Driving B2B leads might not always be the science we want it to be, it can often be an art. We are required to get creative when a client needs an 80% increase in revenue YoY with only a 5% increase in budget. When we learned of this we realized that something special had to be done. We put our heads together to strategize a plan that could blow past these targets. Pulling our typical levers and making incremental gains simply wasn’t going to cut it this time. We needed something big, and fast. Diving into the whitepapers we went to better understand the B2B market, trying to sniff out any possible exploit.
Many B2B buyers start their research with search, but they are not ready to contact the vendor until 70% of the way through the journey. The problem is, most B2B campaigns focus only on that last 30% of this journey because that is where the value is. However, the user is present and searches far before then. If we are not capturing traffic, even before the user has decided to convert, then we open ourselves up to users falling into our competitor’s hands.
Over 50% of B2B buyers are doing independent research to better understand our brand. We need to be visible in Search during these moments. We needed to create a funnel that leads the user along the optimal path while giving them the flexibility to self educate and consume content at their own pace. 91% of B2B buyers prefer to consume interactive and visual content. They create a resounding and memorable impact, stopping the younger digital natives in their tracks. We need to ensure that as users move down the funnel their experience changes. To do this we need to engage in persona-based search targeting.
We are currently testing a structure that allows us to interact with the user depending on their previous interactions with our brand. Users who have been to the site previously, or who fit with our standard In-Market and Affinity audiences are treated differently. Using different bidding strategies on each campaign we are able to maximize efficient volume to the site with new users while driving the engaged users to our lead gen page using our offline conversion bid strategies.
I have included an oversimplified version of this funnel below.
We are in the middle of this test, so far it is performing as expected. We are driving a high volume of visits efficiently, optimizing towards page visit conversion actions. And we have been able to drive efficient conversions with our lower-funnel campaigns. However, we do not yet know how this campaign will play out as our several month sales cycle is still in play.
We will keep you updated, I would recommend giving this a test. At the end of the day, when drastic change is needed, drastic action is required.
