Most B2B marketers, regardless of brand or agency experience, have likely faced this scenario: a budget-conscious marketer insists on investing in PPC campaigns despite obvious issues that hinder their effectiveness .
We’ve worked with some of these customers before, trying to solve problems while simultaneously managing payment media, similar to building an airplane while we fly it. However, this approach was rarely successful. Typically, customers did not recognize the value of means of payment, which led to budget cuts, which was a predictable result.
These days, we are determined to ask clients to address their issues first or work with them to build a better foundation before creating any media campaigns.
Here are common issues that early-stage brands need to solve before spending a dollar on media. This includes:
CRM configuration. Lead follow-up strategies. Mobile Website UX. Ad alignment on landing page. Public understanding. Performance expectations.
1. CRM configuration
The most common issues for CRM setup revolve around tracking as well as lead scoring and progression.
When it comes to tracking, clients often lack the basics for fields to convey the right information (campaign, source, medium, click IDs, etc.). If they’re not set up correctly, we don’t get the data, which means we can’t get to the bottom of it and find out how our efforts are working to drive the business.
We can see the conversion data in the UI of each platform. However, without understanding which campaigns drove lower funnel results, such as opportunities or revenue, or even MQL, it’s almost impossible for us to optimize the client’s budget.
Speaking of back-end data, customers need to have a way to capture opportunities and/or track their progress through the funnel so we understand what’s really working. Without this data, we can’t go much further than understanding how many leads we’ve generated, which means brands could be perpetually throwing money at unwanted leads.
If you can’t look into your CRM and tell, with confidence, where your best leads and opportunities are coming from, you’re not ready to run paid campaigns.
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2. Lead follow-up strategies
Let’s say you activate the media campaigns and generate tons of leads directly to your target audience. Great! What are the next steps to engage and guide these prospects through the buying journey?
Ideally, you’d have your email outreach and nurturing process dialed in, with triggers based on intent level. But major SaaS companies take an average of two days to get back to users requesting demos, for a ChiliPiper Report 2023. This is as intentional as B2B.
If you can’t explain what happens when a qualified lead arrives in your CRM at every stage of the funnel, that’s reason enough not to spend on leads. Worst-case scenario: You spend money, drive leads, and customers get careless and give up on your business, which means you’ve spent money to improve your reputation.
3. Mobile Website UX
Optimizing mobile landing pages for conversions is crucial to getting the most out of your paid media. Basics like optimizing lead generation forms are table stakes, but we still see brands with UX that is frustrating enough to get users coming from the most aligned and highly intentional queries to bounce.
Before you launch any campaign, make sure that mobile users will have a good experience when they arrive at your site.
For example, we still see brands come to us with mobile landing pages (LMPs) that reach the user with a form without explaining the benefits or next steps above the fold, making it difficult for paid campaigns to perform of the door, no matter how tight it is. query/announcement/LP alignment.
Dig deeper: 5 tips for creating a high-converting PPC landing page
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4. Ad alignment on the landing page
Speaking of ad alignment in LP, do a couple of basic checks to make sure your flow isn’t out of step.
Your ad’s call to action (CTA) and your landing page’s CTA must be the same (or at least very similar). The experience should match the expectations you’ve set up for the user when they visit your site.
Better yet, make sure your keyword intent and landing page are aligned. For example, if it’s a top-of-funnel keyword, the homepage or services page might be fine.
Instead, comparison or competitor elimination keywords should go to a page that explains your differentiators or a page that shows a comparison chart.
My other recommendation is to make sure your CTA aligns with your keyword intent. For example, if you’re bidding on educational keywords (eg, “how do I…?”), try asking users to subscribe to a blog or newsletter as a starting point so you can capture their data for educational purposes.
5. Public understanding
See if you can answer these questions:
Who benefits most from your product or service? What problem or challenge do you solve for your audience? Are they even aware they have this problem?
Most brands can answer the second question, but the first can produce murkier answers, and the third is a toss-up.
Can’t answer them all? This will hinder the efficiency of your targeting, and you may not understand that you need to build awareness (eg on Meta or LinkedIn or the Google Display Network) before leaning into search to try to capture intent that does not exist
6. Performance expectations
If you need to generate more revenue in the next week or two, it won’t just happen by activating B2B paid media campaigns. Whether you’re setting your expectations or figuring out how to communicate with your higher-ups, you need to understand that it takes time to nail things down.
For new campaigns, you’ll need time to analyze whether your audience is responding well and whether there’s a product-to-market fit.
Also, for any campaign that uses machine learning (eg LinkedIn, Google’s Performance Max campaigns, Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns) to help with targeting, you’ll need to feed the algorithms with enough volume (and hopefully offline conversion tracking data) to help them optimize.
Combine that with B2B’s long sales cycle—rare is the click that leads directly to a closed win—and you have to build in time for any new campaign to pay off in the form of revenue.
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If you can safely say that none of the above is a problem, you’re ready to start testing paid campaigns.
That said, even mature companies can use a reminder to do some sanity checks and update previous initiatives. Either way, a little fine-tuning of the fundamentals will go a long way in improving the ROI of any media campaign you follow.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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