How Ramp Spends Over $400,000/Month on PPC – And What You Can Learn From It

When it comes to B2B paid search, many assume that the company with the biggest budget wins. But spend management platform Ramp is taking an approach that shows strategic keyword selection and campaign refinement can be just as impactful as brute-force ad spending.

Over the past few years, Ramp has grown substantially — bringing in over $1.8 billion in venture funding and undertaking 3 acquisitions to expand their product portfolio and tap into the enterprise market. Over the same period of time, the company has consolidated their keyword spending, directing the same six-figure budget towards a narrower number of paid search keywords. 

Today, we’ll look at how Ramp is using keyword selection, bottom-of-funnel intent matching, and strategic competitor differentiation to build a PPC strategy that focuses on high-intent users and conversions rather than sheer traffic volume.

In this breakdown, we’ll analyze:

• How Ramp’s PPC spend has changed over the last two years.
• Three key areas where Ramp is placing its keyword bets.
• Why its approach is more about optimization than expansion.
• How Ramp’s PPC budget compares to competitors like Brex.
• What marketers can learn from their refined paid search strategy.

Let’s dive in. 

A High-Level Look at Ramp’s PPC Spend

Looking at Ramp’s pay-per-click performance data in SpyFu, the company has been fairly consistent in its ad spend over the last two years. The monthly budget has hovered around $400k, which may seem like a lot but is actually lower than a number of their competitors. 

Larger keyword competitors like American Express and Bill.com have 7-figure monthly ad budgets, and even more direct competitors like Brex are spending significantly more (but we’ll get back to that later). 

Even more interesting, while the spend has stayed the same, the number of keywords that Ramp has targeted over that same timeframe has dropped nearly threefold—from 19,700 in February 2023 to around 6,500 in 2025. Over that same time period, the number of estimated monthly clicks has also dropped substantially, from 72,000 to 9,400. 

At first glance, things don’t look so good…

But, while it may look like the Ramp team is paying more for less, these numbers don’t tell the whole story. 

This trend actually hints that Ramp is taking the optimization route — focusing on narrower sets of keywords within specific buckets, potentially with a higher CPC and conversion rate. 

The Three Pillars Behind Ramp’s Strategic Keyword Focus

To understand why Ramp is narrowing their keyword focus, it helps to understand their product suite. 

Ramp offers a suite of financial automation tools designed to help businesses manage spending, optimize cash flow, and streamline payments. Think corporate credit cards, expense management platforms, and vendor payments. 

Most recently, the company has made investments into a new business stream, which is where we’ll start our journey through their PPC strategy. 

1) Procurement Software Keywords

Procurement has been a focus of Ramp’s for a few years now, as the company looks to continue its move upmarket and meet the needs of companies like Webflow, Stripe, and Shopify. They doubled down on this focus early last year when they acquired the AI-powered procurement startup Venue. 

To promote this new capability, Ramp is looking to paid search advertising to further spread awareness and capture new leads. 

Procurement-related keywords now make up one of Ramp’s highest-potential ad groups, according to SpyFu, combining for over 88,000 monthly searches in the US. In addition to targeting high-volume terms like “procurement” and “procurement software”, the Ramp digital ads team also targets specific pain points in the procurement process with ads for over 63 procurement-related keywords.

This focus on procurement terms also helps Ramp reach larger mid-market customers, particularly those with 500-1,000 employees, where procurement processes become more complex.

2) Key Financial Product Keywords

In PPC, like SEO, sometimes you have to play defence as well as offence. So, even as Ramp expands into new territories, it maintains strong coverage of core financial product terms by creating a strategic moat. It’s a concept we typically associate with SEO but works just as well in the PPC realm. 

In Ramp’s case, they are building out their moat around business cards and payment management accounts. 

This broader financial focus helps Ramp compete not just with other fintech companies but also with traditional banks and financial institutions that overlap with their ICP on specific business items. 

