Insights for crafting a targeted ad strategy, optimizing your channel mix and creating compelling offers to drive quality B2B leads.
Generating quality leads is a top priority for B2B SMBs, but with long sales cycles and high-ticket products, it requires a tailored approach.
This article tackles the essential steps to build effective lead generation campaigns, from crafting a solid strategy to selecting the right channels and creating compelling offers.
Plan your lead gen strategy
Strategy and tactics are different. Tactics are concerned with building out advertising channels and actual campaign creative.
Stategy happens a step before. It can be distilled down to three parts:
- Segmentation: Identifying your target customers.
- Positioning: Defining your messaging, differentiation and key selling points (KSPs).
- Resources: Determining your budget and KPIs.
Segmentation
Start with research to define customer segments and understand the market. It’s crucial to clearly identify who you’re targeting. Consider key questions about your ideal customer persona, such as:
- Business size.
- Job titles.
- Age, location, gender.
- Pain points: What bothers them?
Positioning
Once you know your target audience and their pain points, apply your messaging to this segment.
- What makes your solution different from others in the market?
- How do you stand out?
- How do you solve their problem better than the competition?
This requires reviewing other market offerings and their messaging.
Resources
What are the KPIs, and how much can you invest to achieve them?
Be realistic and invest strategically to create the necessary marketing assets for a successful campaign.
Determine your channel mix
For most B2B campaigns, the two most relevant paid channels are LinkedIn and Google Ads. Both offer superior targeting options.
While Facebook may be worth considering in some cases, in 90% of lead capture scenarios, a 60/40 split between LinkedIn and Google Ads is recommended.
Why Google Ads?
Google Ads allows you to target people based on what they are actively searching for.
You can focus on specific purchase-intent keywords and place your message in front of potential customers when they’re looking for your product.
For example, if you’re selling IT software to schools, Google Ads lets you show ads for searches like “best IT software for high schools.”
The word “best” signals a high intent to purchase.
Terms like “best,” “compare,” “cheapest” or “sale” indicate that users are ready to make a decision.
Only Google Ads allows you to target potential customers like this.
Below is an example of how a high purchase intent keyword like “buy red tshirts” can be paired with a Google Ad to drive high conversion rates.
Here’s a basic structure to follow for your B2B Google Ads campaigns:
- Brand: Target users searching for your brand.
- High-intent keywords: These are keywords specific to your business and with high purchase intent. Users searching for these keywords are more likely to be interested in your product or service.
- Remarketing: Target users who have previously engaged with your brand, typically through actions taken on your website.
This structure allows you to segment keyword groups into specific categories and allocate dedicated budgets for each.
This ensures that each category has enough budget, making it easier to evaluate what’s working and adjust the campaign accordingly.
Why LinkedIn Ads?
While Google gets us in front of the right searches, we still can’t be certain who is searching.
With LinkedIn, we can be a little more certain that we are targeting our personas and key decision-makers.
Continuing our previous example, I want to target decision-makers and IT staff who work in high schools of a certain size and location. With LinkedIn, we can do this.
LinkedIn has great features and ad types that allow you to generate leads with minimal friction. LinkedIn lead gen ads combined with lead magnets and forms make capturing leads easy.
We find that LinkedIn is generally more expensive than Google Ads, but it is also more effective for B2B.
Average CPCs on LinkedIn range from $20 to $30, while Google Search CPCs are typically around $5 to $10 for most B2B industries at the time of writing.
However, despite the higher costs on LinkedIn, the higher conversion rates can offset these expenses.
Better together
Each platform has unique strengths that, when combined, become more effective than if used separately.
Running campaigns across multiple platforms allows you to reach customers from different angles, creating a reinforcement effect.
You can target customers both when they search for your products and based on who they are.
Creating multiple touchpoints across marketing channels is crucial, as most customers engage with a brand various times before purchasing. This is especially true for B2B with higher-ticket items.
The table below outlines a typical channel plan designed to create multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey.
YouTube is allocated for top-of-funnel awareness, while LinkedIn and Google are used further down the funnel, targeting higher purchase intent.
The interplay between these channels is vital. They complement each other and provide consistent messaging as customers move through the marketing funnel.
Dig deeper: Maximizing your B2B paid media ROI with alternative platforms
Address pain points and offer value
Channel mix is crucial to your marketing plan, but choosing the right platforms alone isn’t enough. The messaging and offers must be compelling.
Given the long sales cycles and high-ticket prices in B2B, it’s essential to:
- Offer prospects a value exchange.
- Address the right pain points.
- Minimize friction in capturing new leads.
LinkedIn Ads lead forms are an effective way to achieve this.
These can be paired with case study videos or images highlighting your target audience’s pain points and how your solution has helped other businesses.
Focus on areas like generating efficiencies, reducing costs, maintaining quality or providing scalability.
At the end of the video, offer a value exchange in return for their contact details.
This could be a lead magnet, such as “5 ways to reduce costs with new manufacturing processes.”
To access this lead magnet, the prospect must provide their details.
Building winning lead gen campaigns for B2B SMBs
To run successful lead gen campaigns for B2B, focus on these key factors:
- Develop a well-researched strategy to understand your customers, define target segments, establish positioning and set KPIs and resources.
- Build a channel mix that leverages search and demographic targeting to engage customers across multiple platforms and touchpoints, reinforcing your message.
- Address pain points, offer a value exchange and minimize friction when capturing leads. Get creative with your ad types to maximize each platform’s potential and streamline lead acquisition.
This approach ensures a strategically and tactically sound campaign.
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