How to Choose The Best Ad Platforms For B2B SaaS
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Don’t want to make a mistake investing in an ad platform that won’t work?
Regardless of what you hear online, no one can promise you that ( including me).
But thankfully success leaves clues and we surveyed 60 B2B marketers to find the answer.
So regardless if you’re a new advertiser, startup founder, or agency owner reading this.
We’ve got you covered, let’s dive in 👇
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Where can you advertise online?
- How to decide on the best ad platform?
- Which ad platforms are best for B2B lead generation?
- Which ad platforms are best for B2B awareness?
- Which ad platforms are most popular for B2B?
- Which ad platforms are most B2B marketers planning to invest in?
- Making your final decision on where to advertise
Where can you advertise online?
There is no shortage of opportunities where you can advertise online.
Most channels can be grouped into these five primary categories:
This isn’t an exhaustive list of every available ad platform but it gives you a sense of what’s possible.
Now that you’re aware of the various ad platforms available, how do you decide which to choose?
How to decide on the best ad platform?
When considering investing in a new ad platform here’s four key criteria to consider:
With these four criteria in mind let’s go through the qualitative results from our study and what B2B marketers have reported as their best ad platforms.
Which ad platforms are best for B2B lead generation?
After reviewing the responses from 60 B2B marketers here’s what we found:
- 52.7% reported Google Ads
- 38.2% reported LinkedIn Ads
- 3.6% reported Facebook Ads
- 1.8% reported Capterra Ads
- 1.8% reported Instagram Ads
- 1.8% reported Native Ads
Which ad platforms are best for B2B awareness?
After reviewing the responses from 60 B2B marketers here’s what we found:
- 56.1% reported LinkedIn Ads
- 12.3% reported Facebook Ads
- 12.3% reported YouTube Ads
- 10.5% reported Google Ads
- 3.5% reported Connected TV
- 3.5% reported Display Ads
- 1.8% reported Instagram Ads
Which ad platforms are most popular for B2B?
After reviewing the responses from 60 B2B marketers here’s what we found:
- 20.2% reported Google Ads
- 18.8% reported LinkedIn Ads
- 13.0% reported Facebook Ads
- 11.2% reported Instagram Ads
- 9.0% reported YouTube Ads
- 8.3% reported Microsoft Ads
- 5.8% reported Capterra Ads
- 5.& reported Display Ads
- 2.5% reported Reddit Ads
- 2.2% reported Native Ads
- 1.8% reported X (Twitter Ads)
- 1.1% reported Connected TV
- 0.4% reported Quora Ads
Which ad platforms are most B2B marketers planning to invest in?
After reviewing the responses from 60 B2B marketers here’s what we found:
- 13.5% reported YouTube Ads
- 12.1% reported X (Twitter) Ads
- 10.6% reported Reddit Ads
- 9.9% reported Connected TV
- 9.2% reported Audio Ads
- 7.8% reported Display Ads
- 7.1% reported Microsoft Ads
- 7.1% reportedFacebook Ads
- 7.1% reported Capterra Ads
- 5.7% reported Instagram Ads
- 4.3% reported Native Ads
- 3.5% reported Apple Search Ads
- 1.4% reported LinkedIn Ads
- 0.7% reported Tiktok Ads
Making your final decision on where to advertise
All in all take these survey results as suggestions to see what other B2B marketers are reporting is working for them and what platforms they’re interested in exploring.
Ultimately don’t forget the four key criteria when making your decision of where to advertise.
When you finally decide, run a small pilot of $100-$1,000 just to get your baselines.
From here you’ll have a better idea of if this channel will make sense.
Hope you found this article helpful!
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
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10 Effective Account-Based Marketing Tactics For Modern B2B Marketers
Do you need to find out if ABM is the right approach for you & how you can get the most out of your efforts?
I had the pleasure of interviewing Brandon Alisoglu who’s achieved a 300% increase in demo bookings for B2B companies while maintaining a 50% SQL rate from ABM campaigns.
Here’s Brandon’s top 10 tips & tactics to maximize return on effort (ROE) for your ABM ads.
(In no particular order, they all matter)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Tip #1 - Assessing the Suitability of ABM for Your Business
- Tip #2 - Embracing the Long Game in Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
- Tip #3 - Create a Dossier of Information
- Tip #4 - Breaking Content to Audience Segmentation
- Tip #5 - Focusing on Outcomes: The "So What?" Factor in ABM
- Tip #6 - Drilling Into Personas & Messaging
- Tip #7 - A/B Testing Value Propositions
- Tip #8 - Set Aside Time to Ideate
- Tip #9 - Streamlining the Process with Templates
- Tip #10 - Don’t Skip Google
- Conclusion
- Resources for mastering B2B advertising
Tip #1 - Assessing the Suitability of ABM for Your Business
When evaluating ABM for your business, consider the nature of your target accounts and the practicality of a personalized marketing approach.
ABM is particularly effective for targeting large organizations or "whales" where the potential return justifies the extensive effort and resources required for highly tailored campaigns.
Challenges with ABM in Smaller Companies
In smaller companies, the lack of numerous distinct roles and seniority levels may limit the effectiveness of ABM strategies that rely on granular targeting and personalized messaging.
If a company is too small to segment effectively based on these criteria, the impact of a tailored ABM approach may be diminished.
ABM often involves high-ticket offerings and significant investment in marketing resources.
If the target account does not have the financial capacity or the organizational complexity, the return on investment might not be worth it.
Strategic Considerations for ABM
Evaluate potential accounts not just by their immediate size but by their strategic importance and the potential lifetime value they offer.
Consider more generalized targeted advertising strategies for smaller accounts that do not justify a full ABM approach.
These can still be effective by focusing on industry-specific pain points and solutions but do not require the level of customization and operational complexity associated with traditional ABM.
Identifying the Annual Contract Value (ACV) Benchmark
An ACV of around $20,000 is generally seen as a threshold where ABM becomes viable.
This benchmark suggests that the deal size is significant enough to warrant the detailed and personalized marketing efforts required in ABM.
Another practical measure is whether the contract value requires CFO approval.
The involvement of a CFO generally indicates that the deal is substantial enough to require careful consideration and alignment with strategic financial goals.
Tip #2 - Embracing the Long Game in Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Unlike traditional demand generation tactics that may prioritize immediate results, ABM focuses on building engagement through a more deliberate and personalized approach.
The idea here is to build a meaningful relationship with key accounts.
In the same way, you wouldn't ask for a hand in marriage on the first date, successful B2B marketers shouldn’t ask prospects to talk to sales unless they've had some interaction before.
The Importance of Educating and Engaging
The early stages of ABM should center around education and awareness.
Allow targeted accounts to familiarize themselves with your brand and value propositions.
This foundational phase is important for setting the stage for deeper engagement.
Jumping directly to aggressive sales tactics like pushing for demos with accounts that have minimal interaction with your brand, is less likely to yield positive results.
Instead, nurturing relationships over time fosters trust and increases the likelihood of conversion when the account is ready.
Balancing Immediate Needs with Long-Term Strategy
While the emphasis on the long game is important, we realize the need to meet short-term sales targets is a pressing reality for most B2B marketers.
In such cases, employing a robust account scoring system can help identify which accounts are most ready to engage based on their behaviors such as:
- Website visits (specially high-intent pages)
- Ad engagement
- Email interactions
- Webinar attendees
For accounts that show clear signs of being in-market or closer to the decision stage, tailor your approach to convert these opportunities.
This can involve more direct calls to action, such as personalized demo invitations and running incentivized offers.
If your company is product-led, this would be a good time to offer free trials.
Sample of free trial ad by Plauti:
Tip #3 - Create a Dossier of Information
Understanding your prospects' interests, pain points, and engagement history comprehensively is the key to crafting personalized and effective ABM strategies.
This information equips sales teams with the required data to personalize their outreach effectively and accelerate the sales process.
Building & Targeting Prospect
Compile data on prospect activities, including the specific ads they clicked, pages they visited, or any communications they have sent.
This dossier should act as a dynamic document that sales teams can use to personalize their approaches.
By understanding what content the prospect has engaged with, the sales team can address specific interests or pain points, making their pitches more relevant and compelling.
Marketers can also use this data to launch 1:1 campaigns featuring social proof and objection handling.
If the list of accounts is not large enough for a 1:1 approach, then gather the top 3-5 most common objections that resonate with the majority of the accounts.
You can reduce the overall cost by dynamically excluding any account that has contacted sales.
Implementation Tips for Effective ABM
- Identify in-market accounts by using advanced analytics and account scoring to determine which of your target accounts are actively engaging with your content.
Tools like HubSpot or Marketo can help streamline the process.
- Once these engaged accounts are listed, segment them for targeted campaigns that address their specific stages in the buyer’s journey.
This segmentation allows you to apply more aggressive sales tactics appropriately while continuing to nurture less-ready accounts with educational content.
- Distribute content that educates and engages at various stages of the customer journey.
This tactical approach ensures that when you invite accounts to a demo or free trial they are informed and more likely to be receptive.
Successful ABM is a blend of patience and strategic agility, tailored to meet both the immediate and long-term goals of your business.
Tip #4 - Breaking Content to Audience Segmentation
The purpose of this step is to develop and deliver content that addresses specific pain points and interests identified in your prospect dossiers.
Strategies for Deepening Prospect Engagement
As you gather more data on your prospects' behaviors, such as the ads they click or the pages they visit, use this information to guide them through a personalized buyer's journey.
This involves crafting content that speaks directly to their needs and leading them to web pages that provide further value and deepen their engagement with your brand.
Regularly update and refine your ads to keep them in line with your audience's changing interests and needs.
Creating a Content "Buffet"
Offer a Variety of Content Options.
Imagine setting up a buffet of content options tailored to different tastes and preferences within your target accounts.
By providing a range of topics and formats—from whitepapers and case studies to webinars and interactive tools—you allow prospects to self-select the content that most resonates with them.
Use the insights from observed interactions to refine your understanding of what each prospect cares about.
This personalized approach not only enhances the relevance of your outreach but also increases the likelihood of a prospect's deeper engagement with your content.
Integrating Technology for Efficiency
While managing this level of personalized engagement can become complex, employing an ABM platform can streamline the process.
These platforms can help organize and automate content delivery based on user behavior, keeping track of interactions across different channels to maintain a cohesive and personalized marketing approach.
Pro tip:
Before fully investing in an expensive ABM tech stack, validate your strategy with simpler tools or minimal setups to prove its effectiveness.
A simple way is to use LinkedIn's demographic reporting to see which companies have been exposed to impressions, and which ones are actually engaging.
