Every ad platform (except LinkedIn) is built for B2C marketers. To target B2B campaigns on traditionally B2C channels, marketers need data that they may be unable to get first-hand. It makes them look for alternative solutions and creative ways to use typically B2C ad platforms for B2B acquisition.
Primer's CEO, Keith Putnam-Delaney, shared his insights on effective B2B targeting in the recent Click and Mortar podcast episode. Find the key takeaways and professional tips from Keith in our post.
B2B targeting limitations and what can be done
Most platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube are tailored for B2C consumer targeting because that's where the vast majority of the advertising revenue lies. On top of that, it's much easier to capture consumer demographic data than to get accurate information on a company's revenue.
Keith admits that B2B gets the short end of the stick when it comes to marketing:
Most of the distribution channels that exist for getting discovered as a product are built for consumer companies. The Facebook algorithm is optimized for consumer targeting, as just one example."
The good news is B2B targeting tools can help you obtain the benefits of consumer targeting for business-to-business campaigns. Platforms like Primer allow marketers to create custom ICP audiences from unique databases. Once pushed into Meta, for example, you can reach the right customers across platforms with considerably higher match rates of up to 40-60%.
I like highly personalized, well-targeted ads. I like finding things that are cool and relevant to me and that is a privilege that a lot of B2C companies have. More B2B companies should have that privilege, too." – said Keith.
5 steps to achieve better B2B outcomes with consumer advertising algorithms
Now, let's take a closer look at using consumer targeting algorithms and how to make them work for B2B marketing. Here’s where we at Primer see the opportunities and what Primer uses to target prospects in 5 steps.
Step #1. Get third-party data and create audiences
First-party data is sort of what's driving a lot of digital marketing these days, especially as cookie restrictions have bitten a lot of ad tech players. But if you're a B2B company, you have to go out there and tap into third-party data sources."
With reliable and relevant third-party data, you get valuable information about potential leads and can select those that are truly worth your attention and investment. These people comprise your target audience and are the most likely to convert and respond to your marketing activities. For an audience to be reachable outside of LinkedIn, however, you need B2C identifiers, like a personal email, in addition to that work email.
Where to get third-party data?
There are dozens of decent platforms that provide companies with access to databases. But for bridging the B2B2C divide, there aren't so many. Primer is one of them. You could also look at LiveRamp, Metadata, ZoomInfo MarketingOS, etc. Within Primer, you can use the ICP audiences feature to build a custom audience from an extensive database specifying your ICP criteria. It frees you from the need to gather data points yourself, wasting lots of effort to prepare for further use. Everything is highly automated and takes minimum time to set up.
We basically allow you to come into Primer and — just like you would build an audience in LinkedIn — you can craft an audience in Primer of certain manufacturing company, VPs of IT and manufacturing companies in the US and push it to multiple ad platforms."
Step #2. Reach accounts through social media
Once you accumulate enough data and create B2B audiences, you can push the data into marketing and advertising channels to reach the necessary your buyers, but on B2C channels like Google, Meta, Reddit, etc. with high match rates. It allows you to achieve the same level of consumer targeting and considerably increases the ROI of your advertising efforts.
You can push it (data) out to Facebook, push it out to Google, push it out to other destinations as an audience that will actually have a high match rate because we're including, for example, those personal emails, but also a lot of other data points." – explains Keith.
When you have proper third-party data and audiences, the usual B2B marketing limitations are no longer an issue. You can effectively use the advertising capabilities of all Meta products, run ads on Google, and launch well-targeted campaigns across other channels.
B2B accounts are pickier and more difficult to convert, but they are, first of all, people who like to see relevant ads that can improve their lives. Read how to generate high-quality leads from Meta using Primer.
Step #3. Compare the conversion lift of exposed vs. unexposed groups
Most B2C channels are mobile-first. Most B2B conversion are desktop. Unifying those different device sessions into unique visitors is impossible these days. So to make sure the B2B campaign you have launched on a B2C heave platform works, we suggest measuring the difference between an exposed group and an unexposed group. It allows you to understand the incremental lift on conversion of running ads on these channels.
Let's say you just take that audience and you run it on Instagram, you'll be able to compare the conversion rates of the folks that did NOT see your ads on Instagram to the folks that may have seen your ads on Instagram. They're still getting emails, they're still searching for us, but we see that running these ads actually increases our conversions on desktop."
It may be challenging to understand whether your approach works without such checks since the connection between interactions like Instagram ads and desktop conversions is not straightforward.
Step #4. Run retargeting campaigns
Another marketing approach we recommend is retargeting. B2B accounts that already know something about your company are more likely to convert. These are warmer leads that have some level of trust toward your brand and can interact with it next time, even if your previous attempts were futile.
Retargeting is super easy using ad platforms' pixels, but pixels are increasingly blocked so we also use website reveal or reverse-IP solutions to build retargeting audiences. These tools (like Koala, Warmly, HubSpot's Breeze, Leadfeeder, 6sense, etc.) identify the companies visiting our site. We then stream that data into Primer via our CRM and convert them into ad audiences that we use in campaigns that have more mid-funnel content. A nice bonus is that we can deploy those retargeting audiences on any ad channel.
We take kind of a two-tiered approach here. We have awareness-based campaigns really pushing towards thought leadership content. And then we do more, retargeting mid-funnel campaigns. We also use Primer for retargeting in more consideration-level campaigns because there're interesting ways to leverage website reveal or reverse IP to build audiences in Primer."
Step #5. Use audiences for Google ad targeting
In addition to all the listed B2B consumer targeting approaches, don't forget about Google. Google Search remains one of the most popular advertising channels, particularly in B2B. But there are oftentimes a lot of expensive, unqualified clicks in Google Search. With custom audiences, you can considerably narrow down who sees your ads. We use Primer audiences to increase our Search ROAS:
Two strategies where you can use Primer audiences (in Search). So, just saying, 'Hey, I never want to serve an ad to any of my existing users, especially a branded search ad.' Or go beyond that. I never want to serve a search ad to anybody outside of my ICP.
Another strategy is inclusion audiences. We've got these keywords that are super expensive to bid on.
Why don't we only run them towards folks that we know are prequalified through the Primer audience? This way we are dialed in so that we win on those expensive keywords, but we manage our budget well.
If you have a pretty big addressable market, we've seen folks using Primer audiences as a signal in performance max campaigns and getting a lot of juice from it too."
Read also the B2B Marketer's Guide to pMax & Demand Gen with Primer Audiences
Summing up
Social media and other marketing channels impose more limitations on B2B campaigns than B2C. You won't get the same level of granularity and targeting in B2B without additional tools like Primer. Primer allows digital marketers to use all channels to the fullest through ICP audiences, retargeting, and other advanced features. The platform provides digital marketers access to extensive datasets to automatically create custom audiences and push them into multiple channels. This results in higher match rates and better B2B advertising efficiency.
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