Client Case Study: Advertiser Partner Training

Last week, we talked in-depth about why having proper analytics and measuring tools in place matters to you – the business owner and final decision-maker. Today, we want to dig in a bit deeper and talk about the specific key performance indicators (KPI’s) that can influence those decisions.

In this world of measurement and analytics, there can be a LOT of noise. Honestly, if you WANT to measure and report on something, there is a way to do it. A few years ago, we started working with an organization that was new to us but not new to digital marketing. In our initial discovery meeting, they could not answer a few key questions around the effectiveness of their marketing and key performance metrics. As they started sharing – we quickly understood why.

While they were receiving a monthly report from their previous marketing firm, it was (no kidding) nearly 100 pages long! Additionally, the report took so long to compile each month that they were not receiving it until several weeks after the month-end – in some cases, months later!

This report, while very detailed and packed with data, was not helpful. In fact, they admitted that they rarely even looked at it. It was time intensive for their marketing firm to create, but it did not deliver any value.

As the leader of your organization, it is vital for you to be able to identify the data points that matter most and help your marketing team set the priorities around them. To start, think about your KPI’s as a self-assessment for your company. If you have to give yourself a letter grade, what piece of information do you need to assess that score? Really dig down to those core pieces that tell you if you are going in the right direction. Because while vanity metrics are readily available and can make us feel as if we are accomplishing something, they don’t really tell us if we are moving the needle.

For example: Instead of looking at Facebook likes, look at how many of those likes commented, shared, or went to your website.  Develop quantitive goals such as generating 50 leads each month, or predictive metrics that will tell you if you are on track to reach your set goal (metrics like web visits and CRM activity). There are also process and production metrics that provide insights into resources needed for future sales.

Ultimately, select three to five key performance indicators, then have your team develop the measurability and reporting cadence for each. Keep in mind that the measurement should be automated, and the reporting should be in near real-time. KPI’s reported weeks or months after the fact cannot be used to change outcomes.

Make sure that the goals around your KPI’s are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). Think in terms of leading indicators as well as lagging indicators – those pieces that tell you what is coming as well as those pieces that show you how it is going today.

Connect with us if you’d like to chat further; our team of dedicated digital experts would love to help you identify your KPI’s and implement the processes needed to measure and report.

Sources: https://www.klipfolio.com/blog/how-to-identify-kpis

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/choosing-kpis

Traditionally, manufactures do not place marketing at the top of their overall budgets.  Manufacturing companies spend about 8% of their total budgets on advertising, lead generation, and business development combined. If you are spending only a portion of that 8% on advertising and using traditional marketing methods, you are missing out on a multitude of potential customers and ultimately wasting your money.  You already know that your buyers are online.  In fact, 94% of B2B buyers research online before purchasing any business product, according to the 2019 State of B2B Procurement Study. In addition, 56% of engineers are in their 2^nd or 3^rd buying stage before contacting the sales team/vendor.  Wouldn’t you prefer to meet your customers at the beginning of their buying process?

The number one marketing goal for manufactures is building Brand Awareness.  In today’s world, it is impossible to build Brand Awareness without a digital strategy.  Digital marketing provides channels to showcase your capabilities, speak directly to interested buyers, and demonstrate what sets you apart from the rest – resulting in more sales.   Utilizing different means of content such as videos, webinars, and blogs about your company and products establishes you as an expert in your field. An online presence is essential to communicating with your audience, learning the challenges your customers face, and demonstrating why your products are the solutions to those challenges.

A recent survey by Content Marketing Institute found that 86% of manufacturing marketers used content marketing for lead generation in 2018. The survey further revealed that 82% of manufacturing marketers who use digital marketing for their companies believe that increased content creation has led to an increase in success over the last year. In comparison, 67% of manufacturing marketers blame not enough time devoted to content creation to their stagnant success over the last year. Overall, 77% of marketers surveyed have seen an increase in their conversion rate due to successful digital marketing campaigns.

These statistics prove that implementing an effective digital strategy will maximize your advertising budget with measurable results.  Through digital tactics, your audience reach is vast compared to traditional methods, and also allows you to identify and focus on your specific target audiences.  With digital marketing, data driven statistics provide accurate measures for ROI.  Online Marketing Institute.org states, “Across industries, digital marketing can increase sales from existing customers by up to 15%. This is great news for manufacturers looking to boost customer retention and earn repeat business from the same clients.”

Now that you know why manufacturers need digital marketing, are you ready to get started? At KeyMedia Solutions, we use the latest in marketing technology to identify your target customers, grow your brand, and keep you one step ahead of your competitors.  Our team of experts will listen to your needs and customize a digital strategy tailored to your goals that delivers results.   Contact us today!

Sources:

https://www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org/blog/2018/07/infographic-digital-marketing-manufacturing-industry/

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/11/manufacturing-content-marketers/

https://www.b2binternational.com/the-state-of-b2b-survey-2019/

Industry:  Manufacturing

Client: National engine manufacture.

Objective: Generate product awareness and benefits to small engine dealers and lawn care professionals by driving a large volume of traffic to their website and adding qualifiers to increase time on the site and pages per visit to ensure qualified visitors.

