B2B PPC Playbook: Your Path to Better Leads and Higher Conversions
You're not new to industrial B2B marketing. You've seen it all: trade shows and conventions, mailers and print ads, cold outreach, lead lists and whitepapers and blogging... You know the value of digital marketing and having a web presence.
At the same time, you also know that sinking feeling when your efforts aren't hitting quite right: the leads slow to a trickle, or what comes in isn't lining up with your ideal customer profile. Sales cycles and follow-ups feel like they take forever, and your best prospects disappear before sales gets a chance to really engage them.
That's because they’re doing research: on their terms, on their timeline and almost exclusively online.
And this is where precision-crafted B2B paid ads come into play: instead of casting a massive net -- in essence, saying, whatever happens happens -- a nuanced, more strategic approach that utilizes the right tools lets you target the right people at the right time with messaging that feels like it's just for them. Because it is just for them.
When done right, paid media campaigns executed via programmatic ads don’t just increase clicks—they generate qualified leads, shorten sales cycles and can more strongly and clearly tie your marketing efforts to revenue.
We Hope This Playbook Helps You:
- Break through common PPC challenges B2B marketers face—and introduce you to tools that help you overcome them.
- Create personalized campaigns that speak directly to decision-makers and inspire action.
- Build a smarter, scalable framework for sustainable, ongoing growth—and not just the occasional one-off win.
Whether you’re looking to overhaul a flatlining strategy, or finally demonstrate marketing’s value to sales or to the C-suite, this guide is your roadmap. StackAdapt and HubSpot are your tools—this playbook gives you the clarity to use them with confidence and success.
Typical Hurdles in Campaign Execution & Tools To Solve Them
Personalization: The Missing Link
Imagine delivering the same pitch to a purchasing director and an engineering manager. They may work at the same company, but their perspectives and priorities are completely different. Your message will be delivered, but it’s not likely to move the conversation forward.
With HubSpot, you can create smart lists that segment your audience by role, behavior, industry and engagement. That means your emails, landing pages and workflows dynamically adjust to match what each person actually cares about.
StackAdapt enhances that with programmatic advertising that feels like a one-on-one chat. Instead of sending everyone the same B2B PPC ad, you’re placing messages tailored to each user’s particular behavior and interests—whether they’re in research mode or ready to buy.
Measuring Beyond Clicks: Tackling Tracking Issues
Clicks are only the tip of the iceberg. What about the prospects who download your whitepaper and spend 10 minutes comparing specs, or watch a product demo from start to finish? These are powerful intent signals that tend to go untracked or unmeasured.
HubSpot’s integrated analytics tools and StackAdapt’s detailed audience insights allow you to track secondary conversion events. These are critical, mid-funnel moments that move buyers closer to a purchase decision. You can tie these behaviors back to specific campaigns and understand which touchpoints influenced the final sale.
Reporting Gaps = Decision-Making Gaps
When data lives in silos, it’s nearly impossible to get a clear picture of what’s working. Marketing pulls reports. Sales reps question lead quality. Leadership asks for ROI. And the answers? They’re scattered across spreadsheets.
With HubSpot as your CRM foundation, you can consolidate campaign performance data into centralized dashboards. Add StackAdapt’s programmatic campaign metrics, and you get a more complete view of your funnel. Now, instead of trying to piece together insights from multiple platforms, your team can make smarter, faster decisions backed by real-time data.
A Starting Point: Understanding Your Ideal Customer Profile
Before launching a campaign or drafting an ad, you need to know exactly who you’re trying to reach. “Engineers in manufacturing” won’t quite cut it. A well-defined ideal customer profile (ICP) goes beyond job titles and is rooted in data.
Start with what you know. Analyze your current customer base to identify commonalities: industry, company size, location and revenue. Layer on technographics: Where do they spend time online? Factor in intent data: Are they researching topics that align with your solution? Are they comparing competitors?
These insights should be the baseline for your B2B PPC campaigns. Your ICP should shape ad copy, dictate content strategy, influence channel selection and fuel lead scoring models. Tools like HubSpot continuously collect and analyze engagement data, refining audience segments and making subsequent campaigns smarter and more effective.
A Deeper Dive Into Personalization’s Value Toward B2B Success
In complex B2B sales—especially in industries like manufacturing—you're rarely speaking to just one person. You’re navigating a matrix of technical buyers, financial decision-makers and operations leads, each with their own respective responsibilities and goals.
Personalization starts with a well-defined ICP, but the real value comes from strategic segmentation, behavioral insights and the ability to activate your first-party data. Using platforms like HubSpot and StackAdapt, marketers can turn owned data into a powerful targeting engine that expands reach and sharpens relevance.
HubSpot allows you to track website behavior and combine that with past interactions and industry trends to inform how you speak to them next. StackAdapt builds upon that with dynamic ad delivery based on that same first-party data, so your messaging adapts to where buyers are in their journey.
For instance, an engineer might be nurtured with detailed spec sheets, product certifications or how-to videos. A procurement officer? They’ll care more about pricing models and supply chain reliability. With HubSpot workflows and StackAdapt’s audience insights and programmatic capabilities, these touchpoints are delivered automatically.
