An Insight into Display Advertising for B2B Marketers

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One of the primary goals for B2B marketers is to ensure that the money that they spend on display advertising offers returns. For marketers a plethora of tools are available for reaching out to potential customers. The trick lies in matching the campaign objective to the right channel. With display advertising marketers can target people based on their specific interests. This article will talk about getting transparency in display advertising so that you can witness its true impact on revenue.

Display ads differ from paid search ads. In case of display ads you will be able to choose from different options you have for placing ads. This will help you to find the right combination of filters and sites. The following display ad strategies should be an integral part of your B2B marketing strategy:

Ascertaining where competitors are showing their display ads

With the help of tools like WhatRunsWhere, you can gain an insight into the competition which prevails. All you have to do is simply type in your competitor’s site and find out the media buying channels which they are using. Check the publisher’s sites on which they run their ads, find out the ad volume for each site, check the ad images and take a look at the ad strength rating which depends on how long the ad has been on display.

Filter ad placements according to layers

There are several layers which can be seamlessly interchanged to target the right audience on display networks. As you filter the ad placements according to these layers it will be easier for you to locate the right audience and lower costs per click. The layers can be divided into several categories: placement layer, contextual layer and interest layer, topics layer, demographics and geography layer.

The placement layer comprises of the sites where your ads appear in. It is important to understand the sites where your ad performs well in and identify those sites where you do not want your ads to appear. The placement layer will help you to decide this.

Under the contextual layer, a list of keywords are provided, and Google will decide the sites on which your ads will appear. For example, if your keyword is related to technology, your ad will show up on tech websites.

The interest layer refers to specific groups of people which Google identifies based on their browsing behavior. These are also known as interest groups. It can be a set of people who love to travel or a group of individuals who love to read books. This testing layer will help you to identify the right audience for your brand.

Marketers need to make a distinction among the interest groups and identify their niche audience. There lies a difference between the affinity group and the in-market group. The affinity group consists of people who love aspecific topic and follow the latest news and blogs closely. The in-marketing group is a set of individuals who are carrying out research and are primarily interested in purchases.

In the topics layer you can classify people according to topics and target the topics on display networks. The demographics and geographic layer as the name suggests, will allow you to use age, gender and location as filters.

Find out about the media buying options available

There are multiple media buying channels which are available today. You can make the best use of Youtube video ads, Gmail sponsored promotions or the non-Google display networks.

Taking a step further

You can take your B2B marketing endeavors to the next level with few important strategies. As you must be aware, at the most basic level is the Adwords. However, Adwords alone is not sufficient. It suffices for marketers who only want to know whether their ads are being seen and whether they are generating clicks. There is no way to measure lead quality and identify the duplicate leads. You can consider using marketing automation and Adwords together. With this dual tool approach you can connect clicks to leads with ease and find out which ads the leads came through. Another approach which you can adopt, is to combine Adwords, marketing automation and marketing attribution. You will get a complete view into how effective the display ad has been. Market attribution helps marketers to know which ads have generated a first-click or which have led to conversions.

For success it is important to regularly check the sites on which your ads are displayed. Consider running a   campaign which compares sites frequented by your target audience. By uploading an email list to Adwords, you can create a custom audience group. Think of the layers and display ad success will not be difficult to attain.