The Real Reasons Programmatic Ad Buys Fail in B2B Marketing

Fail Road SignProgrammatic buying, driven by real-time bidding (RTB), is the fastest growing segment of digital marketing today. But it isn’t ready yet for today’s enterprise B2B marketer.

Time and time again, B2B marketers fall prey to a wonderful sounding sales pitch for their demand generation plan that goes something like this:

“We use 100’s of data points and sophisticated technology that optimizes every single impression in your campaign. Through our connections to every major exchange, we evaluate billions of impressions across millions of sites every day to find the exact audience and inventory you need at a fraction of the cost you would otherwise pay.”

Wow, sign me up, right? Cost-effective, constantly optimized, highly targeted. Get this program live, I’m taking a vacation!

And then you see the results. [Read more…]

Everyone Hates Your Most Effective Online Ads

Angry LadyBanner ads work. Banner ads don’t work. Banner ads are just wallpaper.

It doesn’t matter what your opinion is of banner ads, someone out there has a study that will agree with your position.

However, as online publishers develop new “higher impact” online ads, recently published results should serve as a warning to both publishers and advertisers::

Don’t allow ads to come between your audience and the content they are looking for. [Read more…]

LinkedIn: Do New Offerings Make It the King of B2B?

Picture of a Lion at the Oregon ZooIf you are in B2B advertising, you cannot ignore LinkedIn. With great reach (#22 US site in January 2013 according to ComScore), extensive profile data actively maintained by the audience and granular targeting options, LinkedIn is a powerhouse in the world of B2B advertising.

So when LinkedIn introduces a new advertising option, as a B2B advertiser, you need to pay attention. Here are two new offerings LinkedIn introduced in the last quarter that seem to have slipped under the radar of most B2B marketers. [Read more…]

Banners Don’t Drive Leads in B2B Marketing

Wrong WayIf your goal is to deliver leads that you can tie back directly to your marketing investment, do not make banners the core of your enterprise B2B marketing program. Period.

Lead generation is still one of the top objectives of enterprise B2B marketers and many B2B publishers continue to propose banners as a way to deliver leads.

Publishers that continue to do this are doing a disservice to marketers that don’t know better and are losing the respect of those that do.

Banners don’t drive leads. Remember that. [Read more…]

A New Way To Connect Twitter To Lead Generation

B2B marketers are so anxious to generate leads from social media they are turning Twitter into a list for cold calls and mass email blasts.

In the last couple weeks, two companies have emailed or called me because I follow influential sales and marketing accounts on Twitter.

There is nothing social about this! Marketers are just turning social into a source of email or telemarketing lists for mass outbound marketing.

Here is a better way, along with actual results, that companies can use to drive leads through social media. [Read more…]

B2B Online Advertising: Improve Targeting by 10x (or more!)

B2B advertising begins with the target audience. Until you know who you are targeting, you cannot identify the publications, sites or ad networks you should be working with.

However, one of the first things advertisers do is generalize their target audience. Here are a couple examples of how B2B target audiences are generalized for advertising:

  • Juniper targets companies with large data centers. However, before that can be turned into a broad advertising plan, it is generalized as large companies or specific industries likely to have large data centers.
  • UPS targets companies with national and international logistics and high volume shipping needs. Again, that is generalized into industries, large companies or even geographic regions before it can be used as a target for advertising campaigns.

What if you didn’t need to generalize your audience? Instead of targeting large companies or industries, what if Juniper could directly target companies with large data centers or UPS could directly target companies with complex logistics needs?

Today they can. [Read more…]

4 Rules For Better Online Advertising Performance

You have agonized over your copy, crafting something with depth and nuance. You tell the story around the table of how the message and design combine to illustrate your brand’s superiority.

As you explain it heads begin to nod, the connection becomes clear and the program moves forward.

The problem is, you expect your audience to find the same winding road from creative to communication objective, with no map or guide. [Read more…]

CRM Retargeting: The Shiny New Advertising Tactic?

What if banner ads could become as targeted and relevant as emails?

One of the emerging trends in online advertising promises to make this possible.

Rather than targeting an audience based on various characteristics, CRM retargeting allows you to target segments of your CRM database with online ads. [Read more…]

8 Tips for Evaluating B2B Online Advertising Opportunities

Last week we looked at 6 ways to find new B2B advertising opportunities using free resources and a bit of creativity. But how do you evaluate new potential publishers you are not familiar with?

Of course, you can look at each publisher’s own audience profile and costs (and you should), but don’t stop there.

Here are eight ways to dig a little deeper and determine if an online publisher is a good potential match for your campaign, again using only free tools and a bit of creativity. [Read more…]

Cookie Deletion and Measurement: What you Need to Know

Cookie Crumbs in the LibrarySome days it seems online marketing revolves around cookies, those small text files stored in your browser that may be automatically deleted by browsers or routinely deleted by individuals.

Cookies are used (among other things) for measuring performance, targeting advertising and personalizing sites. But how reliable are cookies and more importantly, how does that impact our data and decisions?

As a way to identify an individual, third party cookies are unreliable. However, most advertising applications for cookies assume they are used to identify a person consistently over time. [Read more…]