Challenges:

• Facing multiple B2B audience channels.
• Marketing component products.
• Confusion with consumer products.
• Technical obstacles while tracking conversions.

Optimizations:

A 30-day test run of the client’s campaign to analyze performance and discover the best keywords, optimize the best performing ad copy and optimize site links.

Additional optimizations include:

• Create Mobile Ads
• Dayparting
• Add and test Site link extensions and phone extensions
• Included ads with dynamic keyword insertions
• Variation of matching types
• Optimize Geotargeting

Campaign Results

After testing different keywords and ad copy for the first two months, we found that our approach increased the CTR above the industry average of 1%. We finished with an overall CTR of 5.42%, which is extremely rare.

• Bounce Rate: 25.55% – Better than Organic and Direct Traffic
• Pages / Session: 4.51 – Higher than Organic and Direct Traffic
• Session Duration: 3.10 min – Higher than Organic and Direct Traffic
• Conversion Rate: 28.09% (Find a Dealer page, Visit a partner page or go to Engines page)
• Auction Insights: #1 in the Industry by far! (Monopoly)

Client Case Study

KeyMedia Solutions has been partnering with SDN Communications, a business-to-business broadband service provider to run multiple digital marketing campaigns for the past couple of years. The client’s campaigns seek to reach business decision-makers in certain industries in order to gain leads, specifically business’s looking for broadband services. B2B targeting can be challenging, but KeyMedia Solutions has been able to help businesses such as this meet campaign goals within their specified marketing budgets.

Execution

The campaign started branding efforts before the network buildout was complete to build name recognition and generate leads for the sales team. As the campaign progressed, different tactics were introduced and tested.

Promoted Video, Pre-roll & Display ads: These ads were served to IT professionals and other industry-specific business decision-makers.

Content Distribution: Using LinkedIn, KeyMedia Solutions sponsored posts and shared content in relevant groups that had active business decision-makers, allowing for direct interaction on the posts.  Additionally, we tested sponsored posts, sponsored ads, and company page updates.

Paid Search: To support the display and content tactics, a targeted paid search campaign using specific, relevant keywords to business connectivity was developed. This effort was backed through precise ad copy, site links, and ad extensions.

Coordinated Efforts: In addition to paid digital media, KeyMedia Solutions worked closely with the internal marketing team to ensure a keyword-rich landing page was developed with conversion points built-in. Constant communication between the teams allowed for mutual support of the local events, email strategy, direct mail, radio, television, out of home, print, and Facebook efforts.

Campaign Results

Since starting in early 2015, the campaign has continued to see success in both brand awareness and lead generation.

• Online form submissions have increased by 350% year over year.
• Site traffic in the new territory doubled; while paid traffic increased by 359% in 2016.
• The users new to the site increased by 311% in 2016.
• Average session duration was up 109% compared to the previous year.
• Referral traffic from LinkedIn increased by 15% as a result of the promoted content.
• Monthly searches within related keywords driving traffic to the site increased 25% year over year.

In the Business to Business world, there’s a ton of opportunity. But with opportunity comes competition. So how can you stand out in a cluttered B2B climate? The answer is Account Based Marketing.

What is Account Based Marketing?

Account Based Marketing (ABM) focuses resources and efforts on a targeted set of accounts that matter most for the business, instead of covering a broad range of potential customers. This increases the likelihood of converting prospects to sales when compared to standard lead-focused models alone.

Account Based Marketing practices traditional and proven B2B principles, but targets company accounts rather than individual sales leads.

Struggles with Traditional B2B Advertising

For any given B2B sale, 7-20 people are involved in the decision-making process, and 34% of B2B buyers have increased the number of stakeholders involved in the purchase process. This means you need to reach and convince more people that your product or service is the best fit for their needs.

B2B buyers don’t contact suppliers directly until 57% of the purchase process is complete, and 94% of B2B buyers conduct some form of online research before buying a business product. Also, it’s estimated by 2020, 80% of the buying process will occur without any direct human-to-human interaction.

Buyers are savvy and they don’t want to talk to you until they’re convinced your product or service may be able to help them.

So, how do you get in front of these buyers?

How Account Based Marketing Works

In Account Based Marketing, it’s common to hear the phrase “Flip the Funnel.” We all know the premise behind the traditional sales process: We start with a ton of leads. As those leads move down the magical funnel, they become more qualified. The most qualified leads become sales qualified leads. Then BOOM! A sale.

Well, in Account Based Marketing, the funnel is flipped.

Below are the basic steps of ABM.

Identify the Best Fit Accounts

Find the right companies so resources aren’t used on prospects that will not become customers. Your marketing and sales teams must collaborate on a list of target accounts, or the companies that are the best fit for your solution. You need to identify your “ideal client” and identify specific companies that fit those criteria.

Expand Contacts Within an Account

Identify personas of the people within the accounts you would like to target. You will need to deliver different messages and creative to different personas because they may be looking for different things when determining whether to partner with your company.