You can take it a step further and leverage a third-party data connector like data slayer to pull the demographic data from LinkedIn through API.
Tip #5 - Focusing on Outcomes: The "So What?" Factor in ABM
A critical aspect of effective ABM is ensuring that every piece of data, every content interaction, and every campaign has a clear and compelling answer to the question: "So what?"
Every action should educate, nurture, or capture leads, to bring you closer to revenue.
The Importance of Outcome-Based Messaging
In ABM, it's not enough to highlight the features of your product or the hours it can save a potential client’s team.
The key is to articulate what these benefits mean in the context of the customer’s specific business challenges and goals.
When discussing a product feature, such as "saves your engineering team 20 hours a week," it's essential to connect this benefit to tangible business outcomes.
For example, what does saving 20 hours a week mean for the company?
Could it lead to faster project completions, cost savings, or better resource allocation?
These outcomes are what will truly capture the interest of decision-makers.
By consistently focusing on the "so what?" of your actions and messaging, you can lift your ABM efforts from functional to transformational.
Pro-tip:
Establish Leading Indicators to Measure ABM Progress:
By establishing clear leading indicators across your marketing funnel, you can quantify progress and tie every action back to tangible business outcomes.
From initial awareness through engagement to conversion, each stage can be monitored and analyzed to ensure marketing efforts move potential clients closer to a sale.
These indicators provide a roadmap that justifies the investment by showing how specific activities contribute to moving accounts through the sales pipeline.
If you want to learn more about creating leading and lagging indicators along with actionable free templates check out the AdConversion Paid Media Program course; Module 2, lesson 1.
Tip #6 - Drilling Into Personas & Messaging
Within any given company, different levels of management and seniority have distinct priorities and challenges.
For example, C-suite executives might focus on strategic growth and scalability, directors on operational efficiency, and managers on tactical execution.
Tailoring your messaging to address these specific concerns can dramatically increase the relevance and impact of your communications.
Beyond role-based customization, consider the particular needs and pain points of the industry or vertical your target accounts might operate within.
Strategies for Effective A/B Testing
Implement continuous A/B testing across your campaigns to determine which messages resonate best with each persona.
Segment your target audience by role and seniority, and tailor your messages accordingly.
For example, test different value propositions with managers versus C-suite executives to determine which messages drive more engagement or conversions from each group.
Understand that the preferences and behaviors of your audience can evolve, and your ABM strategy should be agile enough to adapt to these changes.
Tip #7 - A/B Testing Value Propositions
By testing two to three variations of each message, you can discover appeals and incentives that resonate with distinct groups within the same role and seniority level.
In cases where the target company might not be large enough to segment by job titles or seniority due to LinkedIn’s filtering limitations, marketers need to think creatively about how to approach personalization and segmentation.
Alternative Segmentation Strategies:
- Use Broad Segments:
Instead of job titles, consider using job function and seniority or even adding member skills into the mix.
- Focus on Common Pain Points:
Leverage the common challenges or objectives identified in smaller organizations.
For example, if most employees are likely involved in decision-making due to the company's size, tailor messages that address broad business benefits that resonate across multiple roles.
As discussed earlier, knowing the top objections by vertical can guide the creation of content and ads that preemptively address concerns.
This is particularly useful when precise job title segmentation is not feasible.
Tip #8 - Set Aside Time to Ideate
In the fast-paced environment of account-based marketing, it's imperative to carve out dedicated time for creative thinking and experimentation.
By blocking out time on your calendar, preferably during quieter hours like Friday afternoons, you ensure that you have the space to think deeply and creatively about your ABM strategies.
Regular ideation sessions allow you to review current insights and performance data, enabling you to develop new approaches and refine existing ones.
Pro tip:
Leverage Experimentation and Documentation:
Incorporate a structured approach to experimentation.
Try out new ideas on a small scale to assess their effectiveness before rolling them out broadly.
Keep detailed records of your experiments, including:
- Hypotheses
- Execution details
- Outcomes.
This documentation enables you to capitalize on effective strategies and avoid past mistakes.
Tip #9 - Streamlining the Process with Templates
Keeping detailed and organized documentation of ABM activities, such as experiments, outcomes, and insights will save you lots of time & effort in the long run.
It can be as simple as using Google Docs with structured headings and a table of contents.
Consistent documentation helps in creating a reliable record that can be referenced in reports and strategy meetings.
Leveraging Design Templates
Design templates allow marketers to quickly generate new versions of ads or content without starting from scratch each time.
By standardizing the design elements, teams can focus on tweaking the messaging and content to better align with the target audience’s evolving preferences.
Using templates also ensures that all materials produced are aligned with the brand’s visual identity and messaging guidelines.
Effective Use of Templates and Documentation
Develop a range of design templates for different types of content and ads.
This library should include templates for social media posts, email campaigns, and other marketing materials that are frequently used in ABM campaigns.
Regularly update the documents with the latest results from A/B tests, data analysis insights, and feedback from sales and marketing teams to maintain accuracy and relevance.
Confirm that all team members are trained on how to use the chosen documentation and templates effectively.
With the design templates in place, focus on iterating on the creatives frequently.
Especially in smaller audience segments where ad fatigue can set in quickly.
Tip #10 - Don’t Skip Google
While (ABM) often focuses on direct and personalized communication channels like LinkedIn, incorporating Google Ads into your Demand Gen strategy can heavily reduce the overall cost per acquisition (CPA).
The Strategic Use of Google Ads
Google Ads allows you to address specific queries and pain points that your prospects are actively searching for.
By focusing on these queries, you can position your company as a solution provider right at the moment of need, effectively answering potential customers’ questions through targeted ads.
Often, niche or less competitive keywords related to specific industry questions or problems can be much cheaper than more general, high-intent keywords.
For example, targeting a specific industry debate or a lesser-known feature comparison can capture relevant traffic at a significantly lower cost.
This, not only increases brand awareness but also positions your company as an authoritative and helpful resource.
Creating content that addresses these queries and promoting it through Google Ads can drive highly targeted traffic to your website, increasing the chances of conversion.
Practical Tips for Implementing Google Ads
- Work with your sales and customer service teams to pinpoint the questions and topics that commonly arise during the sales process.
- Use these insights to guide your keyword and content strategy for Google Ads.
Develop content that answers these questions comprehensively.
This could be in the form of blog posts, FAQs, or educational articles.
- Use the identified keywords to set up Google Ads campaigns.
Start with a lower budget to test the effectiveness of your keywords and ads.
Monitor the performance and adjust your strategy based on the results.
Conclusion:
In this article, we discussed the significance of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies through 10 practical tips and tactics to get the most out of your marketing efforts.
We explored the value of a long-term engagement strategy, emphasizing the need to build relationships through educational content and gradual interactions, rather than taking a direct approach.
Effective ABM involves understanding target accounts' specific needs and behaviors, employing analytics for better targeting, and continuously iterating on creative content to maintain relevance and combat ad fatigue.
Bookmark this blog as your comprehensive guide for your next ABM efforts to make sure your strategies align with the overall company goal.
If you’d like to reach out or get more weekly tips, please connect with Brandon via Linkedin.
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
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Intro to B2B Google Ads: Crash Course For New Advertisers
Want to master Google Ads for B2B?
We’ll dissect Google Ads from a 10,000 foot view in this guide.
So you can walk away knowing:
- What is Google Ads?
- Is your ideal B2B buyer searching on Google?
- How can you get your ad seen on the top of Google?
- How much does Google Ads cost?
So whether you’re a SaaS founder, performance marketer, or in-house marketer looking to:
- Scale demo and trial requests for your new B2B SaaS startup
- Run Google ads for clients or launch campaigns internally
- Work with freelancers or agencies running your Google Ads
It all starts here with the fundamentals, so let’s dive in! 👇
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- What is Google Ads?
- Is Your Ideal B2B Buyer Searching on Google?
- How Much Does Google Ads Cost?
- How to Forecast Your Google Ads Budget
- Why is Google Ads So Powerful?
- How Can You Get Your Ad Seen on the Top of Google?
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is an auction place.
Or as I like to think about it, a battleground.
Where you have thousands of advertisers competing against each other to show up on the top of Google when their ideal prospect searches for their products & services.
With 8.5B + searchers happening per day on Google there is a very HIGH likelihood your ideal B2B buyer is using Google to find information, and research solutions.
Is Your Ideal B2B Buyer Searching on Google?
Depending on the niche you’re in Google may or may not make sense.
You can create a free Google Ads account and leverage the Keyword Planner to validate demand.
All you need to do is research the ideal keyword your dream buyer would search and review the average monthly search volume and top of page bid estimates.
In the example below, I can see that for “email marketing software” there is:
- 1,000 - 10,000 average monthly searches
- $49.75 top of page bid estimate
If your ideal keyword has > 100 searches per month, Google can be a worthwhile return on effort.
How Much Does Google Ads Cost?
Before diving into how much does Google Ads cost?
With Google Ads you’re only charged on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.
Meaning you only pay Google if someone clicks your ad, so unlike traditional advertising you’re not being locked into a fixed contract and paying just for eyeballs (aka impressions).
So in short if someone sees your Google Ad and doesn’t click, you won’t pay.
This is what makes Google Ads so attractive, but extremely competitive.
Here’s two ways to find out how much Google Ads will cost for your ideal keywords:
1/ Review Top of Page Bid Estimates in the Google Ads Keyword Planner
As shown in the previous step you can leverage the Keyword Planner to find bid estimates.
In my experience these estimates are never 100% accurate and recommend adding 20% on top of the top of page bid estimate to be safe.
For example, with the keyword of email marketing software we have a $49.75 top of page bid estimate, adding 20% makes it $59.70 allowing us a margin of error to better set expectations.
2/ Launch a Pilot Campaign for $100
Ultimately you’ll never know your real cost per click prices until launching.
If you’re seriously considering Google Ads I recommend launching a pilot campaign for $100.
The whole objective of this campaign is to understand; what is my REAL cost per click price?
Here’s a simple cheat sheet for setting up this campaign:
- Campaign Name = {Region}_{KeywordTheme}_{MatchType}
- Locations = {Your Target Country/Region/State}
- Match Type = Exact
- Bidding = Manual CPC
This setup will allow you to have the greatest control to discover your real CPC prices.
How to Forecast Your Google Ads Budget
Once you know the following:
- Your quarterly sales goal
- Average cost per click
- Opportunity win rate
- Revenue per sale
You can easily forecast a daily, monthly, and quarterly budget using our Google Ads Budget Calculator based on worst, moderate, and best case scenarios.
