The B2B digital ad market has experienced astonishing growth in recent years. This year, B2B organizations will spend $12.7 billion on digital ads, a 195% increase since 2017.
That’s great news for ad networks, but increased investments can bring increased risk for advertisers — especially for newcomers to digital advertising.
If you’re considering investing in digital ads, this quick guide can help you avoid wasting time and money on ineffective ad content, using the wrong platforms, and other common pitfalls.
Mistake #1: Lack of Campaign Diversity
It’s easy for digital-ad newcomers to get pigeonholed into leveraging only one or two types of campaigns. But each major platform offers several different types of B2B ads and targeting options. Popular platforms like LinkedIn offer a variety of advanced options, including:
- Retargeting
- Dynamic ads for ecommerce
- Audience targeting
- Competitive ad insertion
- Lookalike audiences and custom audiences
To get optimal results from your ad spend, mix it up and use various campaigns. For instance, PPC ads can help increase brand awareness by 80% while video ads can help increase conversions by 86%.
Additional Insights
One way to quickly determine the right combination of ad-unit types to support your goals is by identifying how many conversions you want to drive. For instance, these details empower you to simultaneously:
- Efficiently run retargeting campaigns on every platform
- Utilize dynamic ads on LinkedIn
- Run native video campaigns on Facebook
Test your campaigns regularly to ensure you’re getting the best bang for your buck.
Mistake #2: Mismatching Ad Content to Relevant Personas
B2B marketers often struggle reaching ideal buyers with their ideal content. When developing a buyer persona, include which ad formats are most likely to resonate with their behavior patterns. This will help you create a cohesive strategy across all the various channels you’re using.
Additional Insights
Video and display ads, for instance, are great for reaching new audiences and building brand awareness. Native ads on social media can be effective when you’re looking for inbound activity conversions.
Platforms such as LinkedIn are ideal B2B advertising platforms; they regularly develop new tools for targeting. Message ads and sponsored content are great ways to reach ideal buyers on LinkedIn.
Mistake #3: Inaccurately Mapping Ads to Buyer Journey Stages
When constructing a buyer persona, you should also look at the purchasing process in its entirety, from Awareness to Consideration to, eventually, Purchase. Then you can curate content that’s ideal for each buyer at each stage of their buying journey.
Additional Insights
Each persona will have unique interests and concerns, and those interests can radically shift throughout the journey. Understand this multidimensional aspect of the sales process and resonantly address it in your ad creative and linked content.
Mistake #4: A Lack of Clear KPIs
Along with the lack of diversification in campaigns, marketers often fail to set clear key performance indicators (KPIs). Without establishing the right KPIs for each campaign, you’ll have a hard time knowing if your ad spend is effective … or if it’s leading to costly misfires.
To find the right KPIs for your campaigns, examine the different stages of the buying process where you’re looking to engage a buyer. Consider your campaign’s goals.
Additional Insights
Some KPIs to consider include:
- Return on Investment (ROI)
- Click-through rate
- Traffic-to-lead ratio
- Customer acquisition cost
- Customer lifetime value
- Marketing influenced customers
Measuring the right KPIs helps you understand the effectiveness of your campaigns and, in turn, what iterations to make. This will also enable you to execute, track, and measure your campaigns more efficiently.
Mistake #5: Undisciplined Spending
If you don’t effectively track your engagement metrics, you’ll never know if your budget is being put to good use. A lack of visibility leads to undisciplined ad spending or unnecessary changes that costs time and money.
Additional Insights
Keep an eye on these metrics and adjust accordingly:
- Website traffic
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Cost per lead
- Lead-to-Close Conversion Rate (CVR)
- Email list growth rate
- Social media metrics
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
Use data-driven tools like Google Analytics or a world-class account engagement platform like 6sense to monitor your metrics. Also conduct A/B tests to determine your ads’ effectiveness across platforms by trying different copy and imagery for better results.
Let 6sense Help You Scale Your B2B Digital Advertising Campaigns
Avoiding the above B2B marketing mistakes will help you get the most out of your digital advertising campaigns and save you money in the long run. Targeting the right buyer personas and accounts is critical when you want to get the most out of your advertising campaigns.
With 6sense, you get the visibility you need to target — and engage — these personas based on rich insights and intent data. Our AI platform uses historic intent signals to reconstruct the buyer journey so you can confidently predict the right message, time, and channel to deliver value to your audience.
Book a demo or check out our webinar section to learn more.
