Optimization Strategy
B2B Services Marketing Strategy
Once you know what advertising channels you’re using, who you’re targeting and how, it’s important to optimize your ads and strategy. You will optimize your first campaigns and continue optimizing campaigns as you continue your advertising program.
ad copy
You want to put emphasis on the benefits for your services, and not so much about the features. Highlight any promos or discounts. Always have a CTA, such as “contact us with no obligations” or “start growing your business today.” Emphasize on the audience’s pain points to draw them in, and then capitalize on their needs by giving them a solution. If possible, add credibility statements, social proof, or testimonials to build trust.
Typically, you’ll also want to experiment split testing with acronyms in the creative if your buyer is familiar with the language. You might also want to try filtering out unwanted clicks by including headlines geared for businesses and not consumers. For example, “Serving businesses since…” or “Expand your business…”.
Overall, the ad copy should be specific, show value, and showcase credibility, such as social proof.
SOCIAL media ad content
Ad copies vary because people are not buying directly on social platforms. You’re going to have to collect data as you spread brand awareness. You need to split test various ad copies and pay very close attention to your demographic metrics to get a better sense of who you’re high converting audience segment is.
Pro tip: If you have short videos explaining how your services are a solution to a business’s problem, it may be effective to use them in advertising campaigns. Video is a great way to capture your audience’s interest when done right. Be sure to choose the videos wisely and enable a mute button as not to annoy the prospect.
As programs progress, split test 3-4 ad copies. With small budgets, you’re most likely going to be split testing 2-3 ad copies to collect enough data within 30 days or so. Headers are expected to have the most impact. Split test everything from ad text, phrasing (e.g. fun, catchy, negative first, cute, or emotional), benefits, offers, features, unique proposition, etc. It really depends on who your audience is, and that’s why you need to split test to understand who your high converting customer is, and what they like to respond to.
Pause your lowest-performing ad copy (do not edit it!), and replace it with a fresh one that is modeled after the best-performing ad. Be sure not to edit the ad copy if it’s low-performing because you do not want to convolute the data when you, or especially when someone else, tries to analyze it.
conversion strategy
Be aware of attribution towards a paid click. Someone could click on an ad but later convert via organic search. You can leverage the conversion window option in Google Ads to account for this kind of conversion. One effective strategy is creating ad groups based on phases of the sales funnel. We want to try driving down conversion costs by focusing on long-tailed keywords since we typically work with small budgets. However, sometimes you’ll need to request a larger budget for very competitive businesses.
Some lead magnets for this type of industry would be an ebook that each covers different case studies, an outlined step-by-step process, or detailed information about the service you provide. Don’t make the visitor look for the “button” to convert. Make it obvious and visible because they’ll be more likely to click. Be very transparent with information on the landing page because it builds trust in Google’s algorithm and with the customer. Providing a free quote is always an option as well. Other ebook alternatives include white papers or infographics, which are both worth testing via Google Ads and LinkedIn.
A tactic to consider is remarketing to users who saw a specific page on your website, so you can retarget them with a relevant ad. If a professional video is available, it helps to remarket this to users on YouTube. Also consider remarketing on the Search Network because this allows you to target a broader range of keywords, but only for those who previously visited your website.
If sale cycles are much longer, then you may want to increase the duration of your audience list. Typically, a remarketing list defaults at 30 days. Linking Google Analytics might be necessary for your B2B company if you’re lacking conversions because you’re going to need to gain insight on website metrics.
You’ll want to pay attention closely to metrics like time per session, bounce rate, number of pages per session, etc. On social media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn, you need to be split testing different demographics, geolocations, etc., to zoom in on high-converting traffic. LinkedIn ads are going to allow you to target audiences at a granular level, such as by industry, job title, company, and more.
Google Ads and Bing Optimization
Remarketing is always going to be an option here as well because it’s one of the most powerful tools in driving conversions. You’ll be building a custom audience based on the behavior on your website. After collecting data for a couple of weeks or at least until you have enough results, you’ll also be optimizing based on hour and day of the week. Lastly, you’ll be updating that negative keyword list to refine that high-quality custom audience.
Social Media Advertising Optimization
Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer the same features mentioned above for Google Ads and Bing; however, the demographic and interest-based targeting on social media is on another level, and, frankly, is a lot better. You’ll be able to take full advantage of Facebook’s algorithm when you split test different audience groups to figure out the best combination that leads to the highest quality of conversions. Split testing will be key for advertising on these social platforms.
Optimizing Facebook, specifically, includes swapping the ad copies, testing the ad copies, and testing the ad sets, as well as creating a custom audience or lookalike audience and continuing to track custom conversions.
Swap Ad Copies: A study was already done and swapping out ad copies with fresh ones is favorable to Facebook’s algorithm, which will lower the overall cost of advertising. Use a similar theme because you want similar expected results.
Split Test Ad Copies: Same with Google Ads, the importance of split testing ads should be a natural optimization step.
Split Test Ad Sets: Use different segmented audiences to fine-tune and discover the best segmentation that is going to give the right balance between conversions and cost.
Custom Audience/Lookalike Audience: Keep analyzing and making adjustments as needed to increase the performance of lookalike audience targeting and custom audience retargeting.
Custom Conversions: Keep tracking custom conversions to understand important KPIs of the business. Eventually, after analyzing the data and making performance adjustments for a few months, switch campaign objectives to optimize for conversions. You need to justify this switch after analyzing and optimizing results (or conversions) and cost.
Optimizing LinkedIn, specifically, you will want to target audiences at a granular level, such as by industry, job title, company, and more. The type of conversions will depend on the business marketing objective. Split test different demographics, geolocations, etc., to zoom in on high-converting traffic.
ongoing optimization
Allocate your budget to where 80% is focused on high conversion groups and 20% is focused on lower-performing or experimental groups. Make budget, bid, and segmentation adjustments as needed to follow the 80/20 rule (80% budget on results and 20% on experimentation).
google analytics
Pay close attention to your business’s website performance because it’s as important as Google Ads performance; website performance can refer to load time speed, bounce rate, time per session, etc. One of the most common mistakes businesses make towards digital marketing is wrongfully blaming poor performance on campaigns and advertising when their website is poorly optimized for conversions. You can bring the highest quality traffic at the lowest cost to the website, but all that doesn’t matter if they cannot convert due to the limitations of the website.
Our team works as a fluid extension of each of our member’s businesses by developing strategies and executing projects in whatever capacity is best for their unique needs.
Copyright @ 2023 SharedTEAMS, LLC. All Rights Reserved.