Town Hall Recap: B2B Paid Search and Social Tips
by Moe McLeod | Updated Nov 9, 2021
This week's PPC Town Hall was special for 2 reasons. Firstly, this session's town hall lens focused on what B2B companies should be aware of as the market starts to open up.
Secondly, we had a Digitopia representative on the panel! Our CEO, Frank Cowell, was among the B2B experts featured.
You can find the key takeaways from the session in the video below.
If you're not familiar with the PPC Town Halls, these events started back in March. They're great for both marketers and company leadership, looking for insights and validations within the paid advertising world. Without the veiled sales pitch. I have been attending the events for several months now and have walked away with a list of candid and actionable insights from the panelists.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn or leave a comment on the post.
Town Hall Video Summary
Watch the PPC Town Hall in its entirety here: PPC Town Hall #9
As always, a special thank you to Fred Vallaeys and the Optmyzr team for coordinating the event as well as the other panelists:
Panelists:
Fred Vallaeys - CEO, Optmyzr
AJ Wilcox - Founder, B2Linked
Matt Van Wagner - President, Find Me Faster
Frank Cowell - CEO, Digitopia
Top Takeaways:
1.) Stay in close contact with your client
- Reliance on audience targeting in the early stages of COVID was very difficult as people were transitioning from working in the office to working from home
- This makes it difficult to understand the data from targeting
- It is very important to stay on top of the relationships with our clients and find out the quality of leads
- What are the leads like? Is the phone ringing? Are the prospects primarily tire kickers?
- Constant communication and re-evaluation will help us to make adjustments on the ads
2.) B2B Is A Long Sales Cycle
- Most B2B industries have long sales cycle
- It can take 12-24 months to build your marketing momentum
- When COVID hit, some business pumped the brakes on marketing
- This creates a gap in the sales pipeline
- Right now, don’t focus on selling, but focus on building relationships
- Keep the funnel going
- if you don’t continue to build relationships, as the economy opens up, your gap will be even larger
3.) Right now is the best time to advertise
- Lowest cost right now across all paid channels
- If LinkedIn was too cost prohibitive before, now might be a great time to start
- People are working from home and statistically spending more time on channels like LinkedIn
- Many are networking and looking for solutions
- Get in now to build relationships
- Start those conversations now, with lower CPC to fill your pipeline
4.) Brands need to show value by being in front of their customers regularly
- Very difficult to measure immediate ROI on efforts right now
- Focus on building your Brand building, which requires some faith
- Do the things you know you need to do (best practices)
- May not see the immediate results, but long-term it should pay off
- Find a channel that you believe you can get in front of your audience
- prioritize where you think you can get the biggest impact
- Get your brand on that channel and consistently build connections
5.) LinkedIn is a great channel for B2B
- Especially for premium service/product
- Generally get less tire kickers
- LinkedIn is really good at filtering out non-business noise
- Great place to get your brand in front of the right audience to build relationships
- But must have a great offer
- With the higher CPCs you don’t want to target TOFU
- Need to target MOFU
- People working from home are more active and open to offers
NOTE: Microsoft LinkedIn Profile Targeting
- Currently in beta,
- The equivalent of RLSA in Google Ads
- Target by Job function, Company, Industry, and more
6.) Targeting on Google Ads for B2B:
- Although not the same targeting capabilities of LinkedIn or Facebook
- But you can layer some audience targeting to reach B2B
- In-market
- Affinity
- Demographics
- Similar List
- Make sure the copy speaks to your audience and is business-focused
- Do TOFU ads on FaceBook/Display Ads at lower CPC to build audience for retargeting
