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Marketing, some would have you believe, has undergone such a dramatic change in recent years that your tactics and technology are obsolete, or blunted to the point where ROI rarely occurs or is impossible to measure.
Because — and I’m sure you can probably recite this by heart — "buying groups, not buyers" are in the driving seat now, on channels you don’t control, closing deals before you even get them in the funnel, as everything has gone digital.
A gateway has opened for buyers. A barrier has been created for marketers.
And it's all true.
But marketers can’t buy their way out of it with new tech and they don’t need to. Success, right now, isn’t about reinventing the wheel, it's having the right leads coming in and the correct systems in place to turn potential customers into buyers. Same as it always was. And the best tools for the job are those most proven. In digital marketing, that’s display ads.
Now, don’t roll your eyes! They haven’t aged in dog years. We just need to teach you a few new tricks to unlock their potential. Chances are you’ve felt frustrated by display ads. Had diminishing returns. Failed to see them translate into account engagement or even pipeline when using target account lists (TAL). But that’s not solely down to display ads, it's an issue of alignment.
Align the process to achieve precision
Tools and tactics need to work together to protect the ecosystem that is the buyers’ journey.
By using account-based marketing and demand strategies in unison, marketers can create a predictable — and reliable — pipeline using TALs to orchestrate cross-channel with content syndication and display ads.
You can’t keep it separated — you’ve got to get it integrated
Integrated Media is using digital display advertising and content syndication (CS) together, rather than employing the tactics separately, to create a predictable pipeline.
ABM Integrated Media is the next evolution of that process. By combining TALs, digital display ads and CS, marketers supercharge the process.
Integrated Media drives website traffic and leads, nurtures the full buying group and accelerates opportunity creation. The benefits are threefold, but the potential is limitless.
Consider the Benefits of Integrate Marketing:
Benefit 1: Quality leads, more website traffic and better results
Content syndication…
Content syndication, like display ads, often gets a bad rap. But the CS of today is much better than it used to be and guarantees 100% marketable and compliant leads, aligned with your criteria. So you’ll get the right buyers from the right target accounts.
Display ads…
The industry average on click-through rates (CTR) for digital display ads isn’t great, so marketers may, in isolation, dismiss them as a way to drive traffic. But while many might consider the ads annoying, even pointless, clicked or not, they still do their job. Beyond creating brand awareness, display ads actually drive website traffic from targeted accounts.
This is clearly highlighted in a study by Forrester.
While clicking on a display ad was the sixth-most popular action taken by B2B buyers in the last six months — backing up the belief they’re largely ignored — the most popular, taken by over 92% of respondents, was researching the company, solution, or topic featured in that very ad.
So, while buyers didn’t simply take the bait, they responded to them in the intended manner, making display ads potentially just as effective at driving traffic and helping win new business.
Better, together…
Here’s where the real wins can be gained. Combining CS and display ads increases the click-through-rate up to 10X over industry benchmarks for B2B advertising as demonstrated in our recent case study with Hammer which I'll talk through in more detail below.
Sales velocity was increased 37% for leads exposed to dynamic, personalised display ads based on behavioural and CRM data (Integrate Modulo Case Study).
Benefit 2: Nurture the group to win the business
“80% of buying decisions are made by a buying group of more than three people. Individuals participate in the decision process as influencers, users, champions, or decision-makers, but it’s the team that makes the decision” - Forrester.
Count on CS to get the right people
CS acquires the right mix of personas from the buying group at an account. You can run segmented ABM content syndication programs targeting specific job functions, and levels, with different content to get the right combination of buyers from each account.
Count on display ads to give the right person the right message
Digital display ads engage and create company, product, and solution awareness with the entire buying group to ensure each member is educated on your product, offerings and results. Each member getting the right message at the right time maximises the chances of the group making the right decision.
Benefit 3: A faster pipeline and more opportunities
Giving buyers the best experience
B2B buyers only reach out to sales when they’ve done their research, so it's essential their research process runs smoothly, otherwise they’ll never get in touch.
Integrated Media creates a holistic, progressive nurture experience that accelerates their research process, by meeting all of their needs, before they’re realised.
The right leads with no hooks
CS only acquire opted-in leads that you can nurture with the right message, all the way to sales.
It’s important to note here, that CS leads need to enter email nurture flows to continue their education and development into marketing qualified leads (MQL) because, as you already know, not all leads are created equal.
A three-step process
Display ads can be run with a three-step nurture progressing buyers from an account to the next important message based on their interaction with it. This way, marketers can create an experience for buying group members not captured by CS at the account. Together, this accelerates pipeline development and opportunity creation.
The proof is in the pipeline — and here it is
With limited budget, but a clear strategy to accelerate marketing-generated pipeline, the marketing team at Hammer needed to establish a systematic approach to creating awareness and generating demand with their ideal customer profile (ICP) across the brand and reach buying groups with precision.
Problem was, their tech stack had gaps, so their audience data wasn’t great, and they were unable to accurately attribute new pipeline and closed-won business to the marketing channels they were using. The team needed better leads that contributed to ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment), their pipeline, and closed-won opportunities, as well as the ability to see what channels were working.
By using Integrate Marketplace ABM Integrated Media Solution, Hammer collected 750 high-quality leads from buying groups from ICP accounts and their ads achieved a CTR 10X higher than the industry average. This delivered 18 new sales opportunities within large enterprise accounts, creating over 1.5M+ in value.
Integrated Marketing: Learn more to earn more
Ok, so now you have an overview of how it works, and have seen the proof really does come down the pipeline… and, more importantly, you’re still reading. So, if you’re curious how ABM Integrated Media could work for you, why not give our helpful eBook How to Create Predictable Pipeline with ABM Integrated Media a read.
It explains exactly how AMB Integrated Media engages specific buyer personas at target accounts with a blend of Content Syndication and display ads to create predictable pipeline; how it supports top-of-funnel demand by filling it with leads from target accounts, and how it aligns demand marketing and ABM to make you more efficient at a time when you’re asked to do more with less.
The eBook also shows you exactly how AMB IM is put into action through a six-step process.
Display ads, they still work, you just need to learn how to make them work for you.
You’ve got to get your systems integrated.