Using the Sales Feedback Loop to Improve B2B PPC Leads

I got my first Google Ads client because they were going through a crisis. And the secret I stumbled on by accident is now my #1 technique for running successful B2B lead gen Google Ads campaigns. 

A few years ago a B2B software company hired me to be their fractional VP Marketing. A couple of weeks into the job, regulatory changes hit the business hard and the CEO told me to drop everything and fill the funnel with leads so the business could survive. 

I knew they had been running Google Ads campaigns and I knew that they were failing. But this was an emergency and I told the CEO the fastest way to get a lot more leads into the CRM was with Google Ads.

He was skeptical given their recent failures but he let me try it. 

I went to the one person who talked with customers more than anyone else: the sales guy.

I asked him, “How do our customers talk?”

He told me a few stories about interactions he’d had with customers, and the phrases customers would use to describe what they did, the problem we solved, and the thing we sold. 

Those answers became my whole campaign. My keywords. My headlines. My descriptions. Everything.

I launched the campaign, and went back to the sales guy every week and asked:

How are the leads?

Then I adjusted things based on what he said.

The campaign was an immediate success. We started generating new customers (not just leads) within the first month and continued adding more customers every month than what they’d had in that month a year prior. 

Then we repeated this success for another year, now beating our own sales records month after month, year over year.

The two steps that made the difference were:

1. Finding out how the customers talked about our offer, not how we talked about it
2. Getting fast feedback about what was and wasn’t working

I didn’t know it at the time, but this process, which I now call the Sales Feedback Loop, would become indispensable to how I run successful B2B lead gen Google Ads campaigns. 

How does it work?

Knowing your customer always helps.

You already know how important it is to know their actual pain points, and the words they use to describe them. You’re looking for raw, specific  “voice of the customer” insights here. Sometimes we have to be humble enough to realize that customers don’t always see our product’s  “brilliance” the way we do. They might not search for or click on ads that use our internal language, so let’s stick to the terms they value most.

But where do you get these insights? 

Two places:

1. The customers
2. The people who talk to the customers

Those are the most reliable sources, and you should use both of them. Talk to the customers directly when you can, and layer on the insights that your sales, support, implementation, and other customer-facing people can give you.

The Google Ads algorithm wasn’t designed for B2B

The algorithm needs volume to work, but in an inherently low-volume scenario like most B2B businesses, volume often brings junk. 

Our challenge is to keep the algorithm “fed” without poisoning the well with a lot of high volume, low quality signals. If we only track high-value deals, we starve the machine; if we track everything, Google will ignore the $500k whale in favor of 10 easy form fills. We need to bridge that gap with data that actually means something.

How do we know which leads are meaningful? Again, we turn to the sales team.

The Danger of “Mis-training” the Algorithm

Google Ads is a machine-learning engine. It doesn’t understand your business goals. It only understands the data signals you feed it.

In an ecommerce setting, the feedback loop is kind of built in. Somebody clicks an ad, sees a product, buys it, done. I know that’s over-simplified, but we can say this: the purchase happens pretty close to the ad click and it’s a good conversion signal. At least much more so than in B2B.

In B2B lead generation you have to be more careful what you count as a conversion. If you count every form submission as a “Primary Conversion,” you are telling Google’s Smart Bidding algorithm that a “junk” lead (a student, a competitor, or a bot) is just as valuable as a $500,000 enterprise deal.

The algorithm learns to find likely form-fillers rather than likely customers. Over time, your Cost Per Lead (CPL) might look great, but your actual revenue will stagnate because you are optimizing for activity rather than profit.

One way around this is to do Offline Conversion Imports. In its simplest form, this means that once someone has filled a form, you review the entry, perhaps even calling and talking to the lead first, and then if they’re a good lead, uploading the lead into Google Ads as a conversion.

This is only worthwhile if you can tell the difference between a good lead and a mediocre one. 

