Boost B2B leads: Key strategies for advertising success

In the fast-paced world of B2B marketing, paid advertising plays a pivotal role in reaching your target audience and driving conversions. It’s one thing to have perfectly crafted messaging and great creative that highlights what you do and how you do it. You also need to get that in front of the exact right audience. The best way to guarantee that is via a well-thought-out paid ads strategy. 

In this blog, we will explore the key considerations and tactics to develop a winning paid advertising and lead generation strategy.

Effective paid advertising requires a strategic approach. Here are some essential considerations for creating a successful B2B paid ads strategy:

Choosing the right channels

Selecting the appropriate advertising channels is crucial. While there are various platforms available, two primary channels often excel in B2B marketing:

Google Search

Google Search ads are ideal for targeting users actively searching for specific products or solutions (those who are actively searching for an answer to a question or a solution to a problem). To make the most of this channel:

• Use tight search terms: Use exact match keywords and optimise them regularly.

• Direct to relevant landing pages: Ensure that your ads lead to landing pages that align with the user's search intent.

• Optimise landing pages: Design effective landing pages with compelling content and clear calls to action.

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn is a treasure trove for B2B marketers, providing access to a highly targeted audience of professionals and decision-makers. Make sure to leverage LinkedIn's robust targeting features to reach decision-makers and influencers within your niche. 

Here's how to leverage LinkedIn ads effectively:

Document ads

LinkedIn's document ads allow you to promote high-value content, such as eBooks, guides, or whitepapers, directly in users' feeds. This format is perfect for driving qualified leads interested in your industry or niche. People don’t even need to leave the LinkedIn platform in order to download or get access to the content you’re offering. 

Thought leadership ads

Encourage your senior executives to step up their personal LinkedIn game. By sharing thought leadership content, they can establish themselves as industry experts and grow their presence in the market. Then, if they’re eligible, you can utilise Thought Leadership LinkedIn ads to amplify their reach. Essentially it’s “boosting” their personal posts.

Hot tip:

Find it impossible to get your senior execs to implement regular LinkedIn posting? Or do you cringe when you see them post stuff that’s just not really appropriate? Send them in the direction of our LinkedIn Bootcamp here. 

Landing page optimisation

Your paid ads are only as effective as the landing pages they lead to. To maximise conversion rates:

• Create specific landing pages: Craft landing pages that relate directly to your offering or the keywords you're targeting in your ads. Directly people just to your homepage is a huge lost opportunity. They’ll get lost, and exit out. 

• Highlight benefits: Clearly communicate the benefits of your product or service to encourage conversions.

• Use compelling visuals: Incorporate relevant images, infographics, or videos to engage visitors.
  

Tracking and analytics

Implementing conversion tracking and analytics is essential for measuring the success of your paid advertising campaigns. Use tools like Google Analytics (GA4) and platform-specific tracking features to:

• Monitor ad performance: Track metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS).

• A/B testing: Continuously test ad variations and landing page elements to optimise results.

Optimising your campaigns for conversions

Ultimately, the success of your paid advertising strategy hinges on conversions. Here are some tips to optimise your campaigns for conversions:

• Utilise compelling ad copy: Craft attention-grabbing headlines and concise ad copy that clearly communicates your value proposition.

• Implement clear calls to action (CTAs): Encourage users to take the desired action, whether it's downloading an eBook, requesting a demo, or contacting your sales team.

• A/B test ad variations: Continuously test different ad elements, such as headlines, images, and CTAs, to identify what resonates best with your audience.

• Use retargeting: Implement retargeting campaigns to re-engage users who have previously visited your site but didn't convert.

Cold email outreach for lead generation

The age of digital ads across social media ushered in an era where you could reach your target audience across the globe, anytime and anywhere. The shift focused from traditional sales and marketing to how can we use these new shiny platforms. They were and still are more efficient than traditional methods such as picking up the phone or crafting an email for each individual customer or prospect.

That is however changing - and we’re swinging back around into a cookieless world (more on that later) to more traditional direct ways of marketing. Coupled with this, we now have the tools that enable us to create a personalised message, to our target audience and land it right in their inbox at mass. These tools, such as Lemlist, allow us to automate sequences of emails to a list of hundreds of prospects while also forming connections with them and engaging with them on platforms such as LinkedIn, creating a multi-touchpoint one to one conversation. 

And no, we’re not talking about using your email provider to contact your database - but using a special piece of software to target a cold audience. A cold outreach.

• benefits of cold emails include: cost effectiveness, scalability, personalisation and data collection.

• What are the drawbacks? Low response rates, cold emails often can get ignored, spam filters, emails can be caught in spam filters.

• What is the recipe for success with cold emails? Where possible, research the recipients to tailor the email to their needs and interests. Doing this en masse, may look something like segmenting “marketing managers who work in retail/ecommerce,” for example. It also goes without saying that your subject line should be attention grabbing and relevant. The email should provide something of value to the recipient and provide clear direction of what you want them to do.

Tools / hot tips :

• Prompt for creating email marketing campaigns: "Assist me in creating an email marketing campaign for my [product/service] using the Customer Value Journey framework."

• Prompt for creating cold email campaigns: "Compose a personalised cold email for a potential client in the [industry] that highlights [our unique value proposition]."

• To create copy that’s engaging and compelling, input your brand story framework & tone of voice that you’ve created into your AI tool first - it’ll then work off the existing target audience and tone, and get that much closer to nailing your copy the first time.