Digital ad strategies are a must-have for B2B organizations. That’s right, we said B2B. Buyers are spending a lot of their time online researching vendors, reading industry publications, and participating in industry communities on sites like Reddit before they even consider contacting a sales rep. Relying solely on traditional sales tactics isn’t going to help your team attract leads.
Gartner predicted that by 2025, 80% of all B2B sales interactions will take place in digital channels. If businesses aren’t using digital advertising to engage buyers early in the research phase, they risk being left behind by competitors who are.
A well-crafted digital ad strategy not only improves visibility but also helps businesses reach the right audience with greater precision and impact. CID’s digital strategy team has seen its success firsthand as they develop, implement, and optimize digital ad campaigns for our clients in B2B manufacturing and other B2B industries.
We like to say that CID is an “audience first” agency, meaning we always counsel our clients to think of their audience when they’re creating strategy, copy, design — basically anything that could be served up to them. That advice goes into hyperdrive when it comes to digital ad strategies.
A digital ad can focus on specific segments of your market in ways that traditional outreach simply can’t. This is crucial for B2B companies where the target audience is often narrow, such as C-level executives, procurement managers, or decision-makers within particular industries.
Our digital strategists often recommend LinkedIn as an ad platform because it allows them to target users based on their job title, industry, and even specific companies. LinkedIn has robust audience targeting tools within the platform. But if you’re not sure where to start, or the options feel overwhelming, use your documented customer personas as a guide to narrow your focus.
In addition to audience targeting, Google Ads also enables keyword targeting, where ads are shown to users searching for terms relevant to your business. So if your business sells aluminum cans to beverage companies, an ad including the keywords “wholesale aluminum cans” would be a good idea.
Then there’s retargeting. If you’ve ever done some online window shopping and wondered why you’re suddenly getting ads for things you clicked on but didn’t buy, retargeting is the answer. Retargeting (or remarketing) is an effective way to use digital advertising to engage with prospects who have already interacted with your brand. When a user clicks a certain link on your site, starts filling out a form, or takes some other action that signals an intent to buy (but no purchase), they can get served a retargeted ad that’s related to what they were looking at on your site, even when they’re browsing elsewhere. (This is why marketers love cookies, by the way.)
Selecting the right platform for your digital ads depends on where your audience spends their time online. It seems obvious, but plenty of marketers wind up advertising on platforms that don’t fit their needs just because they think they “have” to be there. Sometimes that’s true, but for the most part, it just means they’re wasting budget that could be better spent elsewhere. Let’s look at some of the platforms you might want to take advantage of.
LinkedIn
We mentioned earlier that our digital strategists like to recommend LinkedIn to our B2B clients. That’s because with 900 million+ members all there for professional development and networking, it’s more likely an ad will reach the right target.
LinkedIn lets advertisers reach professionals based on job title, company size, and industry which makes it particularly effective for B2B companies looking to target decision-makers within organizations. The platform offers several different ad types, from standard image and copy ads to an in-platform lead-gen ad.
We try to take advantage of the last option as often as we can, especially when our client has a strong content marketing program. The lead gen ad lets marketers offer thought leadership pieces like white papers, webinars, ebooks, and other pieces of content to targeted prospects directly in LinkedIn. Interested users don’t need to leave LinkedIn to get their content — it’s delivered to them directly on the platform after filling out a form.
The only downside is that users tend to use personal email addresses on LinkedIn, so your contact data may not be as complete as you hoped. If you have a strong presence on LinkedIn, however, even that’s not the end of the world. (But that’s a whole different blog post!)
Google Ads
For nearly every client we work with, Google Ads are part of the recommendation in some form. It’s a powerful tool for intent-based marketing, like retargeting ads, for example.
With Google’s search network, digital marketers can target users actively searching for solutions related to your products or services. Using the right keywords (which may not be how your business refers to your services, but how your prospects refer to them) can get your ad and your website in front of people who are actively searching for the products or services your company provides.
Like LinkedIn, Google offers a variety of ad types, from text-only ads to display, in different sizes. Unlike LinkedIn, however, Google does some of the work for you because its never-ending quest to optimize user experiences includes optimizing how ads are presented. Marketers input options for headlines, descriptive copy, and images. Then, Google puts them all together in the way its data predicts will be most effective in getting people to click on them.
Finally, Google’s Performance Max offering allows your ads to be shown on websites across the internet, not just on the Google search results page.
Meta (aka Facebook & Instagram)
Though traditionally considered B2C platforms, these platforms are increasingly being used by B2B businesses to build brand awareness and engage with niche audiences.
