If you’re promoting B2B services using Google’s default campaign settings in regular Search campaigns, you may be seriously limiting your results. These default settings are designed for broad use and often prioritize volume over quality, which is the opposite of what you need to generate meaningful, high-quality leads.
Why avoid Default Settings?
- Lead Quality matters more than Quantity: B2B services require high-quality leads that are more likely to convert. Default settings may attract a broad audience, including many irrelevant clicks.
- Budget Efficiency: Default settings can quickly drain your budget on low-value traffic. Customizing your campaign ensures every dollar is spent targeting the right prospects.
- Better Control over Targeting: B2B audiences are niche and specific. Default settings often lack the granularity needed to reach decision-makers in professional fields like law, medicine, or industrial services.
When you create a new Google Search campaign, several default settings are applied at both the campaign and keyword levels. Understanding these defaults is crucial because they often need adjustment to better suit B2B service promotion.
Default Campaign Settings
Search Campaign: By default, Google enables the Search Network along with the Partner Network and Display Network options checked.
Why avoid Partner Network? The Search Partner Network includes third-party sites that show your ads, but the traffic quality is often lower and less targeted. For B2B services, this can lead to irrelevant clicks, lower conversion rates and wasted budget.
Why avoid Display Network? The Display Network places ads on websites, apps, and YouTube, which is more suited for brand awareness rather than direct lead generation. Display traffic tends to have lower intent and poorer conversion performance for especialy for B2B campaigns.
Bidding Strategy: Typically set to Maximize Conversions by default.
Why not start with Maximize Conversions? While Maximize Conversions aims to get the most conversions within your budget, it can sometimes prioritize quantity over quality. For B2B services, where lead quality is crucial, this strategy may attract lower-quality leads or less relevant traffic. Starting with a more controlled bidding strategy, like Maximize Clicks with strict controls, allows better optimization for lead quality and cost efficiency.
Maximize Conversions relies heavily on frequent conversion data over a longer period of time, data that many B2B service providers don’t have in their Google Ads accounts.
Broad Geographic Targeting: Presence & Interest
Why avoid the Location option "Presence or interest"? This default setting targets users based on their physical presence or interest in a location. For B2B services, this can attract irrelevant traffic from users who are only interested in a location but not physically present, leading to lower lead quality. Instead, use the "Presence" option to target users who are physically located in your target area (Country, Region, City, etc.), ensuring higher relevance and better conversion potential.
Ad Schedule: Ads run all day, every day.
Why is ad scheduling important for B2B services? B2B decision-makers typically operate during standard business hours and may not engage with ads outside these times. Running ads 24/7 can waste budget on low-intent traffic during nights, weekends, or holidays. Setting an ad schedule allows you to focus your budget on peak hours when your target audience is most active and likely to convert, improving lead quality and campaign efficiency.
Default Keyword Settings
Match Types: Broad match is the default, which can trigger ads on a wide variety of search queries.
Broad match keywords cast a wide net, showing your ads for many related or loosely connected search queries. Without enough conversion data to guide optimization, this can lead to irrelevant clicks and wasted budget.
Unintentionally, it can show ads for product-related searches instead of service-related searches, competitor names, and even your own branded searches.
For B2B services, where lead quality is critical, broad matches can attract low-intent traffic that doesn't convert well. It's better to start with more precise match types like Phrase Match or Exact Match until you have sufficient conversion data to safely expand.
No Negative Keywords by default, meaning irrelevant searches can trigger your ads.
To improve lead quality and avoid wasting budget, add negative keywords that filter out irrelevant or low-intent searches. Common negative keywords for B2B campaigns include:
- Job seekers (e.g., "jobs", "careers", "vacancies")
- Free or cheap-related terms (e.g., "free", "cheap", "discount")
- Educational or informational queries (e.g., "how to", "tutorial", "training", "what is")
- Competitor brand names if you don’t want to target them on purpose
Adding these negative keywords helps ensure your ads only show to prospects with genuine interest and higher conversion potential, improving overall campaign efficiency.
The default settings in Google Search Ads can lead to broad, less targeted traffic, which is often not ideal for B2B services where lead quality and precise targeting are paramount. Customizing these settings allows you to focus your budget on the most relevant prospects and improve campaign performance.
What to do instead?
- Deactivate the Partner Network and Display Network in the campaign settings!
- Start with the Maximize Clicks bidding strategy and combine it with
- Exact Match Keywords! Use highly specific, intent-driven keywords rather than broad match types. Exact match today means the exact same search intent, the same meaning, not just the exact same words.
- Negative Keywords: Regularly update negative keywords to exclude irrelevant searches. Review your Search Terms Report on a regular basis!
- Ad Scheduling: Run ads during business hours or times when your target audience is most active.
- Geotargeting: Focus on locations where your ideal clients operate. Use “Presence” only!
Conversion
This is the initial setup. To optimize a campaign, modern algorithms need feedback in the form of conversion data. Optimizing for lead quality means setting up proper conversion tracking that measures the right types of actions on your website are tracked, such as submitting a form, scheduling an appointment or clicking your phone number.
Conclusion
Optimizing Google Search Ads for B2B Services requires moving beyond default settings to focus on lead quality, precise targeting, and budget efficiency. By customizing campaign and keyword settings, using controlled bidding strategies, and implementing proper conversion tracking, businesses can significantly improve their lead generation outcomes.
Careful attention to ad scheduling and geographic targeting further enhances campaign performance, ensuring your ads reach the right decision-makers at the right time. Taking these steps will help maximize your return on ad spend and drive meaningful growth for your B2B services.