Give it a look, there’s a video tutorial on the page for you explaining the process.
Why is Google Ads So Powerful?
Intention Is what makes search advertising so powerful 🤝
You can reach exactly the right person, in the right place, in the right location searching for your specific product or service. At that point all you have to do is show up and not mess things up.
I always say Google Ads is a blessing and a curse; they bless you with intent, and curse you with scale.
Given your industry search volume will vary dramatically and it can become hard to scale.
The key is to win Google’s Ad Rank game to offset competitors and rising click prices.
How Can You Get Your Ad Seen on the Top of Google?
Every time you search for something on Google (or other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and Firefox) the results page you’re directed to afterwards is the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
I like to think of the SERP as the Battleground in which Google Ads takes place.
The SERP is Divided Between Paid and Organic Results.
The Google SERP usually has about 3-4 paid ads at the top and 3 at the bottom.
Ad Rank Determines the Position of Your Ad on the First Page
Which determines if your ad is on top of the first page of or nowhere to be seen.
Your goal is to appear in the top 3 spots as click-through rates decline with lower positions.
Higher Position Doesn't Always Mean Greater Cost
The remarkable thing about Google Ads is that you can be #1 on the page and pay less than your competitors who are in positions lower than you (hypothetical example below).
If after reading this article you believe Google Ads is worth further exploration.
Build on this fundamental understanding of Google Ads for B2B.
Hope you found this useful!
Resources for Mastering B2B Advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
B2B vs B2C Advertising: 8 Differences & Examples You Need To Know
Hey there new B2B marketer!
Diving into the world of B2B advertising can be confusing and overwhelming.
In this article I’m going to walk you through 8 differences between B2B & B2C you need to know.
This article is part of our B2B learning track so if you’re serious about learning B2B advertising you’re in the right place!
Let’s dive into it 👏
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- 8 Biggest Differences Between B2B and B2C
- The Cost of The Product
- How Purchase Decisions Are Made
- The Average Sales Length
- Smaller Audience Sizes
- Different Distribution Strategies
- Need to Support Multiple Sales Funnels
- Team Sport, Not Individual
- Go Further Than Just The First Conversion
8 Biggest Differences Between B2B and B2C
In no particular order of importance, here are the 8 biggest differences between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) advertising.
The Cost of The Product
The first key difference between B2B and B2C is the cost of the product.
B2B marketers call this the average deal size or average contract value depending on what is sold.
Typically, B2B products are more expensive ranging from $1,000 to over $250,000.
How Purchase Decisions Are Made
In B2B buying, there will be more people involved in the purchase of the product compared to B2C where there is usually only one person involved.
This is often referred to as a buying committee, in B2B your job is to nurture, educate, and reach everyone in this group so they can collectively decide to purchase the product.
The Average Sales Length
There are more people involved with purchasing the B2B product or service and the product is typically a more expensive purchase, the length of time to purchase that product is typically longer.
Depending on the complexity of what is being bought, sales cycles can range from 30 days to 36 months. The higher and more complex the product or service is the longer the sales cycle typically is.
This is different from B2C because it can take me 30 seconds to buy something off an Instagram ad.
I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing 🤣
Smaller Audience Sizes
With B2B advertising programs, you’ll be targeting smaller audiences across ad channels.
Your audience will typically be less than 300,000 contacts with a focus on reaching the right person and company vs B2C where your audiences will typically be much broader than this since more people can purchase your product or service.
Different Distribution Strategies
Since you’ll be reaching a much more targeted audience, and you may be dealing with a specific budget – the ad channels you decide to use may look different than your B2C advertising counterparts.
It all comes down to where your audience lives and breathes, digitally.
Believe me, I’ve been behind some powerful Facebook ads for B2B. But, you may think twice about using a TV commercial during the Super Bowl as a B2B marketer (well…unless you’re Salesforce!)
But again, this will all depend on your budget and the breath of your buyers.
Need to Support Multiple Sales Funnels
In B2B, your advertising campaigns will support and fuel multiple sales funnels and processes.
The big three are product-lead, sales-lead, and a hybrid of both.
You can learn more about each revenue model in our B2B Advertising Guide.
Team Sport, Not Individual
B2B advertising requires strategic alignment across multiple teams including sales, marketing, and customer success departments to support the buyer’s journey and close deals more effectively.
Given the fact that it’s not just about reaching a specific individual but also a company.
This increases the importance and complexity of working across teams.
Go Further Than Just The First Conversion
The B2B sales processes are more complex and there's more buyers involved.
Your advertising campaigns should be designed to help impact the entire buyer journey.
Not just the first conversion like B2C advertising.
I hope you found this article helpful!
Jumpstart Your B2B Marketing Career
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to check out my free course that will teach you the foundational knowledge to becoming a high-performing B2B marketer who knows how to use advertising to drive legit business and revenue impact without the fluff or wasting your time and money learning the ropes the hard way.
- Module 1: you’ll get a crash course in the B2Bverse and master terminology, sales processes, and working across teams.
- Module 2: you’ll learn how to become your customer's psychologist and understand them deeply with buyer personas that allow you to craft effective messaging.
- Module 3: you’ll master the B2B funnel and learn how to think like a CEO to identify performance bottlenecks and convert more leads into revenue.
- Module 4: you’ll learn how to put it all together and build your go-to-market strategy that gets your ad in front of your dream buyers and converts attention.
This course was designed for absolute beginners in mind.
Accelerate your learning curve and start the course today for free.
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How to Craft B2B Buyer Personas For Ad Targeting
Hey there B2B marketing grasshopper 👋
In this article, we're channeling our inner Mr. Miyagi from "The Karate Kid," because we're about to master the art of creating B2B buyer personas.
Wax on, wax off style – but with less wax and more wisdom!
Let’s dive into it.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- What Is a B2B Buyer Persona?
- 3 Major B2B Marketing Personas
- How to Develop a B2B Buyer Persona
- The Five B2B Buyer Persona Segmentations
- B2B Buyer Persona Template
- Translating B2B Buyer Persona’s into Ad Targeting
What Is a B2B Buyer Persona?
Just like Daniel-san needed to understand his opponents in the All Valley Karate Tournament, it's important to understand your B2B buyer personas to win in the market.
It's critical because these personas are your roadmap – they guide every marketing punch and kick you make.
If you don’t do this, your marketing efforts might be as off-target as Daniel-san trying to catch a fly with chopsticks on his first try.
We're talking about misdirected resources and messaging that misses the mark, leaving your ROI down and out — so let's break it down, Karate Kid style:
What is a persona? It’s the semi-fictional characters that make up your target audience. It’s a great way to unpack who makes up your ideal customer profiles, called an “ICP”
3 Major B2B Marketing Personas
In B2B marketing there are 3 major personas or roles to understand in the sales process.
This is also referred to as a buying committee:
- Decision Maker – The person who makes the final decision to purchase
- Champion - A person who enthusiastically supports your product or service in their organization
- Influencer - A person who can influence other members of the buying committee
Your marketing and advertising efforts should address their needs and concerns when it comes to buying and using your product or service.
Knowing what these personas are looking for will help you tailor your messaging to make your ads stand out.
For example: imagine your buyer persona 'Finance-Manager-Frank'. He's in his mid-40s, loves numbers more than karate, and is always on the lookout for tools that bring efficiency and balance. Where does he find his information? → LinkedIn and financial blogs
Knowing this, you’d be able to hone in your advertising strategy to use LinkedIn ads to demonstrate how finance managers find more efficiency from their investments by using your product.
How to Develop a B2B Buyer Persona
There’s 5 major segmentation buckets to consider when putting together a B2B buyer persona:
- Demographic Segmentation
- Targeting potential customer based on their role (ex: Job Titles, Job Functions)
- Firmographic Segmentation
- Targeting potential customers based on company traits (ex: Industry, Company Size)
- Geographic Segmentation
- Targeting potential customers based on their company and physical location (ex:USA)
- Technographic Segmentation
- Targeting potential customers based on the tech they use (ex: Slack, Teams)
- Behavioral Segmentation
- Fine tune your messaging based on your potential customers Jobs To Be Done, decision-making process, and more.
Within each segmentation, there’s key information you should collect to build your personas which will ultimately inform your advertising channel strategy, targeting, and messaging.
Getting crystal clear on your buyer personas will also help you maximize your resources, build internal trust with your sales and service teams, and drive better results.
Let’s dive into the five segmentations in greater detail.
The Five B2B Buyer Persona Segmentations:
Demographic
Target potential customer based on their role
- Role: Identify the job title and role they’re in and what level in their organizations they fall (individual contributor, middle management, or in the C-suite – chief roles including CEO, CFO, CMO, etc).
- Responsibilities: Identify all the key areas they oversee and manage. Pulls who they report to.
Firmographic
Target potential customers based on company traits
- Company Industry: ex: Technology, Manufacturing
- Company Employee Size: ex: 500 - 1,000 employees
- Company Revenue Size: $1,000,000 - $10,000,000 ARR
Geographic
Target potential customers based on their company and physical location
- Company Location: ex: United States, Canada
- Employee Location: ex: United Kingdom
Technographic
Target potential customers based on the tech they use
- Tools: This breaks down the tools they use or need to do their jobs (ex: Slack, Teams)
- Company Competitors: list out any relevant competing technologies
Behavioral
Fine tune your messaging based on your potential customers Jobs To Be Done, decision-making process, and more.
- Goals: This details how their job is measured by
- Jobs to be Done/Pain Points: This elaborates on the biggest challenges they face in their role
- Decision-Making Process: This goes into detail on who they need approval from when buying a new product/service, who signs the contract, who owns the budget
- Evaluation Process: This details how this persona typically decides on a product
- Objections & Concerns: this outlines what prevents them from making a decision
- Consumption Habits: how do they gain information for their job and what social media networks do they use
B2B Buyer Persona Template
To help you put this into action get a free copy of my B2B Buyer Persona template in Module 2 - Lesson 2 of my B2B Advertising Foundations Course when you sign up for free. With this template you will be able to easily map out your buyer persona across the five segmentations.
Translating B2B Buyer Persona’s into Ad Targeting
After completing the B2B Buyer Persona template you should be very clear on who you’re going after.
Now you’ll want to review your persona’s segmentation and find possible targeting opportunities in the platforms you’re considering advertising on – your options will vary greatly by channel.
Create a draft campaign in your ad platform of choice and review all of the audience targeting options available – sometimes you’ll need to get creative! (example below of LinkedIn Ads).
