Connect the dots between B2B ad spend and incremental revenue so you can unlock higher ROI on your paid media.
We’ve all been on sites that promise the Next Big Revolution, but still rely on lead forms in order to get entries into the sales pipeline. This is incredibly ineffective. A study by 6Sense showed that only 3% of visitors actually entered information when presented with forms.
Without reliable data to demonstrate advertising attribution during the sales process, the argument is circular: Are the leads bad, or is the sales team doing a bad job closing good leads? By adding data to title-based media buys, cross- referenced with site-visit information, you can sidestep the question. The “bad leads” argument is dead.
This new paradigm is one of comprehensive prospect tracking. We know who is visiting the site, thanks to a tech stack that signals intent and smart media buys, giving us a clearer picture of who came from where, why they’re interested, and how long they’re engaging with your brand.
It’s no longer about good leads or bad leads, but about good or bad content experiences and good or bad sales calls. It’s about taking advantage of insights you have on your prospects. It’s about matching the outreach process to the current stage in your customer’s sales journey. And, most importantly, when you intelligently track deals originated from or assisted by paid media, you confidently turn the dotted line between ad spend and revenue into a solid, bold line.
Peter Drucker: "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."
The number-one question we hear over and over is a simple one: It’s hard to measure the true ROI of a B2B paid media program – so how do you do it?
Unlike an ecommerce sale, where it’s easier to draw a line between media and purchase behavior, the B2B sales cycle is much longer – often stretching into 12, 24, or even 36 months. Without a conversion tracking tag on an order confirmation page, you need to dive deeper into your metrics and coordinate between marketing and sales teams.
Difficulty measuring ROI is the number-one challenge that B2B marketers face.
Sure, you have a CRM to manage your pipeline, but gaps will always exist because it’s time-consuming to log every touchpoint and prospects don’t always want to share their contact information (or they provide fake info). But whether or not your CRM is performing at its best, your internal teams will need to compare lists in order to decide where, when, and how the marketing department generated or assisted with the acquisition of a new customer.
Turning that dotted line into a solid one is the holy grail of B2B marketing. Now, you’ll be able to draw conclusions at a glance. You’ll be able to see what’s working and what isn’t working. And you can do this without lead forms.
Effective’s unique approach makes drawing that solid line possible. The solution? Pair job-title-based media buys with company-name website tracking.
Step 1: Media buys on job titles make it possible.
When selecting job titles, you need to be as specific as possible, using one campaign or ad set per title. For example, a client was targeting CTOs in the online K-12 education space, and by using LinkedIn job titles, we were able to specify exactly how the media dollars were being allocated.
Specificity is key when selecting media against job titles. In this example, we’re focusing on IT decision makers that would be in the market for a new platform tech and we’ll create unique tracking and UTMs for each targeted title.
It’s important to keep campaigns separate for each job title so we have a clear view of the link between title-based buys and paid traffic that visits your site or landing pages. Once we have those targets, we’ll take them and overlay company identity markers to know precisely who is engaging with website content.
Step 2: Identify. Attribute. Sort. Win.
Now that you have a job title-based campaign up and running, we can add the next layer: Visitor identification tools. While there are a few partners to choose from, Dealfront (Leadfeeder), ZoomInfo, and 6sense are some of our favorites. They all allow you to see filtered lists of companies visiting your website driven by the paid media campaign..
In this Dealfront dashboard, you’re able to view traffic on your site – filtered by company name. In addition to giving you new insights on overall visit patterns, you can cross-reference these visits with UTMs from your title-based campaign.
You’ll be able to sort and filter on any number of criteria, such as traffic source, number of visits, pageviews, engaged visits, and visit length. Some platforms take this a step further, identifying intent signals based on browsing patterns.
Step 3: Close the loop with a solid line.
Your title-based media buys worked, driving audiences with the job titles you chose to your site. And visitor identification software has identified the company name of those visitors and the source of the traffic (your title-based media buy). You can now build a list of contacts including company name and job title. Enrich your list by adding the contact name, either using the same identification software that matched domains to company names or by looking up the contact on LinkedIn. Armed with this information, you can match your list to sales reports and begin lead-nurturing efforts. This is where the dotted line turns into a solid one. You know what you spent, what revenue was associated with deals originated or assisted by the spend.
Case study: The power of title-based media buying.
A client was targeting decision makers at online-only K-12 schools, working to drive sales for its integrated education platform. Based on the goal of driving 120 new leads, we created a programmatic campaign for both search and social across Facebook/Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
By establishing lead tracking in Leadfeeder and Google Analytics, we had a clearer understanding of the total addressable market as well as the characteristics of IT decision makers: They were concerned with ease of integration, simple user interfaces, accessible payment gateways, and data centricity. Based on these criteria, we developed creative that would both speak to all of those purchasing requirements as well as be flexible enough to target all the job functions and titles set out in the brief.
The #1 impact on the B2B decision-making process? Visiting a vendor’s website.
American Marketing Association, 2022 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey, Aug. 11, 2022.
In addition to driving the goal of new incremental business, the campaign also generated a significant amount of site traffic and interest. Among targets who clicked on the ad via a paid social campaign and visited the site more than once, averaged 7.3 pageviews (5x the website average of 1.4 pages) and spent more than four minutes browsing (6x the 41-second website average).
With prospects primed to their message, Genius could alter their pitch accordingly. These potential clients, not even entered as cold leads in their CRM, became warm prospects, most without form fills or other outreach. These decision makers don’t have time to fill out disclosure forms on websites; they need information to move quickly and to make the right call. Reaching individuals who are the decision makers for large technology decisions can often be difficult, but creative solutions can often turn challenges into opportunities.
Follow the process and unlock your media power.
While the entire campaign relies on the efficient use of a tech stack and requires an overall vision, the process is straightforward and, in the example of Genius, the results speak for themselves:
The media buy targets decision makers in the online K-12 industry;
Website visitor identification software shows company domains of those decision makers;
The pairing of company name and job title creates a hot- lead list. Sales and marketing can compare lists, either in the CRM or manually, to see where paid media drove leads and conversions.
That’s how you turn that dotted line into a solid one. Leads become prospects, and those individually targeted prospects become clients.
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Want to see how else we can help your business? Read the rest of our B2B case studies.