Reviewing the sales on a regular basis with the Sales team lets you do this.

How to Run a Sales Feedback Session

This is simple.

• Get 15 to 30 minutes a week recurring on the calendar with the sales team.
• Ask them which of the leads they’ve talked to. 
• Have them describe each conversation.
• Use that feedback to decide two things:
  • Was this a lead worth scoring as a conversion?
  • How can the ads, keywords, and landing page change to better serve the high quality leads?
• Thank the sales team and finish on time.

That’s it.

Over time they’ll notice the lead quality getting better and the leads more plentiful.

This will help them hit their quotas, and establish you as their secret weapon to get to President’s Club.

What Sales Says vs. What Sales Means

When Sales says a lead is “bad,” don’t take it personally. Instead, look at the intent gap. If they say the lead has “no budget,” don’t argue with them, just go check your firmographic filters. 

If they say the lead is “ghosting,” check if your automated follow-ups are actually answering the question the customer originally had.

What Sales says…	What it probably means	What you might do about it
“They’re just tire kickers.”	Our lead magnet was too broad; we attracted people looking for free education, not a paid solution.	Adjust your targeting:E.g. exclude college students if you’re getting a lot of those downloading your pdfs. We love students, but want them to find our organic stuff, not cost us clicks and sales time.
“They have no budget.”	Our targeting is hitting the right people but at the wrong company size (e.g., chasing startups for enterprise tools).	Change your landing page copy:Make it clear in your copy or your form fields (e.g. a dropdown with budget amounts) that you’re looking to serve customers with a certain budget
“I can’t get them on the phone.”	They might have forgotten about you already.	Sorry sales, sometimes this just means you didn’t get back to them quickly enough. Be polite, but remind your team that they can’t expect anybody to remember a form they filled 3 days ago.
“They’re ghosting me.”	We caught them in the curiosity phase, but we didn’t provide enough mid-funnel content to build real intent.	Max out those attribution windows and provide sales with more reasons to reach out in a way that builds credibility and authority while meeting the customer where they are in their search
“The job title is too junior.”	We reached the “user” or “researcher,” but our messaging hasn’t penetrated the “decision-maker” level yet.	You can’t expect to have the CEO filling out your form every time. Nurture them. Consider ABM tactics to broaden your reach within the target company.
“They aren’t ready to buy.”	They have the problem we solve, but our messaging didn’t create enough urgency to make them act now.	This will happen most of the time. Expect it. B2B sales cycles are long. Get your marketing colleagues to give sales other ways to provide value to the lead, and broaden your campaign types
“It’s just a looky-loo.”	They clicked because the ad looked cool or trendy, but they don’t actually have the pain point we address.	Sometimes you have to make your ads less attractive. Your ads should be attractive to your ideal customers and repulsive to everyone else.
“These are junk leads.”	The Google Ads algorithm is optimizing for quantity because we aren’t feeding it enough quality signals.	Are your conversions set up correctly?
“This was a great lead!”	Something went well. Or the salesperson is just feeling optimistic today.	Ask more questions about what makes them a great lead. Consider uploading the lead as a conversion and follow up. What happens to that great lead in the coming weeks?

Final Thoughts

Stop guessing what a good lead looks like and start using the Sales Feedback Loop to train the algorithm for profit over activity. Better leads, a happier sales team, and higher revenue are just a series of ongoing conversations away.

By meeting with your sales team and your other customer-facing teams on a regular basis and translating their customer conversations into campaign adjustments, you can make your ads more attractive to your ideal buyers and more repulsive to everyone else. Align your ads with the way customers actually talk and the quality your sales team actually needs so you can stop being a lead generator and start being a revenue driver.

Let me know what else you’ve done to tighten up your feedback loops to make sure you’re generating meaningful business results from your B2B Google Ads campaigns. And if your campaigns are still struggling you might find something useful in this post: Why B2B Google Ads Fail (Even When You Do Everything Right)