B2B services and lead generation
Enquiries come in, and the sales team says that almost none of them are for them.
With a service sold to another company, between the completed form and the signature there are weeks, an offer and several conversations. I work by the “Three Gates” mechanism: I separate the enquiry, the accepted enquiry and the contract, feed accepted enquiries back into the ad account and move the budget to the sources that reach an offer.
Request a quotewhat breaks
Three places where B2B advertising leaks
01
Small search volume at a high cost per click
The monthly searches in a B2B niche can be counted on the fingers. Several companies bid on the same queries and the cost per click goes up. Broad match eats the budget on adjacent searches that never reach an offer.
02
The account does not see the outcome
The cycle runs for weeks or months, and the algorithm receives a single signal — the completed form. An enquiry from a student and an enquiry from a company with a budget weigh the same in bidding, because both look like a conversion.
03
The assessment stays in the phone call
Which enquiry was good is decided by the salesperson at first contact. That judgement sits in the CRM or in their head. Until it is fed back into the account as data, no exclusions are made and next month repeats the same profile of enquiries.
the mechanism
The three gates
The enquiry, the accepted enquiry and the contract are three different states. By default the ad account measures only the first. The mechanism defines all three, feeds the second back into the account and orders the budget by it.
- Definition of the three statesIt is recorded what counts as an enquiry, what as an accepted enquiry and what as a contract, who marks it and at what moment. Without this definition, marketing and the sales team measure different things and the two reports never meet.
- Feeding accepted enquiries back into the accountAccepted enquiries are fed back to Google Ads as offline conversions via the click identifier, and to Meta via a server event. Bidding starts to learn from the state the sales team has confirmed, and stops chasing the total number of forms.
- Excluding unsuitable companies and positionsNegative keywords against searches by job applicants, students and competitors. Excluding audiences, company lists and roles without decision-making power. Qualifying fields in the form — company, role and project timeframe — that filter out enquiries before they reach the salesperson.
- Report by the three gatesEvery campaign, every audience and every keyword is reported in the three numbers: enquiries, accepted enquiries, contracts. The budget goes up where the second gate is passed, and comes down from sources that stop in front of it.
proof
HR services campaign on Google
A service sold to companies: an offer before the deal, a decision made by more than one person and a cycle that does not close within a single click.
The campaign reports 246 enquiries. The channel is Google.
Behind this number is the same work described in the mechanism: a narrow set of queries with commercial intent, negative lists against searches by job applicants and students, counting calls on a par with forms, and regular reconciliation of the reported enquiries with what actually reached the salesperson.
the first step
A second opinion on your ad account
I review the existing account and tell you where the budget goes, which queries and audiences bring unsuitable enquiries, and what is missing in the tracking between the form and the contract.
- Reply within one working dayYou send a request through the contact form and receive a reply within one working day.
- A written analysis and a personal meetingYou receive a document with the findings and priorities ranked by severity, after which I go through them with you one by one in a meeting.
- The value is deducted in fullWith a contract of a minimum term of three months, signed within 30 days of the analysis, the value of the analysis is deducted in full.
- Read access is enoughNothing in your account is changed. Read rights are enough for the entire analysis.
the channels
Which channel for what in a B2B service
| Meta | It reaches companies that are not yet actively searching. It is targeted by role, interests and behaviour, carries the explanation of the service and feeds remarketing. It is judged by accepted enquiries, because this is where the volume of forms is inflated most easily. |
|---|---|
| It catches the moment of active search. Narrow exact and phrase matches, separate groups by service and by problem, negative lists against job applicants and students, calls counted on a par with forms. The main channel for enquiries with intent. | |
| Remarketing | The decision goes through several people and takes weeks. Remarketing keeps your company in front of their eyes between the first contact and the offer — by service pages visited, materials downloaded and forms started but not completed. |
For a narrow audience by job title, industry and company size, I add LinkedIn. The cost per click there is higher, so the channel is run against specific lists of companies and roles and is measured by the same three gates.
an honest warning
When I am not the right choice
- The sales team has no way of marking which enquiry was accepted. Without this signal the mechanism has no input and optimisation falls back to the number of forms.
- You expect signed contracts in the first weeks, when your sales cycle takes months.
- The service is sold only through a personal network and there is nobody to handle an enquiry from the website within the working day.
questions
