Looking Ahead to 2018: The Year of Data-Driven Marketing for B2B
by MGB2B
Data-driven marketing refers to marketing insights, strategy, and decisions that arise from the analysis of data about or from consumers. It is one of the most transformational changes in the history of advertising. Data-driven marketing takes the answers to the questions like Who, What, When, Where, and Why and makes the answers actionable.
The Benefits of B2B Data
- Enables marketers to focus advertising efforts on businesses that are more likely to be receptive
- Identifies new leads and promotional opportunities using hyper-targeting
- Ensures that existing sales and business relationships are stable and successful through nurturing and growth
Ultimately, investing in data collection and analysis can produce valuable insights that improve your campaign performance, which often translates into increasing your bottom line, while providing more meaningful advertisements to customers.
How to Collect Meaningful Data – Pre-Campaign
Now that the many benefits of data are clear, how do you go about collecting meaningful data for your company? The first step is identifying what you know and what you don’t know. If you’re interested in understanding your customers better and building buyer personas, a Consumer Research Study could be the route to take. Or if new product development is one of your 2018 goals, perhaps a Product Development Survey would be best. Understanding knowledge gaps in your organization is the first step in defining your research parameters and getting at the information you desire.
How to Use Data to Inform Your Online Campaigns
Surveys are a great way to collect data. But they aren’t the only way. Some of the most important data is collected as your digital campaigns are running. For instance, Paid Search campaigns are only made better by tracking the performance of several ads. Over time, the data tells you which messages are resonating with which audience segments, which times of the day ads are performing, etc. You can use information from email campaigns similarly, testing to see which subject lines and messages perform best and using the data to make your campaign more effective. These are just two examples. Online testing and fine-tuning should be a big part of your marketing strategy in 2018 if you are not already doing it.
Investing in Audience Growth
When you conduct research and testing with the goal of gaining insight into your target audience, not only will you have a set of data points describing them, but you will have a deeper understanding of their thoughts, feelings, and motivations. You will have answers to the questions Who, What, When, Where, and Why. With this information, you can create targeted campaigns keyed into specific points that appeal to your audience.
For example, let’s say you learn through research that factory owners are not just concerned with OSHA compliance, but also feel an emotional connection to protecting the lives of their employees through safe work environments. You can take that piece of emotional information and apply it to your messaging, helping factory owners connect with what you’re saying on a deeper level. If you learn architects visit certain industry websites more often than others, tailor your media plan to highlight that website. If contractors tend to open emails more at night than throughout the day, customize your email campaign to launch at 9 pm instead of 10 am. Small tidbits such as these can reveal themselves through detailed research, and become game-changers in the development of your entire marketing strategy.
When considering marketing initiatives to pursue in 2018, marketing research and testing should be top priorities. Gaining a deeper understanding of audience behavior is crucial, especially as outreach becomes more digitally focused each year. And in 2018, we will continue to see this trend develop and blossom. Time to dive in head-first!
Continue ReadingPaid Search for Manufacturers – 5 Tips to Improve Your PPC Campaign’s Performance
by MGB2B
The U.S. manufacturing industry is the strongest it’s been in years. According to the most recent data, manufacturing job growth is on the rise. And in 2016 “manufacturers contributed $2.18 trillion to the U.S. economy.”
But while the manufacturing industry continues to grow, the majority of manufacturing firms in the United States are small businesses. In fact, three-quarters of these businesses have fewer than 20 employees. This means that competition among small businesses in the manufacturing industry continues to increase. Which can make it harder to get your manufacturing company to stand out from the crowd.
Paid search for manufacturers can be just the solution you’ve been looking for to put you ahead of your competitors. But if your business is small, or perhaps new, your budget may be limited. And it’s important to add that money can be spent quickly on a PPC campaign if it isn’t managed correctly. With this in mind, here are some tips to help you control your spend and make sure your paid search budget effectively reaches the right customers.
5 Paid Search Marketing Tips for Manufacturers
- Keywords – Keep Them Tight and Targeted. It’s not revolutionary to make sure your PPC keyword lists are tightly targeted to your product offering. But it’s so important that it has to be stated up front. A lot of your paid search marketing budget can be wasted on search terms triggered by poorly chosen keywords. This means you need to choose keywords that accurately represent your products and industry. It also means you need to utilize Google AdWords’ and Bing Ads’ keyword match type options to eliminate loosely matching search terms. It’s likely you’ll find that broad match keywords bring in highly irrelevant traffic. So sticking to phrase and exact match options for the majority of keywords is highly recommended. One other thing to be aware of is the dual meaning some of your most important keywords may have. In both the B2B world and the manufacturing industry, it’s common to see words that may mean something completely different to the world at large. Use industry-specific modifiers like “industrial” and “commercial” in front of vaguer keywords. This helps make sure you’re showing ads to the right type of searchers while reducing spend on irrelevant clicks.
- Day and Time – Show Your Ads When Your Customers Are Searching. For B2C, it often makes sense to show your ads all day/every day. The average consumer doesn’t have a set schedule for when they’re going to search for a pair of sneakers or a cheap hotel room. But in the manufacturing world, there are days and times when a search is more valuable than others. Most of your searchers are employees or owners of other companies. Therefore, they are much more likely to perform these searches while they’re at work. Setting your campaign’s ad schedule to only run Monday through Friday, say, or from 6 AM to 8 PM, can help you save money on searches less likely to turn into leads. Which enables you to save your budget for the days and times with peak value.
