How to Measure Success in B2B Paid Media Campaigns

Jenna Jones, our Paid Media Manager, quantifies success as “putting your ideal customer in the driver’s seat down the sales funnel” and that paid is “driven by data”.

“B2B paid campaigns are driven by data, no matter the budget, which helps us to create meaningful leads. Continual optimisation becomes the engine for long-term success, helping businesses adapt to market shifts and changing audience behaviours. Here, we create and manage campaigns with regular data analysis and an in-depth understanding of your marketing strategy’s goals.”

But as we navigate a B2B marketing world full of hurdles, blocks and changes, how can you make sure that your paid activity is working?

By tracking meaningful data.

B2B paid advertising offers a great way to drive targeted traffic, generate leads and fuel business growth. But how can you be sure your efforts are working and that you’re not just reporting on meaningless vanity metrics?

Here, Jenna and the Extramile team explore all about the key measures of B2B success in paid digital advertising.

Key Metrics for B2B Google Ads Success

Tracking the right performance indicators is the foundation for understanding whether or not a campaign is achieving its goals. You might be running a brand awareness campaign alongside a lead generation campaign. These both have very different data points that quantify as ‘success’. With that in mind, it’s important to use different metrics against different campaign types.

Conversion Rate (CVR)

Conversion rate is the percentage of users who complete a desired action on your website, such as filling out a form or downloading a whitepaper. Set up with Google Tag Manager, we use fully unique tracking triggers for every website to make sure that the conversions we report on are relevant and meaningful. For B2B lead generation campaigns, this is one of the most critical indicators of success.

Issues with conversion rates can be an indicator that there’s an issue with what you’re advertising. For example, there could be a problem with your landing page design – perhaps the user journey is off – or there’s no incentive on downloading a whitepaper. The metrics outlined below will help determine where the problem lies too. Small changes, like improving call-to-action (CTA) buttons or giving a free audit of B2B processes, can make a big difference.

Cost Per Conversion (Cost/Conv)

Knowing how much you’re paying per qualified key event or conversion is key to controlling costs and ensuring profitability. There’s a big trend in the marketing industry, at the moment, where businesses are finding it hard to report on ROI. We’re working on a lead attributor that follows a conversion to an enquiry to a sale through HubSpot integration – an important innovation that helps to give a cohesive ROAS (return on ad spend) and helps us put event-driving channels into your marketing strategy.

B2B industries, like manufacturing, logistics or chemical, often deal with longer sales cycles, so striving for efficiency in lead generation becomes even more important with an onus on both quality and quantity.

Using research to target peak business and decision-maker usage hours can help boost ROI.

Search Impression Share

Search Impression Share measures the percentage of impressions your ad receives compared to the total it’s eligible for. For B2B Google Ads activity, this metric is critical as it reflects your ad’s visibility in an often niche space. 

Low impression share means lost opportunities to engage key decision-makers. It also lets us see if your competitors are out ranking your ads, analysis of this helps us to retake SERP positions.

To improve your impression share, it can be wise to push more of your budget into high-priority campaigns that are likely to be the money makers. It can also be wise, here, to optimise your Quality Score by aligning any ad copy and keywords with landing pages.

Key Metrics for Paid LinkedIn Success

Qualified Leads

Here at Extramile, we see the terms enquiries and leads confused regularly. We quantify an enquiry as any kind of contact from an external party. We quantify a lead as something that goes through more than one stage of a sales process. 

A qualified lead is critical for B2B campaigns because not all clicks or form fills translate to meaningful opportunities. For platforms like LinkedIn and those within the Meta family, a qualified lead is typically defined by specific criteria like job title, B2B industry or company size. LinkedIn offers advanced targeting features that allow you to zero in on decision-makers, ensuring higher-quality leads. Meta’s broader audience can also be refined through interest-based targeting.

To measure qualified leads, track how many match criteria aligned with your sales goals – while this may be manual, there’s a power to de-automating paid activity with human help. Integrate lead forms with your CRM – like HubSpot – to monitor lead quality over time. For improvement, focus on messaging that addresses pain points of your ideal audience – show that you get it and that you can help. Ensuring that your targeting is precise will help generate more impactful leads.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

Click-through rate (CTR) measures how often your audience clicks on your ad relative to its number of impressions. Both on LinkedIn and Meta campaigns, CTR directly indicates how engaging and relevant your ad is to your audience. A low CTR can suggest misalignment between your targeting, messaging or creative elements – all imperative to boosting ROI.

To calculate CTR, divide the total clicks by impressions, then multiply by 100. If your CTR is underperforming, consider testing different ad formats like carousel ads or video content to capture attention.

On LinkedIn, tailor content around professional challenges, while on Meta, focus on eye-catching visuals that resonate with a person more. Targeting and retargeting on Meta is a particular strength – despite decision-makers not using Facebook, say, while working the 9-5. Refine audience segmentation to improve ad relevance and monitor performance metrics to identify what drives engagement.

A strong CTR often leads to an increase in both qualified traffic and conversions.

Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics, particularly important for Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram, measure interactions such as likes, comments and shares. These metrics reflect audience interest, brand awareness and content resonance, making them vital for relevant B2B relationships. 

High engagement often correlates with warmer leads and can funnel audiences into campaigns.

Tracking engagement is straightforward, and while not directly a moneymaker, it can indicate how well your targeting is performing. To optimise engagement, focus on posting content that invites interaction, like thought-provoking questions, polls or industry insights. 

A/B testing various creatives and ad formats can highlight what your audience prefers, while engaging your audience earlier in the buying process with informative or entertaining ads can set the stage for future lead conversions.

Using Data to Elevate B2B Paid Advertising Campaigns

Data is the foundation of every successful B2B paid advertising campaign, transforming hunches into marketing growth strategies and strategies into tangible results with a measurable return on investment.

Whether leveraging Google Ads or exploring the advanced targeting capabilities of paid social media, data helps you make the right decisions and helps your campaigns be relevant, efficient, and profitable.

Ultimately, data gives you more qualified leads, optimised budgets and measurable ROI.

For all websites, the ability to set up custom conversions allows businesses to track high-value actions, whether it’s booking demos or downloading resources. Integrating Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager adds a multi-touch attribution lens, helping teams understand the nuances of the buyer’s journey. 

However, the true power of data lies in how you use it to refine your campaigns. Raw numbers mean little if they aren’t transformed into actions. By analysing trends, testing strategies and learning from performance metrics, businesses can continuously refine their paid approaches. It’s not just about running an ad but ensuring every impression, click and lead aligns with overarching business goals – that’s marketing.

As Jenna mentioned, by combining insights with innovation, your campaigns will not only generate leads but also build meaningful connections that drive business growth. With a structured and data-focused approach, every click has the potential to lead to measurable success.

Contact us today to discuss the elevation of your ROI.