How can you drive B2B sales using paid advertising?

I've found the usual metrics an agency would report on like leads, cost per lead, lead conversion rate, clicks, impressions mean nothing, they're vanity metrics. If you're looking at driving traffic which increases awareness and consideration of your product/service look at sessions, new users, engagement rate, average engagement time, branded & direct traffic to site. When looking at leads instead of looking at the quantity only look at the quality - so lead to opportunity rate, cost per opportunity, opps to closed win rate, pipeline generated. Only that will show the true value of your activity.

In higher value, higher consideration B2B purchases, ad views or clicks rarely result in an instant conversion. So, think about what you are actually trying to achieve. The three most useful tactics right now are: 1) promote relevant insight and thought leadership from your company and team to your target audience. Engagement and target audience reach are your measures. 2) promote influencer and customer references to your target audience (LinkedIn thought leadership ads are great for this). Again, engagement and target audience reach are your measures. 3) constantly iterate on compelling offers that drive towards a visit, form completion or sign-up. Most buyers will not be in-market, but have an evergreen conversion campaign ready.

Start by getting your list of ideal fit accounts from your sales team. Marketing’s role is to provide the list of accounts which match their target criteria which you can do through tools like Apollo, Zoom Info and Lusha, but before starting any ads get them to confirm this list. Depending on your ABM program this may be a list of 10 (eg. One to few) or hundreds/thousands (one to many). A good measure of success is how many of these accounts (and better yet, specific contacts/roles from these accounts) engage and convert. This also helps you identify if you need further optimisation on messaging (engagement issue) or CRO (conversion issue). This way you’re fully aligned.

Impressions, clicks and conversions are a good place to start. But remember, if your end goal is to drive sales, make sure that your kpis are aligned with the sales strategy. For example: if your company needs leads from an specific vertical, focus on those. Optimize for leads that are useful and showing up for sales conversations.

Paid advertising serves as a valuable tool to attract an audience aligned with our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). However, it is imperative to ensure that visitors find the precise content they seek upon landing on your targeted page. Failure to provide this relevancy may hinder the potential for conversions. An alternative approach to optimize the performance of your ads involves creating compelling content. By proactively sharing your business offerings with a well-informed and engaged audience, you can cultivate a substantial visitor base. Once you have successfully established this foundation, leveraging paid advertising will yield a higher number of targeted prospects, ultimately resulting in a promising return on investment (ROI).

In my experience, the best source of insights to define your ICPs are your client facing teams. Have a chat with the BDRs, AEs, and client success teams and make sure that you’re including their knowledge into your ICP documentation

IMO, identifying the right targets is the most important step, because that dictates where you should advertise (and what you can spend). Pick your core customer, then figure where they spend their time, who they trust, and what groups they're a part of (you can just ask them or use tools like SparkToro). There's usually a key association or community group, a few newsletters, and a some paid search keywords you can effectively advertise through.

Understand your audience. Understand your audience. Understand your audience. Yes I said that 3 times. Researching your audience, creating detailed buyer personas, and tailoring content are ways to increase B2B marketing's impact on sales. Segment your audience for personalization, align sales and marketing, and analyze data to optimize strategies. Gather customer feedback for continuous improvement. Iterate...please.

Here it's important to translate who your buyer is into the targeting capabilities of ad platforms like LinkedIn and Google. Steps I like to take here include: 1. Looking at the titles and companies of closed won deals in the CRM and mapping those back to LinkedIn ads. 2. Working with the team to identify high intent keywords using Google's keyword planner. There are tons of ways of getting started but those are 2 tried and true tactics.

Drafting a customer persona, and the factors affecting their buying behavior is crucial. The best way to do that is to make a form. simple and run a short FB campaign. It will give you great insights into customer demand and needs.

Don't assume that because a platform, ad creative, or channel works for a large brand it will work for your company. A lot of startups and mid market companies like to copy large enterprises but don't have the brand recognition acts as a halo effect on those programs.

Not all ad platforms would fit the description of your buyer persona and so your targeting. How to tackle that? Create 1 or 2 anchor paid channels and others for retargeting. Why? You have to make sure that you are being visible on multiple platforms to the same prospect for maximum recall. It could have same or different creatives/ formats. Example: You pick LinkedIn ads to target your prospects based on firmographics traits + Triblio or any such ABM tool for their firmographic data or intent data or both. Make sure you are trying to push this traffic to a Landing page where you have pixels installed of your existing ad platforms, Fb, Google ads, and X. From there, go and retarget, especially the ones who won't leave you any PII.

Figure out which platforms to use. 1. Do you have a defined category? Start with high intent Google search and review sites 2. Got traction from demand capture? Go to paid social and generate demand. 3. As a minimum, set up retargeting campaigns on Linkedin 4. Not a defined category? Target your ICP on Linkedin and generate demand for your solution. 5. Not a lot of budget? Use precise targeting.

B2B paid advertisers use Google and LinkedIn more than any other ad channel - and it makes sense when looking at the targeting capabilities. LinkedIn has the all the professional related targeting you need and Google you are capturing intent. Unless you're investing 3rd party data solutions, B2B advertising on Meta can get tricky with reaching the right users. That being said, it's always good to be testing. While LinkedIn and Google are the tried and true channels, always allocate some time and budget to testing out newer channels. Especially if you believe your ICP might be active on them.

