Sector: manufacturing and B2B
PPC for Birmingham and Black Country manufacturers
The specification search, and a bidding system that learns which enquiries were buyers
A manufacturer's Google Ads account has two problems the consumer sectors do not: the sale takes months, and the search words are shared with students, job seekers and suppliers. Both are solved the same way, by feeding the account the truth about which enquiries were real, quickly, through offline conversion import from your CRM, and by building the campaign on the searches a buyer types when they have a drawing in front of them. Run for the engineering, fabrication, finishing and industrial services firms from Tyseley to Wolverhampton, one business per kind in the region.
The feedback loop
Five steps between a click and the account knowing it was a customer
Smart Bidding buys more of whatever you tell it is a conversion. In B2B the form fill is not the conversion; the qualified enquiry is, and later the order. The loop is how the account is told.
- 1
The click and the form
A buyer searches "CNC machining Birmingham" and lands on the machining page. The form asks for the part, the quantity and the material, and generates a unique click ID that is stored with the enquiry.
- 2
The first sort, within a day
You mark the enquiry in the CRM as a buyer, a supplier, a student or spam. That flag, with the click ID, goes back into Google Ads as the first conversion: qualified enquiry.
- 3
The quote, within the week
A quote issued is imported as a second conversion with the quote value. The account now knows which searches produce quotes and roughly what they are worth.
- 4
The order, whenever it comes
Two weeks or six months later, the order is imported against the same click. The bidding can now be set to a target return on spend using real order values.
- 5
The report
Each month: enquiries, qualified enquiries, quotes and orders by campaign, with cost per each. The line about orders lags, and the report says so rather than pretending.
The specification search
Buyers type what is on the drawing
A buyer with a job to place does not search “engineering company”. They search the process, the material, the tolerance and the volume: “aluminium anodising West Midlands”, “laser cutting 10mm mild steel”, “ISO 9001 machining subcontract”, “small batch injection moulding UK”. Those searches are cheaper than the generic ones, they are typed by fewer students, and they convert on a page that answers in the same language: capacities, materials, certifications, lead times, minimum quantities.
The campaign is built process by process, each with its own page and its own budget, so the plating work and the fabrication work are judged separately, and the ads say the thing a buyer is checking for before they ring.
Words shared with everyone else
Why a third of an unmanaged B2B budget goes to people who will never buy
The West Midlands is full of engineering courses, apprenticeship schemes and manufacturing colleges, and every one of their students searches with the same words as your buyers. So do job seekers, and so do your suppliers looking for you. Negatives go in on the first day, jobs, apprenticeship, course, salary, degree, definition, how to, PDF, and grow weekly from what people actually typed. The landing page does the rest: a form that asks for a quantity is not filled in by a student.
The weekly read of the search terms report matters more in B2B than anywhere, because the waste does not look like waste until you know the words.
Where buyers search
Desks, office hours, and the search engine most agencies ignore
- The hours
- Procurement searches happen on weekdays, mostly between nine and five. The schedule bids up then and down at the weekend, and the report shows enquiries by hour so the shape is corrected from data.
- The device
- A buyer with a drawing is at a desk. Desktop clicks are worth more than phone clicks for most industrial searches and the bids say so; the landing page still works on a phone for the site manager in a van.
- Microsoft Ads
- Bing is the default on a large share of company Windows desktops, and industrial clicks there are usually cheaper. Once the Google account is clean it is imported, negatives included, and reported beside Google.
- The radius
- Wider than any consumer account, often the whole UK, with the West Midlands bid up because a buyer who can visit the works usually prefers to. Exports are a separate campaign if you want them.
Who it is for
From the Jewellery Quarter's trade suppliers to the Black Country's forges
Precision engineering and CNC machining, fabrication and sheet metal, castings and forgings, plating, anodising and powder coating, packaging, tooling, industrial services and maintenance, commercial cleaning and facilities, logistics and warehousing around the motorway junctions, and the accountants, recruiters and consultants who sell to all of them. Firms in Tyseley, Aston, Witton, Smethwick, West Bromwich, Oldbury, Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton, selling to Birmingham, the region and the country.
One business per kind in the region on the monthly plans, because two fabricators in Walsall bidding on the same searches with the same person setting both bids would be paying us to compete against themselves.
Keep reading
Next door to this page
Landing pages
A page per process, in the buyer's language, with a form that asks for a quantity.
Automotive
The trade many Black Country manufacturers supply, run as a consumer account.
Pricing
Offline conversion import is on the Scale tier; the tiers are on one page.
Get a quote
Send the processes and the CRM you use; the reply says what the import needs and what a click costs.
Questions from manufacturers and B2B firms
Does Google Ads work for a manufacturer with a six-month sales cycle?
Yes, if the account is told what a good enquiry looks like long before the order arrives. The bidding cannot wait six months, so it learns from the early signal: a request for a quote with a quantity in it, a drawing uploaded, a call from a buyer rather than a student. Those are imported as conversions, and the orders are imported later so the account can see which searches produced customers.
What is offline conversion import and why does it matter for B2B?
It is the link between your CRM and the account. When an enquiry becomes a qualified lead, a quote or an order, the record goes back into Google Ads against the click that started it. Without it the bidding optimises for form fills, which in B2B means students, job seekers and suppliers. With it the bidding optimises for buyers. It is included on the Scale tier and set up by us.
How do you keep students and job seekers out of a Black Country engineering firm's account?
Negatives for the words they use, and there are a lot of them: jobs, apprenticeship, course, salary, degree, PDF, definition, how to. A landing page that speaks to a buyer in specification terms, tolerances, materials, batch sizes, lead times, and a form that asks for a quantity. And the weekly read of what people typed, which in B2B is where a third of the waste usually hides.
Should we run Microsoft Ads as well?
Usually, once the Google account is clean. Bing is the default search engine on a large share of company-managed Windows desktops, which is where procurement and engineering searches happen, and the clicks are typically cheaper. The Google campaigns are imported, the negatives with them, and the report shows both engines side by side.
What does it cost?
The fee is set by spend: £249 a month up to £1,000 of ad spend, £399 up to £3,000, £599 up to £8,000. Offline conversion import from your CRM is on the Scale tier. For the clicks, the nearest public benchmark, LocaliQ and WordStream on 1 June 2026, put industrial and commercial at $5.87 a click on average in mostly American data; your own figure comes from Keyword Planner.
Our buyers search during office hours on a desktop. Does the account reflect that?
Yes. The ad schedule follows when buyers search and when your office answers, bids are adjusted by device so a desktop click at 10am on a Tuesday is worth more than a phone click on Sunday evening, and the report shows enquiries by hour and device so both are corrected from data rather than assumption.
Which Birmingham and Black Country sectors do you take?
Precision engineering, fabrication and sheet metal, castings and forgings, plating and finishing, packaging, industrial services, commercial cleaning and facilities, logistics and warehousing, and the professional B2B services that sell to them. One business per kind in the region on the monthly plans.
How long before we can judge it?
Three months for the enquiries, longer for the orders, because the cycle is yours and not ours. The report at month three says what an enquiry costs and what the enquiries were; the report at month six, with the CRM import in place, says what a customer cost. Both figures are checkable in your own account.
Send the processes you sell and the CRM you use. The reply says what the feedback loop needs and what the clicks cost.
If ads are already running, add the customer ID and the free check reads how much of last month went on students, job seekers and suppliers.