And that my advertising friends is your way to craft a buyer persona you can use to identify the audiences you’ll be targeting in your B2B advertising.
Hope you found this article useful!
Jumpstart Your B2B Marketing Career
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to check out my free course that will teach you the foundational knowledge to becoming a high-performing B2B marketer who knows how to use advertising to drive legit business and revenue impact without the fluff or wasting your time and money learning the ropes the hard way.
- Module 1: you’ll get a crash course in the B2Bverse and master terminology, sales processes, and working across teams.
- Module 2: you’ll learn how to become your customer's psychologist and understand them deeply with buyer personas that allow you to craft effective messaging.
- Module 3: you’ll master the B2B funnel and learn how to think like a CEO to identify performance bottlenecks and convert more leads into revenue.
- Module 4: you’ll learn how to put it all together and build your go-to-market strategy that gets your ad in front of your dream buyers and converts attention.
This course was designed for absolute beginners in mind.
Accelerate your learning curve and start the course today for free.
5 Unconventional Ways to Use The LinkedIn Ads Library
Most marketers know the LinkedIn Ads library exists.
And the basics of how to use it (ex: search a competitor and voila you’ll see their ads 🪄)
You’re going to go beyond the basics in this article and learn.
5 unconventional ways experts use the library to uncover insights and inspiration.
Let’s dive into it 👇
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Unconventional Way #1: Finding Conversation Ads Copy
- Unconventional Way #2: Identifying Localization Campaigns
- Unconventional Way #3: Studying Competitive Offers
- Unconventional Way #4: Creative Concept Discovery
- Unconventional Way #5: Landing Page Tear Downs
Unconventional Way #1: Finding Conversation Ads Copy
When you open up the LinkedIn Ads Library you can search %FIRSTNAME% to see conversation ad copy examples from competitors and relevant brands.
Here’s how to find conversation ad copy examples step-by-step:
- Open up the LinkedIn Ads Library and search for a relevant competitor or brand.
- Enter %FIRSTNAME% under search by keyword and select your relevant country and date range filters.
- From here you can browse all available variations based on your filters 🎉
If you don’t see any conversation ad messages you’ll likely need to adjust your filters or it’s possible your competitors or the relevant brands you’re researching aren’t actively testing this ad format.
Unconventional Way #2: Identifying Localization Campaigns
Localization campaigns are when you advertise outside your primary language and draft ads, and landing pages relevant to a specific language.
We’ve seen advertising outside of the English language a reduction in costs by up to 70%.
If you have the potential to advertise outside of English it’s definitely worth testing.
Here’s how to identify localization campaigns with the ad library:
- Open up the LinkedIn Ads Library and search for a relevant competitor or brand.
- Filter by all countries and uncheck your current target locations (ex: United States)
- Browse through the results to identify different localization campaigns (look for ad copy that isn’t in your primary language, example below is an ad in German).
- Click view details on the ad to identify the targeted locations.
Write down any interesting target countries and/or languages your competitors are targeting that you might consider reaching with localization campaigns.
Unconventional Way #3: Studying Competitive Offers
Let’s say you’re a B2B SaaS company looking to drive more demo requests.
You can use the LinkedIn ad library to easily see ads from competitors or relevant brands that are also trying to drive more demo requests.
The same is true if we’re talking about free trials, webinar registrations, ebook downloads, and anything else you can think of.
Here’s how to study competitive offers with the ad library:
- Open up the LinkedIn Ads Library and search your offer in the search by keyword filter.
- From here you can browse various ad types that mention your offer within the ad copy.
- You can repeat this process and narrow down your filters for further granularity.
Unconventional Way #4: Creative Concept Discovery
Most advertisers using the library will just look at the ad examples provided and not dig much further.
Instead what you should do is look for patterns around creative concepts to understand your competitors creative strategy (or the relevant brand in question).
Creative concept = the format of which the creatives are designed off
Here’s 10 examples of creative concepts:
- Before & After
- UGC
- Meme
- Product Mockup
- Illustration (Drawings)
- Stats & Research
- Comedy Skit
- Animated
- Behind-the-Scenes
- AI Generated
Using the library take note of any patterns of creative concepts your competitor/brand in question might be repeating. If it’s significant you might want to consider testing a similar concept.
Use your best judgement when labelling concepts and look for patterns.
Unconventional Way #5: Landing Page Tear Downs
When viewing ads in the library you can click on the CTA button to open up the associated landing page the ad is driving traffic towards.
The original UTMs are also still within the URL parameter so you can reverse engineer these to better understand your competitors ad strategy (learn how here).
With this valuable information you can tear down each page for inspiration.
Hope you found this article useful!
See you in the next article or one of our free courses!
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
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LinkedIn Spotlight Ads In 2024: Are They Worth The Investment?
Should you invest in LinkedIn Spotlight Ads?
In this article you'll learn:
- The pro's and con's of LinkedIn Spotlight Ads
- How much LinkedIn Spotlight ads cost
- Examples of LinkedIn Spotlight ads
- 3 LinkedIn Spotlight ad strategies
By the end of this article you’ll know if this ad type makes sense for you.
Let’s dive into it! 👇
Contents
- What are LinkedIn Spotlight Ads?
- LinkedIn Spotlight Ad Specs
- 4 Reasons to Invest In LinkedIn Spotlight Ads
- 4 Reasons You SHOULD NOT Invest In LinkedIn Spotlight Ads
- 3 LinkedIn Spotlight Ad Strategies Worth Testing
What are LinkedIn Spotlight Ads?
Spotlight ads are only seen on desktop devices and use a combination of your audience's LinkedIn profile data such as photo, company name, and job title to dynamically change based on the user.
LinkedIn Spotlight Ad Specs
When creating a spotlight ad you’ve got the following options:
- Ad headline = 50 characters
- Company name = 25 characters
- Company Image = logo or image in JPG or PNG that is < 2 MB
- Background Image (optional) = 300x250 in JPG or PNG
I’d personally recommend not adding a background image as it removes the ad description, and the users profile photo will not be shown, which defeats the purpose of this ad type 😅
4 Reasons to Invest In LinkedIn Spotlight Ads
Reason 1: 74% Lower Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
After reviewing $1,726,264.56 in spend by ad type for our B2B SaaS clients, we found linkedin spotlight ads have an average CPM of $5.23, 74% lower than single image ads.
Reason 2: Increased Ad Recall
Spotlight ad placements are very “low key” and unintrusive.
They only appear on Desktop and are served on the right side of the newsfeed.
Given an average CPM of $5.23 and subtle placement you can rack large frequencies > 20 without negatively impacting your audience’s experience.
The combination of high frequency and low impression costs = greater potential ad recall
Reason 3: Low Creative Effort
Spotlight ads only require an image that is < 2MB making it an EXTREMELY low creative effort.
Compare this to formats like single image, carousel, or even video ads.
If you want more exposure without a ton of effort they’re an easy addition.
Reason 4: Flexible Bidding Strategies
Spotlight ads allow you to multiple bidding strategies depending on your campaign objectives.
- Maximum delivery = LinkedIn will automatically adjust your bids for the most exposure
- Cost cap = set a target cost per landing page click
- Manual bidding = set a specific bid per landing page click
With each of these bidding strategies you have flexibility to test and leverage the one that allows you the greatest exposure for the lowest cost.
4 Reasons You SHOULD NOT Invest In LinkedIn Spotlight Ads
Reason 1: 83% higher average CPC prices
After reviewing $1,726,264.56 in spend by ad type for our B2B SaaS clients, we found linkedin spotlight ads have an average cost per click of $7.93, 83% higher than single image ads.
Reason 2: You want to generate the most conversions
Spotlight ads have horrible engagement rates compared to other LinkedIn ad types.
If your primary objective is to drive conversions then spotlight ads are not the ideal ad type to use.
Reason 3: You’re trying to drive the most traffic to your site
Spotlight ads have below average clickthrough rates compared to other ad types which makes using them to drive site traffic a poor use case of budget.
Reason 4: You’re not already investing in other ad types
Spotlight ads are not a game changer ad type. They should be used in support alongside other more dominant ad types such as (image, video, or conversation).
The best use of spotlight ads is remarketing, allowing you to stay top of mind at a low cost in front of the audiences that already know/like/trust you.
3 LinkedIn Spotlight Ad Strategies Worth Testing
In no particular order, here’s 3 strategies worth testing with spotlight ads.
Strategy #1: Remarketing
The real advantage of spotlight ads are low distribution costs with an average CPM of $5.28.
This in combination with the fact that spotlight ads are a non-intrusive ad type on desktop devices and limited right-hand placements makes them great for remarketing.
You can leverage spotlight ads to remarket:
- All website visitors
- Company page visitors
- Past event attendees
- Contacts of customers, and leads in nurture
If you want to learn more about building a LinkedIn remarketing strategy check out our in-depth article on How to Build a Multichannel B2B Retargeting Strategy (Step-By-Step).
Strategy #2: Company Page Growth
Another potential strategy to test spotlight ads is growing your LinkedIn company page.
You can leverage this ad type to drive visitors to view your page (which will then hopefully lead to a follower), check out this example from Aurora who is using a CTA of “Follow”.
Strategy #3: Job Recruitment
Spotlight ads are available with the Job applicants campaign objective and given it’s dynamic element (automatically pulling the photo of the user) you can create personalized recruitment ads.
I hope you found this article useful!
And as promised, now know if this ad type makes sense for you.
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
Google Ads Quality Score: Everything You Need To Know (2024)
Mastering quality score is essential if you want to pay less per click and outrank competitors.
In this article you’ll learn the 80/20 of what you need to know about quality score.
Let’s dive into it!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Quality Score Simplified
- How is Quality Score Calculated?
- How to audit your Quality Score?
- How to improve your Quality Score?
- Quality Score FAQ
Quality Score Simplified
Back in 2005, Google released Quality Score.
This is a number from 1-10 that Google created to determine how relevant your ads are to what people are searching for (1 being the lowest relevance, and 10 being the highest).
Google want’s people who search to find what they are looking for.
This way they come back to Google and search again in the future.
Quality Score is how they gamified the system to achieve this objective.
It’s the perfect trinity between advertiser, searcher, and Google:
- Advertisers are rewarded with lower costs when having higher quality scores
- People searching for answers on Google will now find more relevant information
- Because people find relevant information they use Google again in the future
Before Quality Score was introduced Google was filled with tons of irrelevant ads leading to a poor experience for searchers and ultimately less people using Google in the future.
(In my opinion) Quality Score was one of the most important features released that transformed Google into the most dominant search engine in the world.
