Programmatic ads allow businesses to market their offerings to a target audience across online platforms such as apps and websites. More often than not, the campaigns are run using automated software making them an effective option to reach a large audience quickly.
You may have seen programmatic ads on social media and forums. The ads are personalised to your preferences and are tracked by third-party cookies across the web.
Although running a programmatic ad campaign is fairly simple, there are a few nuances that your marketing teams need to adopt to attract B2B buyers more effectively.
In this article, let’s look at four actionable tips that will enhance your programmatic ad efforts and get you quality B2B leads that convert.
1. Create detailed personas
Personas are profiles of a target audience created after in-depth market research. They provide insights into what your potential customers do in their daily lives, the challenges they face, their industry, and the solutions they desire.
While creating personas, mention all relevant details to reach the right people and capture their attention. Typically, B2B buyer personas include the following details:
- Demographics (industry, company size, job title, location, etc.),
- Pain points and challenges (could be related to performance, collaboration, capital, etc.),
- Goals and motivations (higher productivity, increased revenue, reduced costs, etc.),
- Circles of influence (social media platforms, podcasts, forums, etc.),
- Solution preferences (ease of use, affordability, scalability, better support, etc.).
These details will also be helpful while crafting nurturing emails for leads generated through the programmatic ad campaigns. It can be advantageous for B2B marketing teams to have standardised formats for everything, from initial outreach greeting to a proposal template. Templates streamline the process.
2. Set campaign objectives
Each B2B marketing campaign serves a unique purpose in the spectrum of brand promotion. It could be lead generation, gaining traffic, and/or increasing brand awareness. Determining the goal for your current programmatic ad campaign is essential to attract the right audience.
Be mindful that all marketing objectives in broad terms are interconnected. For instance, a higher brand awareness can boost your organic traffic. Similarly, more traffic can, theoretically, mean more leads.
To avoid confusion, focus on only one objective at a time while acknowledging any additional impact of a particular B2B programmatic ad campaign.
Apart from helping you zone in and go for a definite goal, setting campaign objectives is also crucial to monitor the impact of your efforts and learn continually. The objectives make it easier to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs), so simplifying performance tracking.
And at the end of each campaign, consolidating data and extract insights will help you realise new and actionable aspects of the business, its offerings, and the market you serve.
3. Invest in novel creatives
Regardless of how impactful a particular ad banner or message might be, it will lose its effectiveness eventually. The internet audience constantly desires new and more personalised content in different formats.
Your product may evolve with the needs of customers – perhaps there is a new innovation in your industry that changes how your audience works and thinks.
A good rule of thumb is to run multiple versions of the same promotional message throughout a B2B programmatic ad campaign. Whether it is Google Ads or banners on third-party websites, experimenting with different content can be effective in capturing your audience’s attention.
This method can also serve as A/B testing, which can give you deeper insights into the nature and tone of ad messages that have a higher reach or impact, based on your campaign objectives.
Keep in mind that as the leads get closer to conversion, your messages should get more personal and tailor-made. You can use an AI email assistant to craft those messages quickly.
4. Retarget high-value personas
High-value personas are customer profiles that represent potential customers bring large deals and play a crucial role in the decision-making process. They can include professionals like senior managers or C-suite executives in large businesses and enterprises.
Retargeting these personas involves showing your promotional messages to those individuals over and over in different styles and formats across the web. This increases the chances of conversion as B2B buyers often need time to evaluate and validate their options deeply.
Apart from decision-makers in organisations, high-value personas can also include professionals who have attended one of your webinars or downloaded a particular piece of content.
Keep in mind that you (or your programmatic ad inventory provider) adhere to all IT laws and regulations like the GDPR and CCPA when asking for cookie consent.
You can retarget other personas too, but prioritise the high-value personas as they have a greater potential for ROI. Periodically examine whether a particular persona is high-value by analysing the market trends and audience behaviour.
Wrapping up
Programmatic advertising provides B2B marketing teams with a great way to reach their target audience on the internet. While running ad campaigns, businesses should pay close attention to their audience’s preferences, needs, desires, and behaviour to be able to craft the right messages.
B2B marketing teams should prioritise targeting senior employees and C-suite executives of large businesses and enterprises to increase the ROI of their programmatic ad campaigns.
