B2B Advertising: What Channels Work Best and How You Can Generate More Results

Advertising is a staple of B2B marketing, driving measurable results for organizations. As buyer expectations and behavior change, new channels emerge and content preferences evolve, advertising must transform accordingly to continue to generate results. In this blog, we highlight key considerations for ensuring B2B advertising is effective, including goal setting, channels to use and how to be successful in each platform. Let’s dive in.

B2B Advertising Goals

Goals drive decision-making. In advertising, there are two goals organizations often focus on, building awareness and generating conversions. The goal determines what content is offered, what the messaging is and follow-up steps after engagement. Before jumping ahead into developing content or creative for the ads, it is important to determine your goal. If your organization wants to reach a broad audience and inform people about your product or services, brand awareness is a perfect goal. If you are looking to convert known audiences or a targeted subset of people, lead generation might be the best option. Once you have determined your overall goal, you can move on to determining channels and content offerings.

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B2B Advertising Channels

Choosing which channels you want to leverage is a critical decision. It is important to use the channels that will help your organization achieve the advertising goals set out. How can you determine which channels are best? Consider these questions:

• Who is the target audience? What platforms do they use most often?
• What is the budget and what platform can you use to make the most of it?
• What targeting options are available on the platform? Can I target key job titles or industries? What about certain company sizes?
• Is retargeting an option on the ad channel?
• What advertising types (image, text, etc.) are available on each platform? Will the content/offering be suited for those options?
• Are the analytics robust? Can they tell me what I need to know to make ad adjustments for performance improvements?

Once you have answered these questions, you can move forward with identifying the channels that will best meet your needs. Here are a few channels to consider.

LinkedIn

With over 1 billion members and 67 million companies, LinkedIn provides a substantial audience for you to reach. Here are a few best practices and strategy tips to follow to maximize your use of LinkedIn advertising.

• Choose an optimal audience size. For LinkedIn campaigns to be effective, it depends on the ad type. For sponsored content and messaging, aim for at least 100,000 audience members. For text-based campaigns, try for at least 50,000.
• Be specific on targeting. Include at least three areas when defining your audience. Think of job title, industry and company size or maybe job function, revenue size and member interests. Mix and match these to find the most accurate targeting sample. When doing this, keep in mind audience size too. The narrower you get on these variables, the more it can decrease audience size.
• Diversify ad creatives. Variety is key. The more creative units per campaign, the more ad rotation and ad frequency. With each ad, you can see which version is being engaged with most and uncover what is resonating with audiences, leading to chances to improve performance.
• Allocate your budget. When running campaigns with awareness goals, aim for a minimum of $50 per day for optimal results. For conversion-focused, lead generation campaigns, start at $100 or more per day. The more budget you can devote, the more you can see what does and doesn’t work and make changes. Don’t let these numbers scare you away. You can use any budget that fits the platform minimums and your marketing plan, but it can require more targeting and content refining to make the ads shine.
• Be patient. Run your campaigns for at least 30 days. This allows for data to be collected and used for decision-making. If you don’t see the desired results after a week or two, don’t panic. It takes time for the ads to be incorporated into the algorithm and for ad versions to run through rotation. If you still don’t see results after 30 days, then make changes.

Read our complete guide to LinkedIn advertising best practices for even more tips.

Google Ads

Google Ads is also a solid option for B2B marketers. Here are a few best practices to consider following.

• Ensure conversion tracking is set up properly. If conversions aren’t set up properly it is difficult to understand if your ads are performing. Inaccurate conversion tracking can depict overperformance or even underperformance. Take the time to set up conversions, whether it is adding code to your website or setting up an integration.
• Provide an enticing offer or content asset. If the offer is not enticing to your audience, they will not click on your ad or convert. Think about your audience and what is valuable to them. If your goal is brand awareness, consider a blog, article or product page. If you are looking to generate conversions, consider a case study.
• Avoid broad keywords and have a growing list of negative keywords. The broader, the worse in this case. Broad keywords often attract engagement from users not in your target audience or who are searching for something different. What can help to narrow the accuracy of search intent is to have a list of negative keywords. The longer you run ads, the more data you have on what is being searched. If you can filter out searches that do not match what you want and add them to a negative keyword list, it will improve the accuracy of what people are searching for and those who are viewing your ads.
• Craft strong copy that serves search intent. Have ad copy that matches what the audience is searching for. If someone searches for “B2B project management platforms” the ads that are shown should be for exactly that. Putting yourself in the shoes of the audience can also help you craft the copy to ensure it is effective.
• Create simple yet effective landing pages. If your goal is lead conversions, your landing pages play a big role in obtaining those conversions. Too much on the page and it takes away from the end goal, too little and users might be left wondering if they are in the right place. Make it easy for users to know what they are looking at and reduce barriers to conversion.
• Utilize remarketing. Retargeting is a useful tactic for Google Ads. You can target prospects, lost deals, website visitors and even leads in the funnel. It is another touchpoint to reach the right audiences with the right content.

Check out this blog for a few additional insights on how to boost PPC conversion rate.

Drive Results with Strategic B2B Advertising Efforts

Being strategic with your B2B advertising efforts will ensure you plan and execute campaigns and achieve key performance goals. By targeting the right audience on the right platforms with the right content, you can increase your chances of reaching your goals, whether building awareness or generating leads. As your campaigns run, be sure to evaluate performance and make changes as needed. This lets you improve your ad based on engagement data and other insights to generate even more results for your organization.

Looking for support to enhance your B2B advertising efforts? Contact us today or request a free consultation! Our B2B marketing consultants are here to help take your B2B digital marketing efforts to the next level.