The secret to improving Quality Score is relevance.
How is Quality Score Calculated?
Ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected CTR are the three variables that go into calculating your Quality Score. Depending on how relevant each is to your keywords you’ll have a final score between 1-10 (1 being the lowest relevance, and 10 being the highest).
Ad Relevance
A metric that determines how relevant your keywords are to your ad copy.
Above average signifies great relevance, below average signifies room for improvement, below average signifies poor keyword and ad copy relevance.
Ad relevance is 100% in your control and below average ad relevance is usually the result of poor ad group structure resulting from too many keywords and/or few variations of ad copy.
Landing Page Experience
A metric that determines how relevant your keywords, ads, and post click experience matches the search intent of the user.
It’s not just about having your keywords on the page, it also takes into consideration page load speeds, page structure (ex: H1, H2s, H3s), and mobile optimization.
Above average signifies a great landing page experience, average signifies room for improvement, and below average signifies poor post click experience.
Expected CTR
A metric that determines the likelihood of someone clicking on your ads once seen in the Google search results.
In my experience auditing Google Ads accounts this is the #1 most common variable that drags down quality score for most accounts since it’s the least in your control.
This is Google’s perception based on historical and predicted performance on how well you believe your ad will be engaged with.
Above average signifies a highly engaging ad, average signifies room for improvement, and below average signifies poor ad engagement.
How to audit your Quality Score?
Once you understand the basics of quality score that it is a factor of relevance and three components that determine whether you’re a 1-10 the next logical question becomes:
What’s impacting my quality score performance?
Here’s how to run a Google Ads quality score to find what’s impacting your performance.
[EMBED YOUTUBE VIDEO]
Step 1 - Download a keyword report
Within your Google Ads manager navigate to the keywords section within your account:
Campaigns > Keywords (press G + K for a keyboard shortcut)
Modify your keyword columns to include:
- Quality Score
- Ad Relevance
- Landing Page Experience
- Expected CTR
Once completed download your keywords into a CSV.
Step 2 - Summarize your keywords into a pivot table
Pivot tables are great for summarizing large amounts of data.
Within Excel navigate to Insert > PivotTable to summarize your keyword report.
Once complete format your table as follows:
- Rows = Quality Score
- Values = Count of Keywords
- Filter = Quality score 1-10 (exclude —)
Step 3 - Drill down to understand Quality Score performance
With your table setup now you can easily see overall quality score performance and drill down into specific elements such as ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected CTR.
Switch your rows to drill down into each element of quality score to diagnose performance:
- Ad Relevance; rows = Ad Relevance, values = count of keywords
- Landing Page Experience; rows = Landing Page Experience, values = count of keywords
- Expected CTR; rows = Expected CTR, values = count of keywords
How to improve your Quality Score?
After completing your Google Ads Quality Score audit it should be pretty clear which factor of QS is hurting your performance? (ex: ad relevance, landing page experience, expected CTR).
Here’s some recommendations on how to improve each QS factor:
Improving Ad Relevance
Below average ad relevance is a symptom of poor ad group structure.
If you have below average ad relevance, fear not! Because this is 100% in your control.
Here’s some tips to improve your ad relevance:
- Add more headline variations to your responsive search ads to include the keywords within your ad groups.
- Keep your ad groups tightly grouped with thematic keywords, for the keywords that can’t fit the theme consider putting it into its own group with relevant copy.
- Consolidate your active keywords and remove below average ad relevance variations that are not receiving any worthwhile impressions or clicks.
Improving Landing Page Experience
Below average landing page experience is a symptom of poor post click experience.
If you’ve been neglecting your landing pages this is where it’s going to bite you.
Here’s some tips to improve landing page experience:
- Include your primary keyword in your headline 1 to match search intent and your ad copy.
- Run your landing page through PageSpeed Insights to find how you can improve the mobile and desktop experience.
- Follow on page SEO best practices and have proper headline, and content formatting. Remember Google will crawl your landing pages so make sure it’s technically sound.
- Install a session recording tool to see how users behave on your landing page, the insights here are invaluable at understanding gaps.
Improving Expected CTR
This is Google’s perception on how likely your ads will be clicked.
Unfortunately this aspect of Quality Score is the least in your control but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything you can do to improve it.
Here’s some tips to improve your expected clickthrough rate:
- Use as many ad extensions as possible (ex: sitelink, image, structured snippet, etc). Ad extensions provide more info to the searcher and make your ads larger.
- Test new RSA ad copy on a monthly basis to consistently try and improve your ad clickthrough rate performance on an ongoing basis.
- Monitor your account clickthrough rate trends month over month to combat negative trends. You can set up an automated rule within Google Ads to be notified automatically via email.
- Audit your search terms report and build your negative keyword lists. Block irrelevant impressions of your ads so that you can actually drive clicks.
- Experiment with dynamic keyword insertion to see if it positively affects your ad CTR.
Quality Score FAQ
How long does it take to improve your quality score?
Technically every time your keyword enters an auction quality score is recalculated to determine placement of your ad in relation to your competitors.
However in my experience it usually takes a month to see significant changes in your overall score.
Should you worry about low quality scores?
Yes, low quality scores should cause concerns but it shouldn’t be your initial priority. The first goal should be to drive relevant traffic and convert users.
If you’re not currently accomplishing this then stressing about quality score is pointless as it’s really only a factor of reducing your costs and improving visibility.
If you’re not already converting the visibility you do have, getting more of it won’t help.
What is a good quality score?
A good quality score will fluctuate depending on your keyword strategy but overall I’d recommend having 70% of enabled keywords in your account with a score > 7.
Just know this is highly circumstantial and if you’re running a competitive keyword strategy you will have lower quality scores by default given the difficulty of including your competitors in your ads.
Hope you found this article helpful! 🔥
Check out our video tutorial linked if you want a visual walkthrough.
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
How To Use The Google Ads Editor In 2024: Bulk Upload Campaigns, Ads & Keywords
There’s nothing worse than making bulk changes natively in Google Ads.
If you’re ready to save hours bulk uploading campaigns, ads, and keywords.
Mastering the Google Ads Editor is essential.
Let’s cover everything you need to know 👇
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- What is the Google Ads Editor?
- How to get started with the Google Ads Editor?
- How to bulk upload campaigns, keywords, and ads with the Google Ads Editor
60-second crash course on the Google Ads Editor
What is the Google Ads Editor?
It’s a free tool that you can install to update your campaigns offline including altering campaign settings, adjusting keyword bids, and creating new campaigns, ads, and ad groups.
Any serious Google advertiser uses the editor to save hours performing tedious tasks.
Make sure you download the latest version of the editor to follow along in this article.
How to get started with the Google Ads Editor?
After installation add your Google Ads account within the Account Manager and download all campaigns so you have the most recent version of your account.
The Google Ads Editor follows the same account structure:
Account > Campaign > Ad Group > Keyword > Ads
Highly recommend using the Hide Empty Types filter to reduce irrelevant options visible.
How to bulk upload campaigns, keywords, and ads with the Google Ads Editor
The easiest way to bulk upload campaigns into the editor is using a google sheet template.
This template should have the following fields fields available (at minimum):
- Campaign
- Ad Group
- Keyword
Get a copy the example template below here <<
Once you have your template copy you’re ready to get started.
Step 1: configure your campaign import template
Fill in your import template with all the relevant campaign names, ad group, keywords, and ads.
Do not modify the column headers as these are meant to match the editors default fields.
Feel free to fill in whichever fields you find most relevant.
Step 2: Upload your campaign import template
Once you’ve completed setting up your campaign import template with all your relevant details it’s time to import your campaigns into the editor.
Navigate to Account > Import > Paste Text to begin the import process:
Once complete copy all of the column headers and rows you filled in in your import template and paste them into the import from text window:
Don’t worry about the blank “Not importing” columns this is due to the formatting of the import template I provided, instead review the fields that are filled in the column headers.
Make sure everything is looking accurate according to what you want to import.
Once complete click Process to import the campaigns, keywords, and ads.
Step 3: Configure your campaign settings and publish
After reviewing your changes make sure to select Keep in order to retain them.
Now you should have all of your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads that you filled into your import template visible within the Google Ads Editor.
The final step is to configure your campaign and publish your changes.
Highlight each of your new campaigns at the sametime to apply the same campaign settings across of all them at once 🚀
Review all available campaign settings and uncheck the Display Network for search.
If you don’t want your campaigns to spend when published, change the status to Paused.
Once your campaigns are ready to be published into your live Google Ads account.
Select Post > Post Changes > Selected Campaigns
That’s it! 🎉you’ve just saved hours and created campaigns in bulk.
Hope you found this article helpful, see you in the next one!
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
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10 Tips for Free Competitor Research Using Ad Libraries
With so many different tools available for competitor research it can be a bit overwhelming.
I’ve lived and breathed paid ads over the past eight years, and in this article I’m going to share with you 10 tips on how to conduct competitor research for free using ad libraries.
Grab a notebook and let’s dive in!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Tip #1: Familiarise yourself with all the available ad libraries
- Tip #2: Leverage time and location filters
- Tip #3: Estimate platform demand by volume of creatives
- Tip #4: Build a swipe folder of ad inspiration
- Tip #5: Research brands in adjacent industries
- Tip #6: Build a matrix to document your competitors’ movements
- Tip #7: Build a checklist to uncover strategic insights
- Tip #8: Review the ad formats being used
- Tip #9: Clickthrough to review landing pages in use
- Tip #10: Review your competitors’ UTM string
Tip #1: Familiarise yourself with all the available ad libraries
The first step is to know what options you have available.
Here are the primary ad libraries available for the top 3 ad platforms:
LinkedIn Ad Library
Meta Ads Library
Google Ads Transparency Center
Within each library you can study creatives for your competitors and relevant brands.
Using them on a quarterly basis to spy on your competitors is a key habit to develop.
Tip #2: Leverage time and location filters
You can filter by time and location within each ad library to understand:
- Which markets are my competitors investing in?
- How many creative variations are my competitors testing?
- Are they testing localised campaigns outside of english?
You won’t know exactly how much your competitors are investing but you can use the volume of ads as a proxy to estimate the level of investment, and interest for a given market.
If you spot certain markets where you’re finding organic traction AND you see your competitors have gone through the commitment of localising these regions,these are great signals for you to consider running a pilot campaign.
Tip #3: Estimate platform demand by volume of creatives
We touched on using the volume of as a proxy to estimate the level of investment for a market.
The same logic applies to also understanding the demand for a specific ad platform.
