This year, close to 220 billion US dollars will have been spent on media advertising in the USA alone. (Statista, 2018). With all that money being spent, you want to make sure you’re getting as much as you can from your B2B media advertising. This article will outline some simple ways that you can make sure you’re getting the most leads possible from your advertising spend.
Go Where Your Target Market IsAdvertising in a media publication can be an effective way to reach potential customers, but it’s important that you’re advertising in the right places. So, what you should look for in a B2B media publication when advertising?
Do the readers fit into your target market? Are they from the right industries? Right company sizes? How about their job level – are you looking for CEOs or engineers? Different magazines will offer different readerships. You need to do your research and determine whether the people reading the publication are actually likely to buy what you’re selling.
A large pool of readers will (generally) offer you more leads and ultimately more sales. Of course, you should also look at how many of the readers fall into your target market and find where most people from your target market are.
Just because a publication has lots of readers doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best place to advertise. Do people trust the publication and look at it as a valuable source of information? If the answer is no, it may be best to look elsewhere.
Now you’ve found out where your target market is spending their time, you need to take a look at pricing and how much ROI you can get from the advertising. Maybe one media outlet has more of your target market but costs $5,000 for one high visibility ad, but another has fewer readers but only costs $500 for an advertisement. You could place your ad in the cheaper publication ten times for the same cost – which could help increase your brand recognition in the readers and ultimately produce a higher return. Similarly, depending on where you place the advertisement (i.e. front page of online magazine or banner ad on the website or in an email to the readers) you will pay different amounts. Ask the sales rep for a media kit and information on where gets the most reads and most clicks for the lowest price.
Not every advertisement is created equal. You shouldn’t be throwing an ad together at the last minute – it should take some serious thought and be visually compelling.
A good ad should:
People should be able to look at your advertisement and quickly understand what it is that you’re offering. While creativity is fantastic, don’t make it so complicated that no one knows what you’re selling – you only have a few seconds to grab the audience’s attention so make sure your message can be understood in that time.
Your advertisement needs to look professional – and nothing is worse than a stretched-out, blurry image. Check with the sales rep what dimensions you need to provide the ad in and what file type they prefer.
Make sure to include your brand logo in a visible way. Even if someone doesn’t click your advertisement, they may remember your brand and search for you at a later time. Brand recognition is important, so keep it in mind when designing the ad.
A call-to-action is a sentence or button that encourages someone to perform a specific task. You need to decide what action you want the reader to take when they see your advertisement, and realistically in B2B marketing it’s not going to be “buy now.” A CTA can be almost anything, but try to steer away from anything too generic such as “learn more.” Instead, you could say “see how it works” or “discover the difference” – or you could aim for the reader to take a more specific action like “download brochure.” A call-to-action motivates the audience to take the next step in the buyer’s journey and helps to fill your pipeline with more, high-quality leads.
Have A Strong Landing PageNow you convinced someone to click your advertisement, you need to determine where you’re going to send them. The webpage a person is sent to after clicking on an ad is called the landing page. The landing page should directly relate to the content of the advertisement and further their understanding of what you’re offering.
Ideally, your landing page should:
If your ad spoke about an automated pigging system, they should land on a page that shows them the system and explains more about it. Don’t just send them to your homepage, they don’t want to search for the item or service they were interested in.
A brief form will help you to identify who the lead is and will give you a clear indication of interest. The form can be a brochure or white paper download or an offer for a salesperson to call them – but make sure it’s something they’re likely to want.
Your landing page will be one of the first places the lead interacts with your brand – make sure it gives off the right impression. In some cases, it may make sense to hire someone to help you create a landing page – or you could try to find a free template online to base your landing page off of.
Track Your LeadsOne of the best ways to increase ROI from your media outlet advertisement is by being able to identify and track the leads that click on the ad. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way is by getting as many people as possible to fill out the form on your landing page, the other way is with lead conversion software.
Conversion software is used to increase sales, improve marketing ROI, and save resources. The software identifies website visitors and tracks them as they travel through the sales pipeline. Using software like this, you can find out who’s interested in your offerings, what they’re specifically interested in and when they’re ready to be spoken to. Put simply – it takes a lot of the guesswork out of lead qualification.
ActiveConversion is partnered with a variety of media outlets and can be used to help you identify 5-10X more prospects clicking on your ads than you would without it. The more leads you can identify, the more opportunities you have to connect with potential buyers and make a sale.
Now you know what you can do to get more leads from your media advertising, it’s time to implement what you’ve learned. Interested in exploring media advertising with ActiveConversion software? Reach out to start the conversation.
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