- Location – Limit Based On Your Company’s Capabilities. There are a number of options available to you in the location targeting settings of your paid search campaign. So you should definitely use them to your advantage. You can specify which countries, states, even zip codes, can see your paid search ads. What you choose, however, must be determined by your company’s or product offering’s capabilities. Does your manufacturing business only ship to the U.S.? Then don’t show ads in other countries. Is your product offering specific to a regional industry? Limit your location settings to exclude states outside of your target region. In the end, it makes no sense to show your ads in places you can’t or won’t sell your products.
- Devices – How Are Your Customers Searching the Web? Today’s articles on Internet traffic sources will tell you that more and more searches occur on mobile devices every day. While this is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the traffic your PPC campaigns receive from mobile devices is more relevant or valuable than the traffic from computers. In fact, you’re likely to see quite the opposite. Since, as we’ve already stated, you are targeting a B2B audience, your prospects most often perform their searches while at work. Often from a desk. You’re likely to find, then, that the traffic you receive from computers performs at a better rate than the traffic from mobile devices and tablets. In your paid search campaigns, you can choose to bid higher or lower for mobile, tablet and computer traffic. This allows you to put more or less of your limited budget behind the traffic source that is most valuable to your business.
- Remarketing Lists for Search Ads – Reaching Your Website’s Previous Visitors. Like the manufacturing industry, the online paid search market is a highly competitive one. A higher bid on a search keyword can determine who shows first for a relevant search. You should use every tool at your disposal to reach your customers. But also recognize that some searchers are more valuable to your efforts than others. And perhaps the most valuable searcher of all is one who has already visited your site. After all, they may just need that extra push to return and make a purchase. Data regularly shows that the traffic from these previous visitors is likely to perform at better click and conversion rates than regular traffic. Utilizing Remarketing Lists for Search Ads can help you reach these customers before your competitors do. RLSA requires some set-up. But once you have it running, you can set higher bids for searches that come from previous visitors to your website. So you can appear above your competition in the search results and turn past visitors into new leads and sales.
Both the manufacturing and online advertising industries will continue to grow over the coming years. So you’ll need to use every tool in your belt to grow along with them. These 5 tips for paid search for manufacturers can help get the job done.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: I Can Save Money By Keeping Digital Marketing In-House
by MGB2B
The Myth: Keeping Digital Marketing In-House Saves You Money
The Truth: With All the People You Need to Hire, Outside Help Is Worth Looking Into
Some companies are big enough that they can afford the marketing team they need to run their digital campaigns. But often, this is not the case. The number of people you need to have on staff to do digital marketing well is higher than you might think.
Think about it in terms of the different channels you need to drive prospects into your sales funnel. Then, consider the people who make that happen. Let’s take a look at the key components of a strong digital program:
- Paid Search and SEO. These are easily two of the most important parts of a successful digital marketing program, but B2B brands are often unsure of how to execute them successfully. You can hire an expert internally or an outside agency to help you avoid roadblocks.
- Email. This is easily overlooked, but it is essential for reaching both prospects and current customers. Whoever runs your email program should know everything there is about segmentation, testing, landing pages, and reporting (just to name a few).
- Content Creation. This is a big one. Content takes a lot of time. And often a lot of people, depending on how many pieces of content you’d like to produce each month. The best thing to do is calculate that first, then figure out how many people you’ll need to pull it off. Some companies use 1 or 2 people. Larger brands often have entire content studios producing their content. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, your content team will also rely on some of your key staff outside of the marketing department for stories, demos, and other substantial pieces they can turn into engaging content. Together, you can create the arsenal of content you need for a successful campaign.
- Social Media. Have interns running your company’s social media? You may want to rethink that. Content is no good unless it’s distributed properly. You’ll need someone who can not only post now and again but create an overarching social media strategy that can be fine-tuned and perfected over time.
- Design. With increasing demand for compelling visual content and landing pages that drive prospects to convert, you’ll need a talented designer to help you. Many B2B brands focus on quantity when it comes to content, leaving design and writing to fall by the wayside. But you can’t underestimate the importance of design. Simple, intuitive design is a difficult goal to achieve, but there are designers out there who make it happen every day. Those are the ones you want to work with.
- Reporting. Some reporting will fall to your Search person. Some to your Email person. And some to your Social person. But you’re going to need someone who can evaluate everything from the top down and make recommendations to improve your marketing program overall. This might be your Marketing Director or someone beneath him or her. But it needs to be someone who’s good with numbers. And someone who both cares about accuracy and can interpret data.
- Web Development. Not all web developers are created equal. If you’re lucky, you can find one who is brilliant not just at coding but at understanding the consumer’s journey online. They understand the importance of user experience. And do everything they can to make it smooth and seamless. There are not many who have mastered this. So when you find someone who has, do whatever you can to make them stick around for as long as possible.
Depending on the needs of your organization, you’ll need at least one person working in each of these categories (if not more!). And you won’t likely want entry-level people in these positions.
So, using the list above, add up the salaries of your mid-to-expert-level internal digital team. Then compare the total to what an ad agency or other outside service might charge. More likely than not, your number is going to be higher than the agency’s.
Often what works best is a mix of an internal team and an outside agency. Your lean, internal team works with the agency to develop a sound marketing strategy, and each one uses their strengths to implement the seven key components listed above. Which gives you the most bang for your marketing buck. And keeps you – and your CFO – smiling.
Continue Reading