Engage Accounts

Next is to engage the contacts on the channels where they’re most active using messaging and content that’s valuable to them. The CEO is most likely looking for something different than the Director of IT or CFO. Craft content that’s relevant to each persona and provide that information when it’s most valuable to them.

Create Advocates

Above we mentioned that sometimes 20 or more people are involved in the decision-making process. This means you cannot simply target a single decision maker. There are many people inside the business that you need to convince. By targeting and creating internal advocates, your messages can resonate much further than you could ever achieve on your own.

Measure Success

With Account Based Marketing, measurement focuses on performance indicators that evaluate success at the account level. You can report on reach, impressions, clicks, and media spend by account to report on advertising’s influence on target accounts. But you can also go deeper than that.

Here are other KPIs you should report on in your ABM efforts:

• Marketing Qualified Accounts – With ABM, you’ll shift from marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to marketing qualified accounts (MQAs), which provide a much more comprehensive picture.
•  Engagement Rate – Look at whether accounts are clicking on ads, have a high-velocity score, or are visiting your website.
• Reach Within an Account – How many new contacts did you reach with your ABM campaign? This is a great indicator of account brand awareness.
• Pipeline Velocity – Did your ABM campaign move accounts through your sales process faster and did you close deals faster?
• Conversion Rates Throughout the Funnel – This can be measured by many different parameters depending on the stage of the sales process and your business goals. Some common goals to track include meetings set, opportunities created, and target accounts converted to customers.
• ROI – What is the return on your investment for each account-based marketing campaign?

Go Beyond What You Can See

There are, hopefully, many people coming to your website every day. Many of these people are “invisible” because they don’t fill out a form, call, or request to be contacted. You need to be able to see who’s viewing your website because it can be a direct result of current ABM efforts or you can identify potential leads.

Google Analytics reports on how many people visit your website, but IP intelligence platforms tell you “who” is visiting your website. These platforms use the visitor’s IP address to scrub relevant information about that individual from the internet. Creepy, right?

IP intelligence platforms won’t tell you the name of the person viewing your site, but it will tell you where the person works and a bunch of information about that company.

Account Based Marketing is a complex, in-depth process that usually requires a fair amount of setup in the beginning. However, in return, you’ll have less wasted marketing spend and the efforts can generate 97% higher ROI than other marketing activities.

If you have questions about ABM or digital marketing in general, don’t hesitate to reach out. We would love to help!

If you are in the business-to-business (B2B) advertising realm, you may be one of the many businesses wondering how digital media efforts could benefit you; especially in a cost-effective and measurable way. Over the last few months, this has been one of the top questions I’ve received and more often made as the statement, “Online advertising is for consumer driven campaigns and doesn’t work for B2B efforts.”

Well, I’m here to tell you that it does work. And works quite effectively when targeted correctly. Below, I’ve outlined five tactics that we’ve used to deliver measurable results for B2B campaigns. Keep in mind that each campaign is unique, and it might take some testing to identify the one or two tactics that work specific to individual audience and goals, but I encourage you to start with one or more of the elements below.

Strategize. Implement. Monitor. Analyze. Repeat.

Space

5 tactics for B2B campaigns

1. Content Marketing– Research shows that content is the backbone of successful online marketing. Firms that generate at least 40% of their leads online through a content marketing grow four times faster than firms that don’t. The content can include web text, blogs, new releases, and product videos that provide information relevant to your products and services. Use keyword rich text and stories that will inform and entertain your buyers in a way that they will not find anywhere else on the web.
2. Social Media Marketing – Yes, Social Media Marketing can be a powerful resource for B2B campaigns. And is a helpful tool in distributing the content you’re developing for your website, trade shows, and sale pitches. LinkedIn and YouTube often work better for this category, however, don’t discount Google+, Facebook, and Twitter too quickly. If your buyers spend time with these networks, there are opportunities to engage with them and share your story.
3. Search Marketing (Paid and Organic) – Yes, for most businesses SEM can be affordable and effective in driving quality web traffic at an affordable price. The key is to look at long-tail keywords, technical terms that are specific to your industry, and accurate ad copy that will limit irrelevant clicks. For example, using broad match for “Internet services” as compared to modified match for “+business +Internet.”
4. Video Marketing – I’m positive you’ve heard this before, but Video Marketing is the future of the web and that include B2B marketing. Use short-form videos to tell your story, feature new products, and show how to use your products. Once available, promote them to your core buyers through interests, industries, and buyer demographics. Narrow your focus to significantly reduce the video impressions served to consumers over business buyers.
5. Email Marketing – I hope that you are one of the 70% of businesses with an email marketing strategy. It’s still one of the most effective tools in nurturing leads and educating existing customers. I would encourage you to examine your CRM funnel as if you’re the end user; give them what they need; not what you want to sell. Then look at how often are your sending emails. What information are you including in your emails? Are you providing opportunities for your readers to convert?

If you approach your marketing strategy with a one-to-one mindset – meaning that you (a person) are wanting to engage with your buyer (also a person) – you’ll be successful. Understand who you’re trying to engage with, where they are when they go online, and what they’re interested in. From there, simply plan your ad buy around them.

If you’d like to see how we do it, fill out the form below and take read our case study on B2B marketing.