Marketers are always looking for new ways to engage with audiences.
And one of the best ways to attract new buyers is through digital advertising.
Yet, some B2B marketers struggle to get consistent returns from their ad campaigns – and, as a result, secure the necessary budget and executive buy-in they need.
The purpose of digital advertising is to amplify the existing marketing tactics you already have in play. This is only possible if your digital advertising strategy aligns with your larger marketing goals.
Seems simple enough. But this crucial step can easily get lost as priorities shift quarter over quarter and month over month. Here’s how to align your goals and make your budget go further:
Align Your Digital Advertising Strategy & Marketing Goals
Marketing budgets are under greater scrutiny than ever before. To ensure your digital advertising program rolls up to revenue, you need to align it with your marketing goals.
At a high-level, digital advertising goals fall into three categories:
1. Customer Acquisition
Customer acquisition goals are one of the easiest ways to attribute ad dollars to marketing ROI. Ad campaigns and offers that fall under this category include CTAs for demos or any other means of attracting new customers.
2. Brand Awareness
More companies are investing in digital advertising to grow brand visibility and awareness. Ad campaigns that fall under this category include free software trials or targeted keywords on Google.
3. Nurture
According to Drift’s State of Conversational Marketing Report, buyers are increasingly frustrated by irrelevant ads and emails from B2B brands:
New ad platforms and technologies have made personalization at scale a reality for marketing teams of all sizes. Using retargeting ads in unison with email nurture is a great way to engage buyers with more relevant content and digital experiences.
Once you define and align your goals, identify the right metrics to keep track of ad performance and ROI. Learn more about front-end and back-end digital advertising metrics here.
Run Experiments & Make Your Digital Advertising Dollars Go Further
Executive leaders don’t care how that one ad performed on Facebook.
They care about your return on ad spend.
Still, if you want to make the most of your digital advertising budget, it’s important to test your ads and workflows, iterate, and test again. Why? Because an ad campaign you ran last month or an offer you pushed last year, might not perform as well today.
That said, there is such a thing as over-optimizing ad campaigns – which is a quick way to burn through your budget, without learning much.
When you run an initial digital advertising campaign, don’t split test everything all at once. You don’t have any data to prove testing certain elements will have an impact. Start by launching a few offers first. You’ll be able to tell whether those ads / offers are working based on how quickly you recoup your return on ad spend.
Once you’ve identified high-performing offers, you can start to split test various ad elements like design or copy, experiment with landing page copy and design, and more.
Getting this process down to a science will help you stretch your ad budget further and drive more value from your digital advertising campaigns.
Final Thoughts
Despite COVID’s deep economic impact, eMarketer reports that digital advertising spend grew by 22.6% in the United States last year. Plus, when in-person marketing channels became inaccessible in March 2020, ad spend from B2B businesses grew by 250%.
While experts expect this rapid growth to slow further into 2021, it’s clear that B2B digital advertising remains an incredible asset for marketers – especially during times of uncertainty.
If you’re looking to up your digital advertising game, we’re here to help. Download Drift’s guide to Digital Advertising that Converts and discover the tactical steps to turn clicks into conversations. Get your copy now.
