Combining Google Ads & LinkedIn Ads for a multi-channel PPC strategy

Let’s face it, B2B marketing is a bit of a minefield. Constantly shifting algorithms, CPCs rising across numerous industries and an ever competitive market overall, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd.

If you’ve been relying on Google Ads alone to bring in your most engaged users and interested audience segments, you may be missing a trick.

Combining the power of Google Ads with the B2B focused engagement of LinkedIn Ads is the multi-channel approach set to level up your conversion rates. Welcome to the ultimate guide to making Google and LinkedIn Ads work side-by-side.

• Challenges of B2B marketing in the digital landscape
• The strengths of Google Ads
• The power of LinkedIn Ads: Targeting decision makers
• Integrating Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads: Stepby Step Approach
• Cohesive messaging and creative strategies
• Measuring and optimising results

Challenges of B2B marketing in the digital landscape

B2B marketing has a unique set of challenges that are specific to the world of digital marketing. Here are some of the most prominent stumbling blocks to overcome:

Longer sales cycles
Any B2B decision involves multiple professionals from various departments, along with extended research periods. It takes time to effectively build out any campaign, and in the highly competitive B2B marketing space, every decision has a substantial impact.

Limited audience targeting on Google Ads
While effective for capturing demand, Google lacks the precise targeting for decision-makers in companies,  making it difficult to target B2B business owners specifically. This leads to wasted spend as your budget is eaten up by less useful leads.

Fragmented buyer journeys
B2B buyers interact with multiple touchpoints before converting. You need to stay top of mind, and working cross platform is a great way to combat this. Relying on a single platform limits scalability, and can hide you from leads who spend their time online in other parts of the internet.

The strengths of Google Ads

A stalwart of the PPC-scene, Google Ads has defined digital marketing for over a decade. One of its most useful features is its intent-driven targeting. Google Ads reaches users who are already actively searching for solutions, products, or services through its highly targeted use of keywords. This allows marketers to bid on high-intent terms relevant to their business.

Another feature of Google Ads that is unique to the platform is Search, Display, and YouTube integration. This expands your brand visibility across multiple Google-owned properties at once. Currently, no other company offers anything close to this level of coverage of the digital marketing space.

Finally, something a little more practical. When working on a Google Ads campaign, you can generally expect a lower cost per conversion compared to LinkedIn (if you carefully strategise). Since Google Ads capture existing demand, CPCs can be lower than LinkedIn, which is home to more casual browsing in a specific, work-based context.

The power of Linkedin Ads: Targeting decision makers

Let’s get acquainted with LinkedIn Ads. These ads offer some unique targeting capabilities based around specific B2B elements such as job title, industry and company size. This opens up some seriously bespoke targeting options for B2B marketing.

Overall, we’d recommend LinkedIn ads for brand awareness campaigns, targeting an engaged B2B audience.

Best for

• Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) conversions. Reaching prospects actively searching for solutions.

• Remarketing campaigns. Bringing previous visitors back to convert.

• Lead generation. Using search ads and conversion-optimised landing pages.

Unique targeting capabilities

• Granular audience targeting. Filter users by job title, industry, company size, seniority, and interests.

• ABM (Account-Based Marketing) potential. Directly target key accounts or specific companies.

• Highly relevant B2B audience. Over 65 million decision-makers use LinkedIn, making it the best platform for professional targeting.

Brand awareness & engaging B2B audiences

• Top-of-funnel (TOFU) campaigns. LinkedIn excels at building awareness before search intent develops.

• Native content formats. Sponsored posts, lead gen forms, and video ads encourage engagement.

LinkedIn is most useful for

• Building credibility and thought leadership.

• Educating potential buyers about solutions before they search.

• Nurturing leads before conversion through brand exposure.

Integrating Google Ads and Linkedin Ads: A step by step approach

Getting started needn’t be complicated. Here’s a guide on how to begin creating your first LinkedIn Ads campaign to run alongside your Google Ads campaigns.

Define your goals for each platform

• LinkedIn Ads is good for awareness and early-stage engagement.

• Google Ads can help with intent-driven conversions.

• Consider how you can mirror your targeting from LinkedIn through to Google Ads.

Identify and segment your audience

• Target decision-makers and influencers on LinkedIn.

• Retarget any LinkedIn-engaged users with Google Display/YouTube Ads.

Create a cross-channel remarketing strategy

• Use LinkedIn Ads for initial awareness and Google Search Ads to capture demand.

• Leverage LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences to retarget Google visitors.

Budget allocation for multi platform campaigns

• Allocate more budget to LinkedIn Ads to help cast a wide net at the start of your campaign.

• Prioritise Google Ads for qualifying those fresh LinkedIn leads, portioning off enough budget to assist in leading those users to a conversion.

• Test different budget splits to find the most cost-effective balance. As with anything in PPC, this will become easier with more data over time.

Cohesive messaging and creative strategies

When you’re crafting the perfect LinkedIn and Google campaigns, keeping everything on-brand is vital.

Consistent messaging across platforms

• Ensure all your ad messaging and branding align across Google and LinkedIn.

• Use a similar tone, CTAs, and offers to reinforce recognition.

• Ultimately, you want your brand to be instantly recognisable in a Google ad, to a user who first discovered your brand through your LinkedIn ads.

Tailoring content to each platform
Just to add another layer to this copywriting, make sure you’re writing with each platform’s highlights in mind, too. After all, each platform is especially useful and effective at different parts of your marketing funnel.

• LinkedIn: Thought leadership, educational content and engaging visuals all do well on this platform.

• Google: Direct response ads, high-intent keyword targeting and strong CTAs will all help your ad copy stand out.

Measuring and optimising results

Once you’re all set up, it’s time to collect data. Here’s what to look out for, and a few tips on how to test and analyse as you go.

Key metrics for each platform

• LinkedIn Ads: Keep an eye on the engagement rate, click-through-rates and any audience insights. Leads are a diverse and wide range of potential B2B customers, so the more data you can track here, the better.

• Google Ads: Look at CTR, conversion rate, cost per acquisition (CPA) and ROAS to see which users are actually converting, and what ads are having the most positive impact.

• Cross-channel: Compare performance data between each platform to optimise your ad spend and targeting. Look for key trends, similarities and repetitions as a good starting point.

A/B Testing and performance analysis

• Test different creatives, CTAs, and messaging across platforms. A/B testing can save you a lot of wasted spend.

• Adjust bidding strategies, audience segments, and ad placements for efficiency. If you’ve left a campaign running for 30 days without bringing in the results you’re chasing, it may be as simple as updating your placement strategy, or changing how you bid on certain keywords.

• Use UTM parameters to track LinkedIn-driven traffic in Google Analytics. This takes a minute to set up, but it’s worth the effort to properly track the user journey.

Closing Notes

The days of relying on a single platform for your PPC results are long gone. It’s time to usher in an era of multi-channel PPC marketing with confidence. By using LinkedIn Ads alongside your existing campaigns in Google, you’re setting yourself up to present your ads to the key decision makers who’ll most benefit from your business and services.

Once you get the balance right between sourcing your audience through LinkedIn, and marketing to them again on Google Ads, you’re likely to see higher quality leads and lower acquisition costs. It’s time to let your ads do the heavy lifting.

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