Let’s use a hypothetical example, imagine you see the following for your competitor:
- LinkedIn Ads = 20 active ad variations in the past month
- Meta Ads = 10 active ad variations in the past month
- Google Ads = 5 active ad variations in the past month
Based on the volume of ads you can assume LinkedIn could be their primary platform followed by Meta, and finally Google. Look up your competitors and take note of their volume of ads by platform.
You’ll never know with 100% certainty but it’s a good approximation for at least the effort they are expending on each channel, if not their level of success.
Pro tip: get buy-in from leadership to test new ad platforms by showing them how active your competitors are within those channels, this creates FOMO which is quite powerful.
Tip #4: Build a swipe folder of ad inspiration
A swipe folder is a simple collection of screenshots of ads, landing pages, and offers that stand out.
As you’re going through the ad libraries take note of the ads that catch your attention from competitors, relevant brands, and from scrolling through social platforms.
Inspiration comes from all sources and by building this swipe folder you can:
- Better communicate and share guidance with your creative team
- Avoid reinventing the wheel with tested concepts
- Reduce the time to produce new creatives
This can be as simple as a folder in a Google Drive, it doesn’t need to be complicated.
If you want to be organised about it you can also group ads by concept, such as:
- Social Proof
- Thought Leadership
- Product Marketing
The most important piece to takeaway from this is you have some sort of folder to refer to.
Pro tip: create a shared slack channel for people across teams to upload examples of great ads they come across to crowdsource inspiration.
Tip #5: Research brands in adjacent industries
Oftentimes your competitors might be behind the ball when it comes to advertising.
In these instances researching them won’t be very helpful or worthwhile.
Instead what you can do is research brands in adjacent industries, for example:
- eCommerce
- E-learning
- Retail
You can take what works in other industries and adjust it to fit in yours.
Creativity is often taking what works from one sphere and applying it to another.
Tip #6: Build a matrix to document your competitors’ movements
If you want to take your competitors’ research to the next level, build a documented matrix.
This can be as simple as:
- Competitor Namesome text
- Month/Year
- Channel
- Ad Count
It will take a bit of work to put this together but the primary benefit is you can now monitor your competitors’ activity by ad platform on a quarterly basis.
Here’s a simple example of what this can look like in Google Sheets:
Pro tip: if you’re looking for a role in paid media, do a competitor research analysis on the brand you’re applying for. It's a great way to differentiate yourself against other candidates.
Tip #7: Build a checklist to uncover strategic insights
When reviewing your competitors’ ads in the library you’ll want to think deeper than just the surface level of the styles and examples of ads in front of you to uncover strategic insights.
Create a simple checklist to remind yourself to think about:
- Are the ads running to gated or ungated content?
- Is there a mixture of content that focuses on demand creation or capture?
- What stage of the funnel are their ads focused on? (ex: ToFu, BoFu)
- What mixture of offers are they testing? (ex: Conferences, Webinars)
- Are they driving to a landing page or lead form?
Compare the insights you uncover against your current approach.
If you notice 3 of your competitors are promoting events and you’re not then it’s worth testing.
Tip #8: Review the ad formats being used
This was touched on slightly before but it deserves to be in its own tip.
As you’re reviewing competitors in the library take notes of the ad formats being used.
For example, when it comes to LinkedIn are they testing:
- Image
- Video
- Spotlight
- Carousel
- Document
- Conversation
If you notice a large volume of a certain ad format it’s safe to say it must be working.
Compare the formats they are using against your own to inspire future experiments.
For videos take special note of aspect ratio, short vs long form, and other nuances like humour.
Pro tip:assign your competitor research tasks to an intern or junior person as pulling these insights is quite time-consuming and can be done by an entry level team member.
Tip #9: Clickthrough to review landing pages in use
The remarkable thing about these libraries is that you can click through on the ad and view the landing pages your competitors are using. This insight is not otherwise easily discoverable.
This all of sudden opens up a lot of homework for you to perform landing page teardowns.
- What are the calls to action on the landing page?
- How is the page structured compared to yours?
- Do they have better social proof than you?
Now suddenly your swipe folder can be filled with print screens of their entire landing pages.
Which can be shared with your team to test new page variations.
Pro tip:
If you’re using Google Chrome you can use the extension called GoFullPage to take screenshots of entire pages with the click of a button.
Tip #10: Review your competitors’ UTM string
To close out on our final tip, I wanted to share a more advanced approach.
When you’re clicking through to the landing page of your competitors’ ads take note of the UTM string in place to potentially uncover insights on how they’ve set up their campaigns.
By reviewing the URL structure I might gather the following information:
- Network = g | they’re advertising on Google Search
- Device = c | they’re running ads on Desktop devices
- Keyword = crm software | they’re bidding on crm software
- Matchtype = e | they’re using exact match
Hope you found this article helpful! 👏
Connect with me on LinkedIn and let’s keep the conversation going.
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
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LinkedIn Ad Formats: How to Choose the Best One for Your Campaign
LinkedIn has become an essential platform for B2B marketers, offering a variety of ad formats designed to reach professionals and decision-makers.
But with so many options, how do you choose the right one for your campaign?
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into LinkedIn's diverse ad formats, uncovering detailed insights and actionable best practices.
Whether you're looking to increase brand visibility, generate quality leads, or drive traffic to your website, mastering LinkedIn's ad formats can give you a competitive edge in the market.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Overview of LinkedIn Ad Formats
- Single Image Ads
- Video Ads
- Carousel Ads
- Thought Leader Ads
- Text Ads
- Conversation Ads
- Message Ads
- Spotlight Ads
- Follower Ads
- Document Ads
- Lead Gen Forms
- Connected TV Ads
- How to Choose the Right Ad Format
- How to Measure Performance of Each Ad Format
Overview of LinkedIn Ad Formats
Selecting the right ad format depends on your marketing objectives and target audience.
Let’s explore each primary LinkedIn ad format in detail, and reference this article for all ad specs:
Single Image Ads
Single Image Ads are a staple of LinkedIn advertising.
These ads feature one static image and appear directly in the LinkedIn feed, making them highly visible and engaging.
- High engagement with minimal content.
- Simple to create and easy to manage.
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Pro tip: Use images and copy that resonate with your target audience. The best-performing ones often use your Ideal Customer Profile's (ICP) language or even direct words. Remember, in B2B, we are still advertising to people, not to robots! 😃
Video Ads
Video Ads are perfect for storytelling and driving engagement.
They allow you to share dynamic content that captures attention and conveys your message effectively.
- Excellent for storytelling and capturing attention.
- Engaging format that can explain complex ideas
Pro tip: Video ads excel at both brand building and showcasing testimonials. They are particularly effective for demonstrating product functionality. Make sure to add subtitles, the videos usually autoplay on mute.
Carousel Ads
Carousel Ads allow you to showcase multiple images or videos in a single ad unit, each with its link.
This format is ideal for highlighting different aspects of a product or telling a story more interactively.
- Interactive format that encourages engagement.
- Multiple visuals to showcase different products or features.
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Pro tip: Carousel ads can be used for explaining the product, showcasing use cases and features, or explaining customer success stories in the feed. Ensure you have a consistent flow across all cards.
Thought Leader Ads
Thought Leader Ads are a powerful way to build brand credibility and engage your audience by leveraging the influence of key figures within your organization.
These ads allow you to sponsor posts from your company's thought leaders, positioning them—and by extension, your company—as industry experts.
- Build Credibility: Sponsoring posts from thought leaders enhances your brand's authority and trustworthiness.
- Engagement: These ads typically receive higher engagement rates as audiences are more likely to interact with content from recognized industry experts.
- Content Variety: Showcase a variety of content, from personal insights to industry analysis, that resonates with your audience.
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3 tips for implementing thought leader ads:
- Authenticity: Ensure the content from thought leaders is authentic and reflects their genuine perspectives.
- Consistency: Regularly publish thought leadership content to maintain engagement and visibility.
- Interactive Content: Use content that encourages interaction, such as questions or calls to action, to drive higher engagement rates.
For more insights refer to 14 Powerful LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad Strategies Worth Testing.
Text Ads
Text Ads are simple yet effective.
They appear on the right-hand sidebar of LinkedIn and are great for driving traffic to your website or landing page.
- Cost-effective and easy to set up.
- Ideal for driving traffic to your website.
Pro tip: Text ads are very effective, allowing you to stay top of mind at a low cost in front of your target audience. Also, they always help to keep your logo in your ICP’s LinkedIn Feed.
Conversation Ads
Conversation Ads offer an interactive way to engage your audience by allowing recipients to choose their own path through multiple call-to-action buttons.
This format fosters engagement and ensures high visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.
- Highly engaging format that fosters engagement.
- High visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.
- Great for generating leads
Pro tip: Create engaging and relevant conversation flows tailored to your audience's needs and interests. The message subject can be a game changer for open rates! Also, try incentivized ads, sometimes they can work miraculously 🚀
Message Ads
Message Ads are direct messages sent to LinkedIn members’ inboxes, making them highly personal and effective for driving immediate action.
- High visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.
- Personalized and direct communication.
Pro tip: Craft personalized messages that speak directly to your target audience’s pain points and offer clear, actionable solutions. Keep the tone to the one that your target audience is using.
Spotlight Ads
Spotlight Ads are personalized ads that appear on the right-hand side of the LinkedIn feed.
These ads use the viewer's LinkedIn profile data, such as their photo, company name, and job title, to dynamically personalize the ad content.
- Lower CPM and High Ad Recall
- Personalized Ad Content
Check out LinkedIn Spotlight Ads In 2024: Are They Worth The Investment? to dive deeper into this ad format.
Pro tip: Spotlight ads are particularly effective for remarketing, allowing you to stay top of mind at a low cost in front of audiences that already know and trust your brand.
Follower Ads
Follower Ads help increase the number of followers for your LinkedIn page, promoting your company to a wider audience.
- Effective in promoting LinkedIn pages to acquire followers.
- Increases organic reach on LinkedIn.
Pro tip: Highlight the unique value your LinkedIn page offers to followers. Use eye-catching visuals and compelling copy that resonate with your target audience.
Document Ads
Document Ads allow you to share in-depth content directly within the LinkedIn feed.
You can share whitepapers, e-books, or case studies that members can view and download without leaving LinkedIn.
- Share in-depth content directly within the LinkedIn feed.
- Options to gate content with a Lead Gen Form to capture leads or share freely to build brand awareness.
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Pro tip: Offer valuable content that addresses your audience's challenges or interests. Use a strong call-to-action to encourage downloads and interaction with your documents. Some say they prefer Document Ads to Carousel Ads because you can build retargeting audiences for Document ads.
