a Primer Audience of 2 million users, it will likely match to about 400,000 in Google.

Given that search volumes can be low within niche B2B audiences, maximize your reach by aiming for a larger audience size. A very small Google Ads audience (e.g., 30,000 users) often means low impression volume since only a small fraction will actively search for your keywords at any moment. So for this strategy to work you need BIG audiences. In your campaign settings, focus on maximizing reach while targeting quality users by:

• Using Broad Match Keywords: Broaden your reach by allowing Google to match your ads to related searches. Consider turning off exact match.
• Expanding Your Keyword List: Include a mix of branded and unbranded keywords to capture more potential searches.
• Increasing Your Bid Cap: Adjust bids to remain competitive while maintaining a favorable ROI. While costs may rise with this approach, the goal is to attract high-quality traffic, even at a higher CPC.

Strategy 2: Excluding Non-Qualified Traffic with Primer Audiences

Another strategy is to leverage Primer Audiences to exclude specific audiences from your campaigns. This can reduce unqualified traffic and improve conversion quality. For example, if your primary audience is IT decision-makers, consider creating an exclusion audience in Primer comprising customer support roles. By excluding this audience from seeing your ads, you avoid traffic from users who may not convert despite similar keyword searches.

• Create Exclusion Audiences: Build large Primer Audiences of users outside your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and use these as exclusions in Google Ads.
• Add Primer Audience as an Exclusion Audience: Exclude non-qualified searches. Ensure ads don’t reach users likely to generate low-quality clicks, preserving your budget for high-value prospects.

Strategy 3: Using Primer Audiences as Signals for Optimization

If your ICP is narrow and direct targeting (Strategy 1) feels too restrictive, try using Primer Audiences as signals. By syncing a smaller audience (say, 50,000 to 100,000 users) as an “observation” audience in Google Ads, you allow Google’s algorithms to recognize patterns and optimize ads for users similar to your ideal audience.

• Set Primer Audience as Observation: Google can use this as a signal to serve ads to similar users, helping optimize campaign performance without limiting reach too much.
• Drive Incremental Efficiency: This technique allows for incremental improvements in targeting precision, helping you reach more relevant users without overly constraining your campaign.

These three strategies provide structured ways to harness Primer Audiences in Google Ads, whether you're looking to target niche groups directly, refine your traffic with exclusions, or leverage audience insights for broader optimization.

Our Experience Testing Campaign Strategies

1. Audience Targeting with Primer

Start by syncing your audiences from Primer to Google Ads. In the example described, we synced three Primer audiences, resulting in a matched audience size of 150,000 people. These audiences were composed of our core ICP criteria.

You can place them in observation mode or directly use them in targeted campaigns. Test audience performance against native Google audiences, such as affinity and in-market audiences, to see which delivers better results.

2. Testing Bidding Strategies

Testing various bidding strategies is crucial to determining what works best with Primer audiences.

Directly Targeting Primer ICP Audiences

When you’re only targeting your search ads to Primer ICP audiences, audience size matters - A LOT. Keep in mind that search is a high intent behavior and not a lot of people in your ICP are searching for your keywords at any given time. Primer audiences will further constrain your search ads to the prospects we have successfully matched. Given that you will have more limited reach than you are used to, expect each click to cost more, but expect higher quality traffic in return. We typically see customers 2-5Xing their bid caps.

We’ve conducted testing around bidding strategies. We synced three Primer audiences, building a matched audience size of 150,000 people, and here’s what we learned:

• Maximizing Conversions: Set a target CPA for conversion optimization (e.g., $300–$500). However, it’s important to note that this strategy might not always generate sufficient impressions or clicks, especially for smaller audience sizes. We recommend avoiding this strategy unless your matched audience size is greater than 1M.
• Maximizing Clicks: With a bid cap ranging from $30 to $100, this strategy led to an increase in impressions and clicks but came at a higher cost per click (CPC). Though impressions and clicks were higher, the cost was significant, which may not be ideal for smaller budgets. We recommend using this strategy if your audience size is greater than 500K.
• Target Impression Share: Given our smaller audience size (150K), this strategy performed best, with CPCs ranging from $30 to $40. It generated the most impressions and clicks, but you need to evaluate the cost per click to ensure the budget aligns with B2B lead quality. This strategy seems most effective for audiences under 500K.

Smart Bidding with Primer Audiences

A strategy to also consider is Google’s smart bidding. By placing Primer audiences in observation mode, Google’s smart bidding algorithm can use these audiences as signals to optimize for conversions automatically. You don’t need to adjust your bidding strategy and you can still get higher quality results.

Exclusion Audiences

You might get bigger gains by making sure certain people DON’T get served your search ads, leading to wasted clicks. You can sync through audiences of your existing users and certain segments you want to avoid. Then, you add them as exclusion criteria in your campaign set up. This can improve the quality of the traffic you drive and reduce unnecessary ad spend.

Optimization Tips

• Audience Size: Make sure your audience size is sufficient (ideally over 1,000,000 people) to allow Google’s algorithms to optimize effectively.
• High-Quality Traffic: Use tools like Koala to assess the quality of traffic driven by your campaigns. In our video example, Koala’s reverse IP lookup revealed that despite high CPCs, the traffic was composed of high-quality accounts.

• Incremental Testing: Use incrementality tests by comparing traffic performance in different geographies or time periods with minimal marketing activity. This can help isolate the effect of Primer audiences in search ads.

Measurement and Reporting

Before launching your Google Search campaign, gather the following baseline metrics to measure success effectively:

• Current CPL: Understand your existing cost per lead to benchmark campaign performance.
• Lead Qualification Percentage: Measure the percentage of B2B leads meeting your MQL criteria.

Tools for Attribution and Tracking

• Google Analytics and Koala: Use Koala (or tools like Warmly.ai) to track reverse IP data and attribute your B2B leads to Primer audiences, even when Google’s own tools may miss the full attribution story. UTM parameters can also help track specific audience performance.

• Touch-Based Attribution Limitations: Keep in mind that while Primer audiences can improve targeting, mobile interactions in search ads may not always directly lead to conversions. Be sure to measure desktop and mobile interactions separately to capture the full impact.

DOWNLOAD: Enhanced Spreadsheet Template for Pre/Post Campaign Performance Assessment!

Conclusion

Using Primer to generate high-quality leads through Google Search requires thoughtful audience targeting, testing different bidding strategies, and measuring lead quality carefully. By leveraging smart bidding, exclusion audiences, and incrementality testing, you can improve both the reach and quality of your Google Search ads. Ultimately, the goal is to find the right balance between driving high-quality traffic and keeping costs manageable.