Expansion into adjacent solution areas creates additional competitive moats. By establishing a presence in related categories like business credit cards and procurement, Ramp makes it harder for competitors to expand into its territory. 

3) Industry-Specific Bottom-Funnel Terms

It’s easy to focus on those high-volume keywords, but one of the most important aspects of Ramp’s keyword strategy is that it targets long-tail, industry-specific financial management needs. Rather than getting caught up in a bidding war with competitors on generic business financial terms, the Ramp team has done the work to identify and target specific verticals with unique requirements.

For example, Ramp bids on a number of bottom-of-the-funnel terms that are specific to different industry segments, understanding that different industries have distinct financial workflow needs. Here are some of the other industry-specific, high-intent keywords that Ramp is going after: 

• Nonprofits: “free accounting software for nonprofit organizations”
• Real Estate: “property management expense tracking”
• Ecommerce: “woocommerce|pressible etsy accounting”
• Logistics: “component procurement for an assembly supply chain with random capacities and random demand”
• Agriculture: “accounting software for agriculture”

This targeted approach allows Ramp to appear at the top of the SERP for niche searches where the intent to adopt a financial management solution is particularly high.

Regular analysis of conversion data helps refine intent signals over time. By tracking which keywords and ad copy combinations drive actual sales, not just clicks, marketers can continuously optimize their campaigns for quality over quantity.

We’ve focused a lot on Ramp’s paid search strategy. Now, let’s look at one of their close competitors: Brex. 

Ramp vs. Brex: A Tale of Two PPC Strategies

Ramp and Brex are both fintech companies offering corporate charge cards and expense management solutions, but they cater to different business needs. Companies looking to optimize spending and automate savings should choose Ramp, while those needing growth-focused financial tools, international capabilities, and dynamic rewards should opt for Brex.

Ad Budget Trajectories

SpyFu data reveals a stark contrast in how these fintech rivals approach PPC spending. Ramp has maintained a consistent monthly investment of around $413,000, demonstrating a measured approach to paid acquisition. This stability suggests a focus on optimizing existing campaigns rather than constantly expanding reach.

Brex, meanwhile, has pursued an aggressive growth strategy, nearly doubling its monthly spend to $698,000 by early 2025. This dramatic increase reflects Brex’s push for market share, but the efficiency of this spending remains unclear. The divergent approaches highlight how two companies in the same space can pursue radically different paid acquisition strategies.

The timing of these spending patterns is particularly interesting when viewed alongside Ramp’s product launches. While Brex ramped up ad spend, Ramp chose to invest in product expansion, launching new treasury services and last year’s acquisition of Venue to strengthen its procurement capabilities.

Traffic and Efficiency Metrics

The paid click volumes tell an equally compelling story about strategy divergence. Ramp generates approximately 9,400 monthly paid clicks, maintaining steady traffic while focusing on high-intent searches. This relatively modest click volume suggests careful targeting of users who are more likely to convert.

Brex’s approach has yielded substantially higher traffic, reaching 42,000 monthly paid clicks. However, raw click volume doesn’t tell the whole story. The nearly 5x difference in clicks versus a roughly 1.7x difference in spend indicates Ramp may be targeting more expensive, higher-intent keywords while Brex pursues broader reach through higher-volume, lower-cost terms.

These metrics become particularly significant when considered alongside Ramp’s growth in customer numbers—from 15,000 to over 30,000 in a year. Achieving this growth while maintaining steady PPC spend suggests strong conversion rates and efficient customer acquisition.

Find the Right Balance For Your PPC Strategy

Ramp’s approach shows that sustainable PPC growth doesn’t require matching competitor budgets. As the company expands into procurement, treasury, and banking services, its disciplined PPC strategy demonstrates how paid search can support product evolution while maintaining efficiency.

For B2B marketers, the lesson is clear: focus on capturing high-intent traffic that aligns with your product strategy, rather than competing solely on budget. As Ramp’s success shows, smart targeting beats big spending every time.

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