Lead Gen Forms
Lead Gen Forms are a versatile tool that can be used with various ad formats to capture quality leads directly on LinkedIn. These forms are pre-filled with LinkedIn profile data, making it easy for users to submit their information.
- Captures quality leads with pre-filled forms.
- Provides a seamless user experience.
- Can be used for booking demos, downloading guides and templates, event registrations
Pro tip: Minimize the number of fields in your form to reduce friction. Use pre-filled form fields to make it easier for users to submit their information quickly. Don’t use “work mobile” or “work email” because they are usually not pre-filled.
Connected TV Ads
Connected TV Ads allow you to reach professional audiences through streaming content.
These ads appear on connected TV platforms and are ideal for reaching a hard-to-reach professional audience in a large-screen environment.
- Reach professional audiences through streaming content.
- High visibility on large screens.
For detailed ad specifications and additional tips, check out 50+ Ad Specs for The Top 10 Ad Platforms.
How to Choose the Right Ad Format
Choosing the right LinkedIn ad format is crucial for achieving your marketing goals. Here’s a guide to help you align your campaign objectives with the most effective ad formats and measure their performance.
What's Your Primary Campaign Goal?
First, identify your primary campaign goal. Are you aiming to capture demand, create demand, accelerate open cases, or brand awareness?
How to Measure Performance of Each Ad Format
Effectively measuring the performance of your ad campaigns is key to optimizing and achieving your marketing goals.
Here are the KPIs and bidding recommendations for each ad format:
By aligning your ad formats with your campaign goals and following these tips for measuring performance, you can create more effective LinkedIn ad campaigns that drive results and maximize your ROI.
You can read more about Objectives and Bid strategies here.
Hope you found this article helpful! Connect with me on LinkedIn, and reach out with any questions.
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
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10 Expert Tips For Scaling Google Ads Demand Capture
Do you need to scale your paid search campaigns and find new ways to increase demand capture?
As the head of Marketing at Catalyst, I build and mentor teams to maximize ROI in paid ad channels including Google.
Here’s my top 10 tips & tactics to scale your Google ads efforts.
(In no particular order, they all matter)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Tip #1 - Leverage Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)
- Tip #2 - Tap into Device & Location Bid Modifiers
- Tip #3 - Shift Towards Smart Bidding ASAP
- Tip #4 - Sync Your CRM with Google Ads
- Tip #5 - Steer Away From Broad Match As Much As Possible
- Tip #6 - Take Advantage of the Google Ads Editor
- Tip #7 - Lean on Google Ads Script & Rules
- Tip #8 - Exclude Search Partners & Display Network
- Tip #9 - Install Behavioral Analytics Tools for Landing Page Optimizations
- Tip #10 - Consider Bing as a Second Demand Capture Channel
Tip #1 - Leverage Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)
DKI is a powerful method to improve the relevancy of your ads based on user search terms.
When managing ad groups with multiple keywords on a similar theme, this technique ensures that you are displaying ads that closely align with users' query terms.
How Dynamic Keyword Insertion Works:
DKI automatically updates the ad’s headline to include the exact keywords that triggered the ad.
This way, the ad's first impression is highly relevant to the user's search, which improves overall engagement.
Even a slight increase in click through rate (CTR) can impact the performance of a campaign by driving more traffic to the landing page.
Best Practices for Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion:
Prioritize the First Headline: Always aim to have the first headline of your ad matches as closely as possible to the user’s search query.
Group Keywords by Theme: Make DKI more effective by grouping your keywords by themes.
There are generally 6 buckets of themes for search ads:
- Brand
- Non-brand
- Competitive
- RLSA (Search Remarketing)
- Content
- Dynamic Search Ads
With this organization, DKI can create more coherent ads that display the most relevant headline for each bucket.
Tip #2 - Tap into Device & Location Bid Modifiers
A critical aspect often overlooked in Google ads is the optimization of device and location modifiers.
For most B2B SaaS campaigns, the quality of traffic can vary significantly across different devices.
Desktop vs. Mobile vs. Tablet:
Typically, desktop traffic yields the highest quality in terms of conversion rates and user intent.
Users on desktops are generally more engaged and possibly in a professional setting, compared to mobile users who might be multitasking or browsing casually.
Tablets often perform the worst in terms of conversion rates and traffic quality, which is why many advertisers choose to exclude them entirely from campaigns.
Strategic Use of Location Modifiers:
If you target several states or countries, you should modify your bids based on the areas that perform best.
This could mean adjusting bids upward in high-performing regions to capture more traffic or decreasing bids in lower-performing areas to conserve budget.
In extreme cases, you can exclude low-performing regions altogether.
Pro Tip:
Start with a conservative approach focused on proven strategies. As results come in and budget allows, gradually introduce new variables and expand your focus to optimize the overall campaign performance. Maintain detailed records of campaign performance across different devices and platforms. This data will be invaluable for making informed decisions about where to allocate resources most effectively.
Tip #3 - Shift Towards Smart Bidding ASAP
Smart bidding strategies can help improve campaigns’ performance by focusing on conversions rather than clicks.
The Maximum Conversion strategy is particularly effective, as it lets Google optimize your bids to meet a specific CPA target, ideal for campaigns with regular conversions.
Key Considerations for Smart Bidding:
Google recommends having at least 30 conversions per month to effectively utilize Target CPA.
However, for campaigns with lower conversion rates, setting a minimum threshold of 10-15 conversions can still be sufficient.
Ensure that your conversions are properly set up and that Google receives clear signals about which conversions to prioritize by setting specific values for each conversion action.
This is crucial for smart bidding algorithms to function properly, as mixed signals can dilute the focus of your campaign optimization.
Pro Tip:
For businesses, especially in B2B sectors where conversion volumes are low, it's important to track higher funnel events. These can include engaged visits, interaction with forms, and even form abandonment. Each of these steps can be set through Google Tag Manager (GTM), providing richer data for optimization. Apply a structured conversion funnel that captures various stages of user engagement. From initial website interaction to form submissions or CRM entries, each stage should be defined and tracked as separate conversion events. You can then design custom goals and bundle your conversion actions together to add them to your campaigns.
Tip #4 - Sync Your CRM with Google Ads
Performance marketers thrive on optimizing for meaningful conversions. It will take emotions out of the decision-making process.
Integrating CRM lifecycle stages into Google Ads can profoundly impact your ad optimization and overall marketing strategy.
By linking stages such as MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), SQL (Sales Qualified Lead), opportunities, and customer status directly from a CRM platform like HubSpot, you enable a more nuanced and powerful approach to ad targeting and bid adjustments.
How to Implement Your CRM Sync:
Depending on your CRM system, various tools and plugins can facilitate this integration. Ensure that the tool you choose can sync data reliably and in real-time to maintain accuracy in your campaigns.
Define which CRM milestones are important for your campaigns and set Google Ads to track these as conversions
Use the data from your CRM to set up automation rules in Google Ads. For example, you could decrease bids or pause campaigns if the cost per SQL exceeds a certain threshold, ensuring you maintain profitability.
Regularly review the data flow and synchronization between Google Ads and your CRM to ensure accuracy. Adjust your strategies based on new insights and continually refine your approach to improve outcomes.
Tip #5 - Steer Away From Broad Match As Much As Possible
Broad match can drive a high volume of traffic due to its extensive reach. This can result in a large number of conversions, which initially might seem cost-effective.
However, the quality of these conversions often needs to be revised when scrutinized more deeply in the sales funnel.
Despite lower upfront costs, the conversions from broad match often fail to convert into valuable leads or sales.
They may also attract clicks from irrelevant queries, leading to wasted ad spend and diluted performance metrics.
Best Practices for Keyword Match Types:
Phrase match offers a balance by allowing your ad to show only when a searcher's query includes the exact phrase or close variations of the phrase, in the same order. This strikes a better balance between reach and relevance, providing more control than Broad match type.
Exact match targets queries that are much closer to the keywords.
While this reduces reach, it increases the relevance and quality of traffic, making it ideal for targeting high-intent users and optimizing conversion rates.
Regardless of the match type used, a comprehensive negative keyword list is crucial.
Finally, test different match types to see what works best for your specific campaigns. This could mean comparing the performance of Phrase match versus Exact match or testing different variations of your keywords.
Tip #6 - Take Advantage of the Google Ads Editor
Google Ads Editor is an indispensable tool for marketers aiming to streamline their campaign management processes.
This desktop application allows users to manage their Google Ads campaigns offline, offering robust functionalities for bulk editing and optimization.
Google Ads Editor is particularly advantageous for managing large accounts with numerous campaigns and extensive lists of keywords.
Best Practices for Using Google Ads Editor:
Develop a standardized template with predefined columns and settings that align with your campaign's requirements.
This setup ensures that you can quickly import data from spreadsheets directly into Google Ads Editor without compatibility issues.
Always synchronize Google Ads Editor with your online account to ensure all changes are up-to-date and to avoid discrepancies between offline edits and online status.
Before uploading changes to the live environment, use the review function to ensure accuracy and prevent potential errors from impacting your campaigns.
While Google Ads Editor is incredibly powerful, it does have a learning curve.
Invest time in learning its features and shortcuts.
Tip #7 - Lean on Google Ads Script & Rules
Automation is a key component in optimizing campaigns. Google Ads scripts and rules offer powerful tools to automate routine tasks and strategic operations.
Scripts allow for advanced, customized automation that can modify bids, pause ads, or adjust budgets based on specific conditions.
Rules can be set to trigger based on performance metrics such as CTR, conversion rates, or cost per acquisition.
For example, automatically increasing the budget for high-performing campaigns or reducing bids for underperforming keywords helps maintain efficient spending.
Utilize scripts to automatically apply a tracking template across all campaigns, incorporating dynamic elements like campaign and ad group names.
This will detach personal bias from campaign management. Scripts and rules operate based on data, not preference, enabling objective decisions that focus solely on performance metrics.
You must regularly review the outcomes of automated actions. Automation is powerful, but it requires oversight to ensure it aligns with changing campaign goals and market conditions.
Tip #8 - Exclude Search Partners & Display Network
When managing Google Ads, especially for substantial budgets, it's crucial to ensure that every dollar spent is driving quality traffic and conversions.
A common oversight is not excluding search partners and the display network from search campaigns.
While these features can increase visibility, they often compromise the quality of traffic and the overall effectiveness of your campaigns.
Understanding the Impact by Network:
Including Search Partners and Display Networks can inflate your impressions without a corresponding increase in clicks.
