B2B companies invested over $ 6 billion in digital marketing campaigns in 2020. While that pales in comparison to the nearly $ 15 billion spent on trade shows, the trend is towards it digital and performance-oriented marketing of business-to-business (B2B) players is accelerating rapidly.
This is partly due to the impact of the global pandemic, which has severely limited travel and trade fair opportunities. However, this is primarily the result of improved performance and accountability tools now available to B2B marketers.
“B2B marketing is a whole different beast from consumer-centric advertising,” he says Andrew Gill Smith, SVP for strategic partnerships with GeistM, the fastest growing martech platform in the US. “”The conversion funnel for B2B must be highly elastic to accommodate large fluctuations in customer lifetime values. We have telecommunications equipment customers with deals ranging from $ 25,000 to $ 5,000,000. It also has to be extremely efficient, which means calls, leads and sales have to be handled quickly. B2B is all about performance. Most players don’t have time for fru-fru ‘soft’ metrics like brand awareness or abstract top-of-the-funnel concepts. ”
For most B2B players, digital marketing is a necessary evil. It starts and ends with Search engine marketing (SEM). Many companies rely on local or part-time “consultants” to perform this essential role and are missing out on enormous growth opportunities. GeistM recommends B2B marketers a budget of at least $ 5,000 per month for consistent, optimal results.
The biggest mistake most B2B marketers make starts at the top of their funnel, especially when setting up their keyword campaigns. The traditional setup described below assigns multiple messages to multiple keywords or “ad groups”.
Traditional setup
This works well enough, but it also results in lower quality scores, which means the company’s pages are less likely to show up in paid search results. This means higher costs per click and ultimately higher customer acquisition costs.
GeistM pioneered the use of Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs), which require a completely different campaign architecture:
“Just about every player in just about every vertical market is using the same old approach: sending traffic straight to their website or landing page in hopes of engaging potential customers for a quick purchase decision,” says Smith. t Maximize the ROI of your digital marketing spend. “
Instead of sending prospects to a website or a company-hosted landing page, the better approach is to walk them through a filter with third-party content. This content needs to be carefully calibrated to deliver the company’s value propositions and differentiating points. It must be specially developed for optimization.
“The benefit of passing prospects to a content filter is that you get the positive benefits of social validation while maintaining control of messaging. You get educated customers who are genuinely ready to make a purchase decision after reading your content to meet.”
GeistM recently created another case study This shows how the content filtering approach in SEM campaigns increased conversions by 2000% while reducing CPAs.
By fusing a modern SEM strategy with quality, unbranded content, B2B players can stand out from the crowd and escape the “race to the bottom” of price-based competition.
To learn more about how GeistM can help your B2B company implement these strategies, visit theirs Website.