Paid marketing strategies for each stage of the customer journey

As you know, paid marketing gives the push that is needed to improve a company’s visibility and customer engagement. In this fast-moving, dynamic digital space, you can stay ahead with paid marketing. 

As per the B2B Content Marketing 2022 report⁽¹⁾, among the organizations that use paid content distribution channels, 77% use social media, and 65% use search engine marketing/pay-per-click. Amongst paid social media marketing, LinkedIn leads.

In this blog, see how you can use various paid marketing strategies on Google and LinkedIn to boost every stage of the customer journey, as well as a few best practices

Paid Marketing Strategies for Each Stage of the Customer Journey 

1. Awareness  - 

Building brand awareness is a common digital marketing goal. The more you make your brand visible, the more you stay on top of your potential customers' minds, which eases decision-making. You can build brand awareness using the following paid marketing strategies:

• Brilliant, engaging, dynamic ads on Google Display Network – Display ads are an excellent way to make your brand visible to your target audiences. As per Google, the Google Display Network reaches 90% of internet users worldwide. Before you begin, it is critical to understand the needs of your target audience and the types of websites they visit for work purposes, as this is where your ads will appear. You could execute these ads in-house or hire a digital marketing agency that can help you with planning and running Google ad campaigns.
  

• Native ads on the #1 B2B Marketing Platform, LinkedIn – With 850+ million professionals, including decision-makers and influencers, LinkedIn is the go-to platform for building awareness. You can use native ads or sponsored content targeted toward your relevant audience. These ads appear in their feed and help them learn about your brand. This content can be in the form of branding messages, webinars, catchy infographics, or anything that helps them recognize your brand as a trustworthy partner when the time comes to look for solutions.

2. Consideration - 

As the prospect is preparing to compare products, the searches are a little more specific, maybe brand oriented. Here, your goal could be more website visits, customer engagement, or video views. Here is how you can go about it:

• Relevant native ads (sponsored content) on LinkedIn – With LinkedIn, you can run campaigns for well-targeted audiences. With detailed filters (skills, title, company size), you can target those who are most likely to be looking for a solution like the one offered by your business. 
  

• Video ads on LinkedIn – Video ads in the form of sponsored content on LinkedIn instantly capture attention, especially amid textual posts. Product videos, testimonial videos, and explainer videos can help boost this stage. The brand recall also improves, which is another goal you want to meet.

• Video ads on YouTube through Google Ads – When YouTube viewers⁽²⁾ watch a video about a product, their chances of making a purchase increase. All you need is a well-planned, impressive video campaign. In Google Ads, select Video as the campaign type. Choose a video format: bumper (a 6-second non-skippable ad), skippable in-stream videos (which the viewer can skip after 5 seconds), or non-skippable in-stream ads (15 seconds or shorter, which the viewer can’t skip). The rest is similar to setting up a Google ad; you need to define the audience and set the budget.
  

3. Conversion - 

As the prospects inch closer to the decision, they search for more brand-specific keywords. Lead generation or requests for a demo or call-back could be your goal. So, focus on commercial keywords (such as reviews and comparisons) or transactional keywords (such as buy and purchase). Here is how you can employ paid marketing tools:

• Join the need with the solution through Search ads – To address the very specific needs of the audience at this stage, search ads are quite effective. When you set up the keywords in Google Ads, your search results will come right at the top of the organic results, and they can’t be missed by your audience.
  

• Display Ads across many websites – You can even use ads on the Google display network to generate leads and increase the website's micro-conversions. But be ready to tailor your campaign as you go. You may not know from the start what will click with your audience—offers, CTAs, keywords, etc. Once you start understanding which kind of content is getting fewer clicks, you can optimize the content for better responses. Retargeting is another important strategy applicable here.

• Retargeting through LinkedIn or Google ads – Using LinkedIn's free feature, Insight Tag, you can retarget LinkedIn members who have visited your website. Similarly, for Google ads, you can retarget those who have visited your app or website. To push them toward conversion, you can build ads talking about demos and offers, and the landing page also must offer something worthwhile.
  
  

Best Practices 

1. Start wide, then narrow down - 

The fact is, we don’t always know everything about our audiences. What if we were focusing on one set of B2B clients, not realizing that there was another untapped set? Hence, it can benefit you to start wide in the beginning. If you are a healthcare company, you could focus on several healthcare roles. Monitor which segments respond well to your content. Learning about the interested audiences will help you customize the content further to meet more specific needs and eventually get better-quality leads.

2. Prepare to modify and optimize   - 

In continuation of the above step, it is best not to stick to one type of ad. Study the data coming in from the ad platforms and optimize your ads for better keywords, copy, CTAs, and landing pages.

3. Retarget - 

It helps to see these strategies along with the fact that B2B marketing is not the same as B2C marketing. A paid ad is no guarantee of an instant purchase, as seen in B2C. So, let your ads test the waters first. Then, revise and build more effective campaigns.

The above strategies indicate that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time. If the content is rich and still valid, then make it accessible to more and more audiences for their benefit by repurposing it. In return, you boost your SEO results and gain trust of your target audiences. That’s a win-win situation.

Reference and Citation-

1. https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/b2b-power-content-marketing-research/

2. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9219326?hl=en-AU

3. https://www.invespcro.com/blog/ad-retargeting-2/