This dilution of CTR can harm your campaign's overall performance metrics, misleading you about its effectiveness.
Google's quality score is a critical metric in determining your ad rank and the cost per click (CPC) you pay.
A lower CTR resulting from irrelevant impressions on search partners and display networks can decrease your quality score, leading to higher costs and reduced ad placement.
Pro Tip:
Conduct regular audits of your Google Ads accounts to identify any inefficiencies or overlooked settings that could be draining your budget or diminishing your campaign’s effectiveness. While Google may provide recommendations, always assess them critically in the context of your specific campaign goals and historical data. Consider experimenting with settings on a smaller scale before applying them broadly, especially when dealing with large budgets. This cautious approach allows you to gather data and make informed decisions based on actual performance metrics.
Tip #9 - Install Behavioral Analytics Tools for Landing Page Optimizations
One of the most effective strategies for enhancing landing page effectiveness is to implement behavioral analytics tools, such as Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity.
These tools provide deep insights into how users interact with your page, allowing for data-driven improvements.
The Importance of Behavioral Analytics:
Most of these tools offer features like heatmaps, scroll tracking, and session recordings that reveal how users interact with your landing page.
You can identify which parts of the page attract the most attention and where users lose interest.
You can make informed decisions about layout adjustments, content placement, and calls to action.
For instance, if users frequently abandon a form, you might simplify it or adjust its placement on the page to increase completion rates.
Use the insights gathered to A/B test different versions of your landing page.
Pro Tip:
Before implementing any changes based on behavioral data, be clear about what you’re trying to improve. Having specific goals will guide your optimization efforts, whether it's increasing time spent on the page, reducing bounce rate, or boosting form submissions. Combine quantitative data from analytics tools with qualitative feedback from user surveys or feedback forms. Keep a detailed record of all changes made and the results they yield. This documentation will help you understand what works, what doesn’t, and how future landing pages can be designed for maximum impact.
Tip #10 - Consider Bing as a Second Demand Capture Channel
To extend the reach of your successful Google Ads campaigns without significantly increasing your budget, consider importing your best campaigns into Bing Ads.
Bing, while smaller than Google, still captures a unique audience segment that may not overlap completely with Google users. This can increase your campaign's overall reach and exposure.
Generally, competition on Bing is lower than Google Ads, leading to lower cost-per-click (CPC) rates.
Hope you found these 10 tips helpful!
For more tips or to connect, please reach out via LinkedIn.
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:
✅ 100% free access.
✅ Taught by vetted industry experts.
✅ Have workbooks, resources, and templates.
✅ Less than 10 minutes per lesson.
We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:
- Scale their ideas
- Level up their careers
- Make a positive impact
Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.
Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)
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10 Proven SaaS LinkedIn Ads Tips To Drive More ROI
Want to drive qualified pipeline and revenue from your LinkedIn Ads campaigns?
I’ve worked with 50+ startups, and managed 7-figure LinkedIn ads budgets for B2B SaaS.
My goal with this article is to show you ten proven tips for improving your LinkedIn ads ROI.
Irrelevant of the order, all of these tips have equal importance.
Let’s jump into it! 🚀
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Tip #1: Use auto bidding for the first 7 days of a new campaign
- Tip #2: Never use the Audience Network
- Tip #3: Penetrate your audience with the reach objective
- Tip #4: Leverage exclusions for focus
- Tip #5: Job functions give you best visibility and reach
- Tip #6: Always start with even rotation upon launch
- Tip #7: Check your demographics report weekly
- Tip #8: Target mobile devices exclusively with 628 x 1200
- Tip #9: Review your performance by device
- Tip #10: Use LinkedIn’s bulk import and export feature
Tip #1: Use auto bidding for the first 7 days of a new campaign
When launching a new LinkedIn Ads campaign start with automated bidding for the first week.
The thought process behind this is it will give LinkedIn’s algorithm enough time to learn and give you an average bid of what it takes to win auctions for your target audience.
After the first week switch to manual bidding and set the bid amount 20% lower than your average.
This works almost 99% of the time allowing you significant cost per click reductions.
Once you make the switch keep an eye on your daily spend over the next five days, if you set your bids too low it can negatively impact your visibility.
The key is to find the optimal bid between cost and maximum visibility (ex: impressions, views).
Give it a shot and send me a DM on LinkedIn with how much money you save! 🤑
This tip applies to traffic and conversion campaigns.
Tip #2: Never use the Audience Network
This one might be a bit controversial, but no matter what you LinkedIn reps say this is a no no.
If you’re not familiar, the LinkedIn audience network is a conglomerate of website partners.
This allows you to distribute your content outside of LinkedIn and on their websites.
Sounds amazing in theory but in practice the problem with the audience network is:
🔴90-95% of your ENTIRE LinkedIn Ads budget is spent on websites outside of LinkedIn
Which completely destroys the point of running LinkedIn ads in the first place 😂
The LinkedIn algorithm always prioritizes the audience network because it’s cheaper and it’s trying to optimise for the greatest number of impressions for the lowest cost with your budget.
I’ve personally tested the audience network over multiple quarters with the same exact campaign and the only difference is one is using the audience network and other isn’t.
The campaign using the audience network had a CTR of 0.03% compared to 1% without.
You also have no ideas which websites placed your ads as it’s a black box.
Save your budget and improve your ROI by turning it off.
Tip #3: Penetrate your audience with the reach objective
If you’re trying to reach a large audience (ex: target account list) and want to do so in the most cost effective way, leverage the reach campaign objective.
Obviously if you’re trying driving the most clicks then this tip wouldn’t be applicable.
Instead in that case you should focus on using the website visits objective.
The caveat here is if you truly know:
- Your ideal customer profile
- That your content resonates with them
Then you can make the case that these people will click through anyways regardless of objective,
Through testing I’ve found that if you have great content using reach you’ll actually serve towards more people and generate more net new clicks given the reduction in CPM costs.
The major benefit of reach is that it is optimised for driving more unique impressions per viewer.
Pro tip:
Contact your LinkedIn Ads rep to send you a report on audience penetration on a monthly and quarterly basis to see how many unique users you’re reaching in your target audience.
Tip #4: Leverage exclusions for focus
Most LinkedIn advertisers underestimate the power of exclusions.
It’s one of those things most leveraged but not to its fullest capability.
Everyone knows you need to exclude the obvious things like competitors, students, customers, etc…
But they haven’t built the habit of checking LinkedIn Demographics Report once per week to find irrelevant titles for exclusion.
It’s really important to be mindful of multiple current roles when excluding as you can accidentally block your ads from being visible from high value audience members.
For example, let’s say you only help businesses with more than 1,000 employees.
Conventional logic would be exclude people who work at companies with < 1,000 employees but what happens when your perfect prospect:
- Volunteers at a nonprofit organization with < 100 employees
- Started a side hustle that only has with a size of “myself only”
The answer is, they won’t see your ads.
Remember that exclusions are always prioritised over inclusions.
When excluding focus on using job titles to refine your audience and prevent accidental conflicts.
Tip #5: Job functions give you best visibility and reach
This point is a bit controversial but from my own testing I’ve found job functions give you better visibility and reach than job titles.
This doesn’t mean you should never use job title targeting, I’ve actually found for certain personas titles work better than functions but if you’re in the following scenario:
- Targeting a high value account list
- Promoting ads that speak to a general pain point/benefit
- Your ideal audience has a million variations of the same title
Then you’re better off using job functions to reach as many relevant audience members.
Here’s some great combinations of job function targeting to test:
- Job functions AND seniority
- Job functions AND seniority AND member skills OR interest
Make sure you’re checking your demographics report on a weekly basis to find all the irrelevant job titles you’re reaching and exclude them on an ongoing basis.
This process can take up to two and half months but the goal is to eventually get to the point where you only see relevant titles inside of the demographics report.
Highly recommend excluding unpaid, training, and entry seniority as a starting point.
Pro tip:
Study LinkedIn profiles of your best prospects and take note of the member skills, certifications, and schools they’ve listed to find commonalities for targeting.
Tip #6: Always start with even rotation upon launch
When launching your new campaigns you have the option to choose how to serve your ads.
The thought process behind this is you want to understand which ad will perform the best by receiving enough budget for proper testing.
Unfortunately if you start with optimising for performance LinkedIn will prematurely assign 40-50% of your budget to one variation of ad while the others only receive what’s remaining.
In order to avoid this, start with rotating ads evenly for the first 7-14 days when launching a new campaign to serve budget equally and then switch to optimise for performance.
Tip #7: Check your demographics report weekly
I’ve hinted at this multiple times across all these tips but it’s so important to driving a return on investment with LinkedIn Ads that it deserves to be its own tip.
You need to know what’s happening across your account.
Review your demographics report for:
- Ad performance
- Campaign performance
- Campaign group performance
This will ensure your budget is going towards reaching the right people and companies.
Pro tip:
LinkedIn has reporting minimums when using the demographics report in platform, get around this by using a third party data connector to push the data into G-Sheet or Looker.
Tip #8: Target mobile devices exclusively with 628 x 1200
LinkedIn has a 628x1200 image ad spec that allows you to only appear on mobile devices.
If you know that your audience performs well for you on mobile devices you can set up a campaign leveraging this specific image ad dimension to serve exclusively on LinkedIn mobile.
The same is true for targeting desktop devices with text or spotlight ads.
Learn more about your audiences device behaviour with Google Analytics 4:
Tip #9: Review your performance by device
You can review your performance in LinkedIn by clicking on Breakdown > Impression by Device Type
The AdConversion team analysed 10,000,000+ impressions and found:
- 85.1% of impressions serve on Mobile App
- 9.6% of impressions serve on Desktop Web
- 5.3% of impressions serve on Mobile Web
That’s 90.4% of total impressions serving on mobile devices! 🤯
Pro tip:
Use the LinkedIn Ads preview to see what your ad will look like when displayed on mobile and optimise your copy to best fit this device over desktop.
Tip #10: Use LinkedIn’s bulk import and export feature
This tip is one that even my most savvy marketing friends aren’t aware of.
Changing bids, and creating campaigns on LinkedIn is a REAL pain.
You don’t need to suffer this pain and instead can use LinkedIn’s bulk import and export feature.
You can simply just export your ads, campaigns, or groups to make bulk changes.
Voila, a task that would take hours has been cut down into minutes.
Learn more about bulk actions in this article by LinkedIn.
Hope you found these 10 tips valuable! 👏
Implement the ones that resonate most with you to improve your ROI from LinkedIn Ads.
Connect with me on LinkedIn, if you have any questions or want to connect!
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