While B2C (business-to-consumer) advertising revolves around direct response tactics and programmatic audience targeting across multiple channels, business-focused advertising is often aimed at decision-makers and influencers who are making larger purchases, and assessing a deeper level of information.
B2B sales cycles are typically much longer than B2C cycles, with the average B2B purchase taking nearly seventeen weeks to progress from initial needs identification to purchase completion.
They also come with higher price points, smaller target audiences, and more decision-makers. No longer are marketers focusing on a single buyer choosing the colour of a sweater to purchase. The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to ten decision makers, all looking at a large financial investment that will often last for an extended period. The B2B buying process is more in-depth and involves more people, ranging from junior staff members to senior executives.
In B2C, the customer may either decide on their own that they need to purchase an item, or they may be shown an item they didn’t originally consider and make a decision. This can apply to the entire swathe of consumer goods, from clothing, and electronic devices, to entertainment, and holiday offers.
As an advanced B2B marketer, you want to ensure you are being more deliberate in your audience targeting, as many programmatic tactics are best suited for B2B targeting. The advertising strategy process involves determining your target market, creating buyer personas, and then deciding on your media mix.
The media mix should include all the top channels—display, native, online video, digital out-of-home, audio, in-game, and connected TV. For brands seeking authority, native ads should be part of the mix, as many users conduct online research when looking for a new product or service. In addition, native advertising allows you to engage with potential buyers at the top or middle of the funnel and provide them with what they're looking for.
A B2B advertisers will likely know their target market based on past purchasing behaviour or the success of any previous campaigns—digital or not. However, you might be overlooking a few, or targeting an audience that is very broad or very narrow, at the bottom of the funnel only.
The secret is to dig deeper into your customer data to confirm the top characteristics of your buyers. It is best to rely on defined metrics or data points where you can. For example, identify the characteristics of your top spenders to conclude who your target market is. You can even build lookalike audiences from those data points
Since B2B products and services have higher price points and often require commitment from numerous stakeholders, it’s no surprise that the majority of ad dollars in B2B are invested in upper and middle-funnel tactics. Upper and middle-funnel tactics for a B2B business may include things like a web page view or an eBook download. More than likely, a sales conversion would be a signed contract, and often this does not come easily.
It may take a series of negotiation cycles, with longer sales cycles. So, the best way to invest your budget is on awareness and engagement, to help push your warm leads through to the bottom of the funnel where your sales team can take over and close the deal.
As you explore different channels to promote your brand, offerings, and content, consider how different prospects at different points of the funnel receive forms of content. According to eMarketer, many users prefer to consume credible, trustworthy content about brands. The way you share the information should also be aligned with their intent—light, relationship-building, and not overly salesy. Also, consider how your programmatic efforts at each point of the funnel are affecting your organic traffic as well.
Unlike B2C, where a purchase is often easily made on the site, using a very easy-to-follow conversion path, B2B is often more complex. For sure, some users could convert right after they have interacted with your brand, but many will come back at a later time when they are in the right frame of mind to review their buying options.
Once the user is ready to interact with a brand, they will start with a web search, and in many cases, they will likely click on the paid search ad, instead of the organic search result, to get to the homepage. This inflates any paid search click-through rates, without the guarantee of a conversion.
Taking all of this into consideration, the impact of programmatic advertising should be measured in conjunction with organic channels and other paid channels, such as search and social. The ultimate goal of a programmatic ad is to increase the volume of organic searches or interactions on social platforms or owned websites. If your programmatic efforts are successful, the goal should be to keep the CPA on the paid search channel constant, while growing the number of conversions.
For more information on how programmatic advertising can benefit you, visit HERE
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