In my desperation to generate B2B leads in my first days at Curacel, I jumped right into LinkedIn Ads. The CTA was for the audience to sign up for demos. A significant amount of dollars later, I had refined the process and managed to hack getting the right type of leads. The only problem? These leads were unresponsive and usually no-shows at the demos.
Now I know better, but I had to find out the hard way that no matter the pressure you’re under, demo sign-ups are probably not the best CTAs for people who know little to nothing about your brand. and as you’ll discover after reading this, the goal for paid media should be to get your audience off paid channels and onto channels that you own and have control over.
Today’s post is from“How to pre-optimize your paid media strategy.” A Wynter webinar by Susan Wenograd.
Rule #1
Stop measuring platform success based on immediate demos generated.
Whenever B2B marketers are asked how long it takes to land a demo or close a deal, the typical answer is that it takes a while. However, with paid media, the expectation is usually that demos should happen instantly.
This can be described as a misalignment of expectations.
So how should we look at paid media and how do we judge its success? You can start off by evaluating how your audience approaches finding solutions:
Does your product solve an issue for everyone or is it for a select audience? e.g. Email software for e-commerce or for a general audience.
This is important because when it comes to search, select audiences don’t search differently from more general audiences.
This can be an issue with paid search because it limits our ability to narrow down to these personas. Specific audiences don’t search differently from the customers you don’t want.
Is it a problem that people actually seek to solve?
Are they aware of a problem and are they looking for solutions?
If so, how do they typically do that? Peers, recommendations, experts?
Paid search is typically a good solution if your audience is aware of a problem and is actively looking for a solution. If they’re unaware the solution exists, they may not even be searching for anything, so paid search is typically not the best option here.
RULE #2
Optimise towards getting your target user off the platforms and onto your list.
Winning in B2B paid media means building a captive audience. if you do this right, demos will show up.
Yes, paid media is expensive and competitive so the last thing you want to do is keep dumping money in trying to get people to do a bottom-of-funnel action. The key is to get your audience to where you can control what you’re sending them and how you educate them.
Ask the question, “How do I find users that will become demos in the weeks and months that are to come?”
You can do this by using the platforms for their strengths, Susan provides a cheat sheet below for the strengths and weakned Google Ads, LinkedIn and Meta:
Overall (as you probably already know), LinkedIn is the best for niche B2B targeting.
Rule #3
Ask the right questions
Here are some of the questions to ask at each stage of the funnel when it comes to paid ads:
For each stage of the funnel, the metrics to be measured are also super important. Here are some metrics you can measure at each stage of the funnel:
Rule #4
Analyze and test the right things at the top of funnel to drive quality downstream
At the very top of the funnel, you want to make sure you optimise for quality as this will affect the quality of your leads down the line.
You can do this by
Adding qualification questions on every opt-in form: This initial hurdle lets you know if they’re an ICP or not.
Creating welcome drips for opt-ins and then watching their engagement levels
At the top of funnel, here are some of the things you can measure to test the creative messaging, landing page experience and the content you promote.
Rule #5
Avoid boring B2B copy
The major thing to remember here is that B2B may be boring but humans in B2B are not.
When creating copy for B2B, Susan leans more toward what I’d like to call “inside jokes.” Maybe not jokes, but more of the language. Things that only people who have experienced the problem will know and understand.
She says, “If they don’t get the joke, they’re not the right person anyways.”
A couple of points to round up
Paid media success does not equal immediate gratification
Paid media drives future growth from a healthy audience
Invest in human-facing value and content relentlessly
Comments or feedback? Send a message on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you.