B2B Advertising Essentials

By AJ Wilcox

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About AJ Wilcox

• 8 years of PPC and SEO experience

• Began heavy B2B focus 2 ½ years ago• Stumbled onto LinkedIn Ads and they won me over

• Saw awesome successes

• Quit my full-time job to start B2Linked.com

• Live in Lehi, UT with my wife and 3 kids

• Triathlete, exotic car lover, soulless ginger

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B2B Definition

• Business-to-Business (B2B)• Selling to a business rather than the end user/consumer

• 72% of the Fortune 1000 are B2B• B2B is less sexy than B2C, but it’s where the money’s at

• Business users are still consumers, so they’re being bombarded by B2C communication constantly

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How Do You Reach these Business Users?• Paid Search (Google Adwords/Bing Ads) keyword-based

targeting• Great because it’s intent-based

• CEOs type the same keywords as janitors, so intent is the only thing communicated

• How do you ensure your dollars are spent on someone with BANT?

• Budget

• Authority

• Need

• Timing #ExpertSession

B2B Ad Networks

• AdTech Vendors• Bizo – fuzzy targeting, expensive

• Quantcast – lookalike targeting, expensive

• DemandBase – company IP targeting (advertise to the CEO and the janitor), expensive

• Targeted Publishers• You’re extremely likely to reach CEOs if you advertise on CEO.com.

• Paid Social• Twitter – weak targeting, inexpensive

• Facebook – Weak B2B targeting, inexpensive

• LinkedIn – precise targeting, inexpensive

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LinkedIn Advertising

• No-brainer for B2B advertisers• Users keep their profiles updated

• Can target based on almost anything in someone’s profile

• Massive site = near-unlimited traffic

• Users are in the business mindset

• Self-serve means you get full control

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LinkedIn Ads 101

• Structure: Account>Campaign>Ads• Paid search has MCC>Account>Campaign>Adgroup>Ads/Keywords• Bids, budget, and targeting live at campaign level

• $2 Minimum CPC• Not uncommon to pay between $4-$6/click

• CPM or CPC Bidding

• Campaign Nomenclature• Keyword-based advertising, name campaigns and adgroups around keyword

themes• i.e. ‘Sales Training Videos’

• Audience-based advertising, name campaigns around audience• i.e. ‘Sales Manager Titles | US’

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LinkedIn Ads 101 cont’d

• Ad Units• Text Ads – Right rail

• 50x50px image

• .04% CTR is good

• 25 char headline, 75 char adline

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LinkedIn Ads 101 cont’d

• Ad Units• Sponsored Updates – News feed

• 350x268px image

• .4% CTR is good

• Character limits

• 155 char intro

• 60 char title

• 155 char description

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LinkedIn Ads 101 cont’d

• Targeting (profile completeness dependent)• Job Title (Project Manager)• Job Function (Marketing)• Seniority (Manager)• Company Name (Microsoft)• Category/Industry (Hi-tech, consumer goods)• School Name (Stanford)• Skills (nunchuck, MySQL)• Group (Project Management R Us)• Gender (M/F/Both)• Age (55+)• Company Size (51-2000)*• Geography (San Francisco Bay Area)• In any combination

• Exclusions on all except Geo

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LinkedIn Ads 101 cont’d

• 4 Pillars of Targeting• Titles

• Job Function + Seniority

• Skills + Seniority

• Groups + Seniority

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CMO

Groups

Job

Function

Titles

Skills

Challenges

• Conversion Tracking• Have to do it within your analytics

• Profile Completeness• Classifying open-ended inputs is hard• LI has to read into weak profiles

• Single-domain Traffic• Whole platform just for traffic from one domain

• Relevancy Score is Ruthless• RS can sideline your ads entirely

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Making the Most of LinkedIn

•Optimization

•A/B Testing / Tracking

•Offer Testing & Nurture

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Relevancy Score and Optimization

• Your goal on any ad network is to get your cost per conversion to the lowest possible point

• LinkedIn is interesting in this regard because their KPI they optimize on is totally different than the one you’re optimizing for.

• Say you’re running 2 ads.

• A has a CTR of .61% and a CPA of $48

• B has a CTR of .40% and a CPA of $41

• Which ad is better?

• LinkedIn would tell you A is better, but you would say B because who cares that fewer people were interested in clicking on it if the traffic is more qualified? You only pay by the click, so it doesn’t cost you anything but traffic velocity.

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A/B Testing

• Always be testing 2 ads in each campaign• Can do ‘Rotate Evenly’, but it hurts QS

• Tag each ad individually with Google’s URL builder • https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

• Keep a spreadsheet with your code so you can report on it

• In enterprise environments, you can go deeper with Custom Data Import (Dimension Widening)

• https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3191417?hl=en

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Offer Testing

• LinkedIn optimization skews to content • Rewards CTR over value to advertiser

• Build nurture funnel to make the best use of lighter offers• Webinar

• Whitepaper

• Gated content

• At least use retargeting, if not email capture to nurture/drip streams

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AJ Wilcox’s Contact Info

• Twitter: @WilcoxAJ

• Email: AJ@B2Linked.com

Feel free to hit me up with any questions!

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