It’s all about building a user journey that feels relevant and intentional from the first click to the final decision. That kind of personalization shortens sales cycles and strengthens buyer confidence.
Did You Know? Companies that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue than their counterparts.
A Smarter Framework for Sustainable B2B Growth
Modern B2B marketing is cyclical. The flywheel model focuses on continuous momentum: Attract → Engage → Convert → Delight. Each phase strengthens the next, creating a feedback loop that accelerates growth. Powered by tools like HubSpot and StackAdapt, this model becomes a marketing powerhouse—with real-world examples to prove it. (More on that soon!)
Attract: Precision Targeting to Reach the Right Prospects
You’re out to fill the top of the funnel, but it’s who that comes in that really matters. With HubSpot, teams are able to define and refine ICPs using firmographics, technographics and historical conversion data. Then, using StackAdapt, marketers can extend their reach through programmatic advertising that puts educational, relevant content in front of high-fit B2B decision-makers.
Example: A connector manufacturer wants to expand into the aerospace sector. Using HubSpot, they analyze their most engaged accounts and find common attributes: company size, location, and job functions like senior engineers and product designers. From there, they launch a gated whitepaper series on connector reliability under extreme conditions. They use StackAdapt to promote the content on engineering-focused publications, targeting users with similar profiles and effectively warming up new leads before they ever land on the website.
Engage: Building Personalized Journeys That Guide Buyers
B2B buyers expect relevance at every touchpoint. With HubSpot’s smart content, automated nurture workflows and segmentation tools, marketers can create personalized paths for different personas. Meanwhile, StackAdapt helps maintain visibility through retargeting campaigns based on browsing behavior, keeping your solution front-and-center as buyers do their research.
Example: A product packaging manufacturer is targeting operations directors at food processing companies. After downloading a sustainability guide, those leads enter a HubSpot email workflow tailored to the challenges of eco-friendly food-grade packaging. At the same time, StackAdapt serves display ads showcasing product certifications and video case studies on sustainable design, building trust and helping buyers visualize the value in switching vendors.
Convert: Accelerating Sales Through Context and Coordination
In B2B, sales conversions often depend on timing and a frictionless handoff between marketing to sales. HubSpot’s CRM gives sales teams detailed insights into what leads have read, clicked or downloaded. That context informs more meaningful conversations. On the B2B PPC side, StackAdapt’s ABM capabilities allow you to continue influencing the entire buying committee with personalized, decision-stage content.
Example: A safety device manufacturer identifies high-interest leads—plant managers and EHS professionals—who have reviewed compliance documentation but haven’t booked a demo. Those leads are flagged for follow-up in HubSpot, and sales has access to a timeline of their engagement. Simultaneously, StackAdapt launches an ABM campaign targeting the broader procurement team at those companies with use case videos and spec sheets, reinforcing the brand while sales works to re-engage.
Delight: Turning Customers Into Brand Advocates
The flywheel doesn’t stop when a contract is signed. The delight phase focuses on retention, expansion and turning customers into your strongest marketing asset. HubSpot helps automate post-sale communication, support documentation and satisfaction surveys, while StackAdapt can promote customer-focused content or cross-sell B2B PPC campaigns to existing accounts.
Example: An HVAC systems manufacturer uses HubSpot to send quarterly check-ins to project managers at commercial construction firms, gathering feedback and offering new maintenance content. When they notice a growing interest in smart building integrations, they launch a StackAdapt campaign promoting their new IoT-compatible systems—exclusively targeting their customer base with testimonial-driven ads. These efforts encourage repeat business and referrals to other contractors in their networks.
That Real-World B2B PPC Example
We Promised
A fabric welding manufacturer partnered with Kuno to take a strong year of organic growth and turn that momentum into pipeline results. By pairing HubSpot’s automation and analytics with StackAdapt’s targeting capabilities, they shifted from high-spend, low-yield ads to a data-driven strategy that connected with the right decision-makers across multiple channels.
In just 90 days, they added five qualified contacts and $130,000 to their pipeline—plus an additional $30,000 through a closed-lost re-engagement campaign.
Through lookalike targeting, ABM campaigns, and tight StackAdapt and HubSpot integration, the company was able to re-engage cold leads, improve cost-per-click efficiency and generate a 35X return on ad spend. It’s a clear example of how B2B manufacturers can align platforms and strategy to drive sustainable, and even unexpected, growth. Read the case study!
Your Funnel’s Future
Starts Here
Digital-first buyers aren’t waiting for a cold call or a trade show handshake. They’re actively researching, comparing and shortlisting before they ever talk to sales. For B2B manufacturers, this shift is as much a challenge as it is an opportunity to dig deeper.
Outlining a more strategic path forward starts with a rich understanding of who you want to reach. From there, personalization becomes the thread that ties your campaigns together across touchpoints. With platforms like HubSpot and StackAdapt working in tandem, you can identify buying intent, engage prospects with tailored messaging and guide them through a journey that earns their business and continues to do so.
Whether your goal is to reignite interest from dormant leads or break into new markets, now is the time to put a data-backed B2B PPC strategy into motion. With the right insights, the right platforms and the right partner, your next campaign will generate real outcomes.
Let’s explore what that could look like for you.