Meta offers ads that appear in a user’s feed, on certain sidebars on Facebook, and in Stories on Instagram. If your brand has solid video assets it could be worth testing them in ads on Meta. Like other platforms, Meta offers audience targeting that allows you to specify geographic location, interests, and other information to help ensure your ads reach the right people.
One thing to keep in mind is though: people on Instagram, for example, are on Instagram, not LinkedIn. It’s smart to adjust your ad content to align with the expectations the users have of the platform. That doesn’t mean drastically changing your message or style, but in the case of Instagram, it might mean being sure you’re using a beautiful photograph, or using multiple image slides to tell a story.
X/Twitter
We generally haven’t recommended advertising on this platform to our clients because in our experience ads simply haven’t performed as well there (even before the change in leadership). What can be effective on this platform is having an organic presence and engaging with your audience that way instead.
In our experience the best approach is often a multi-platform strategy. That allows for a wider reach and more opportunities to get your brand and message in front of the right people.
When you’re buying traditional media, airtime for a TV spot, let's say, the cost of the airtime has to do with what channel it runs on, what time of day, during what shows, how long it runs, and so on. The more people who are likely to see it, the higher the cost.
Buying digital media seems a lot more complicated, but the truth is it’s based on the same idea: how many eyeballs will see it? The biggest difference, and where some of the complication comes in, is that in traditional media buys your airtime or ad space costs what it costs. You can’t easily adjust your ad spend mid-campaign based on how many people see it.
In a digital media buy you have a lot more control over costs, but the costs are still based on how many people are likely to see your ad and interact with it. If you’re bidding on a very popular keyword, your spend will be higher because the volume of people searching that word or phrase is large. If you want your ad to show up you’ll have to pay. A keyword strategy can help identify words that are relevant to your brand and audience that are also cost effective to bid on.
There are several types of bidding strategies:
Using automated bidding can also be an effective digital ad strategy. That’s when platforms like Google use algorithms to adjust bids in real time based on the likelihood of conversion. This helps businesses optimize for their desired outcome while staying in control of their ad spend.
Just because it’s automated doesn’t mean you can set it and forget it, however. Our digital strategists monitor our clients’ campaigns weekly (and in some cases daily) to make sure nothing has drastically changed that could cause an unexpected spike in spend.
It’s not easy to accurately measure the effectiveness of traditional media. Knowing exactly how many people saw a billboard or went to a website because of a print ad. That’s not the case with digital ads.
One of digital media’s key advantages is the ability to track performance in real-time. Every action can be measured—whether it’s clicks, impressions, conversions, or engagement—allowing businesses to see exactly where their budget is going. For B2B sales and marketing teams, this kind of tracking gives a new level of insight into what prospects are responding to in terms of messaging and content.
Analytics tools integrated within ad platforms, such as Google’s GA4 and LinkedIn Campaign Manager, provide insights into campaign performance, user behavior, and conversion paths. You’ll be able to see which keywords or audience segments are driving the most conversions and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Additionally, A/B testing (comparing two versions of an ad to see which performs better) is an essential practice in digital advertising. By testing different ad creative, copy, and targeting, B2B businesses can continuously optimize their campaigns for maximum ROI. That’s not something that’s easy or particularly cost-effective to do in traditional media formats.
As more digitally savvy buyers enter the workforce it’s clear that having a digital ad strategy isn’t optional, it’s essential. CID’s digital strategy team has seen how businesses that invest in a thoughtful digital ad strategy can gain a significant competitive advantage simply by having a presence in a channel. (Having expertly crafted creative and copy doesn’t hurt things either.)
For marketers with small teams, we recommend starting with one channel and getting comfortable there rather than trying to advertise everywhere right away. That will give you a chance to get familiar with the ins and outs of running digital ad campaigns.
Businesses interested in having a more comprehensive presence should lean on an outside partner specializing in digital advertising. The clients CID works with appreciate being able to focus on the big picture — marketing goals and overall direction — while our team takes on the heavy lifting — creating the ads and managing the more complicated details involved in running several campaigns on multiple platforms. (Some of us thrive in the weeds!)
If your B2B business hasn’t ventured into digital advertising yet, there’s no time like the present.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or optimizing an existing strategy, CID’s digital marketing team can help. Let’s talk about what’s right for your business.
Creative. Strategic. Crategic? (We'll workshop it.) Rebecca's part of our award-winning marketing & strategy team where she turns ideas into words and words into content.