I've observed a rising trend towards programmatic advertising and retargeting strategies. These techniques allow us to connect with potential leads more personally, serving ads based on their browsing history and behaviors. Platforms like Taboola and Outbrain, that focus on native advertising, are also gaining traction. The integration of AI and machine learning into ad platforms is another avenue to explore, as they offer predictive targeting, optimizing the ads for the best possible ROI.

"Oh, it's just creative and text, let's push that off to the last minute and least senior person." No. Please stop doing this. Your creative should be engaging, resonate with your audience, and not made within 2 seconds before deadline. Have it stick out cause you only have meer seconds to catch the eye. Your copy should be the same, answer the "Why did I just dedicate my time to looking at this - what value did I get?". If that value is positive, good job.

Effective ad copy and visuals are crucial. Keep it clear, concise, and benefit-oriented. A compelling headline and a strong call to action are a must. High-quality visuals reinforce your message. Test different versions to find what works best and optimize your campaigns for success!

Driving B2B sales directly through paid advertising is always going to be challenging. But probably your best shot is to use testimonials and case studies. That way, you mention the brand's name, probably what you sell, and include some peer validation. That's some serious box-ticking. Another good way to drive sales is to advertise an RoI calculator. B2B customers love those.

To assist you in this endeavor, the Meta Ads Library can prove invaluable. This resource allows you to access a comprehensive repository of paid advertising creatives that have been launched on Facebook (Meta). You can filter these creatives based on regions, companies, timelines, and more. It would be beneficial to research and analyze what your competitors are doing in order to incorporate best practices into your own advertising content. However, it is equally important to infuse your creatives with a personal touch that embodies the uniqueness of your business.

My 2 top tips: 1. Create a swipe file and screenshot any ads you spot "in the wild" that catch your eye. Review this folder anytime you need new inspiration. In my experience, even ads from totally different products and industries can spark a new, exciting creative avenue that you never would have thought of before. 2. Use the Google Ads Transparency Center, Meta Ad Library and LinkedIn's Ad Library to see what ads your competitors are running. What do you think they do well? Where might there be room for improvement? Identify those opportunities and use them to create engaging ads that check all the boxes.

The actual landing page that people arrive on is crucial for CRO. Here are some pieces of advice I'd recommend for landing pages: 1. Make sure that your landing page matches with your ad copy. Don't "trick" readers with ad copy that doesn't match your landing page. 2. Optimise your landing page for conversions. Make sure you have CTAs in the right places and that they are targeting what your audience needs/wants. 3. Create unique LPs for different ads. A 'one-size-fits-all' approach with ad LPs is usually more 'one-size-fits-no-one'. 4. Competitor research: make sure you are conducting competitor research to see what is working for other companies. You should be able to get some great insights this way!

Landing pages are key! Match headlines with your ads, keep the layout clean, use visuals, and build trust with social proof. Include a clear call to action. Keep forms short. And track with tools like Google Analytics for success and insights.

Consider segmenting your landing pages for different buyer personas. Tailoring content to specific industries or roles can drastically increase conversion rates. Additionally, leveraging A/B testing not only on your ads but also on the landing pages themselves will provide insights into what truly resonates with your audience. Lastly, integrating chatbots or live chat can assist in real-time queries, further enhancing user experience and potential conversions.

Always pay close attention to the traffic your landing pages are generating. You want to know if, as pointed out above, the overall journey is consistent and engaging, is the supporting copy directing your audience to your landing page working? Is it strong enough? When they are on the landing page does the content on offer match their expectations? These are all things to consider and focus on as they all play an important part in the conversion journey from a prospect to a lead.

When reviewing the success of your paid campaigns it's important not to draw a straight line between channel cost and channel conversions/pipeline/revenue. With data privacy and firewalls today, attribution has never been more difficult. This leads to too many rash decisions to turn off channels that "aren't working". My advice is use target lists from the beginning (doesn't need to be ABM, it can be a large list), but crucially this starts giving you data on which companies have seen and engaged the most with your ads (particularly on LinkedIn). Compare the deals in your pipeline to the engagement reports and start building a better picture of your customers digital buying journeys, and the influence channels have in that journey.

Integrating customer relationship management (CRM) data can provide invaluable insights into the buyer's journey, ensuring ad strategies align with stages of the sales funnel. Continuously educating the team about industry innovations and holding regular brainstorm sessions can further drive innovation in advertising strategies. It's all about staying agile and informed.

At this point, it's critical to analyze data correctly. Lots of great data with poor reading and analysis processes is worth nothing. You must look at data from a flying eagle eye point of view to keep perspective of things. Results should give you signals about short-term and long-term performance, which often differ. You can see a drop in engagement rate in a given month yet a steady growth in the annual view, which means this sudden drop may have been caused by a seasonality effect, an internal test being run, or simply a bug. Always maintain a strategic approach when looking at results, which will help you secure an ever-happening optimization of indicators.

In my experience, LinkedIn native lead form ads can be a game-changer for B2B lead generation. You're directly reaching out to decision makers and get them to indicate whether they are interested by simply clicking your ad without needing to leave LinkedIn. Keep the lead form short (only essential details) but include a qualifying question (like "What's your biggest challenge in your role?"). You can also add a checkmark for people to indicate whether they would like to be contacted. This can significantly reduce drop-off rates and increase lead quality. The goal is to get people to click and discover your products. So, make it as easy as possible for them to take that first step.

If you're willing to be patient, and focus more on awareness (which is what paid advertising is inherently geared towards), you can drive more sales long-term than if you just focus on hard-sell tactics now, because you'll get a lot more prospects into your funnel if you try filling it from the top instead of the middle.