There is an old saying that goes like this: What you can’t measure, you can’t improve. It’s a fundamental truth that haunts the dreams and ambitions of marketers the world over. The ability to measure, test and change your tactics at the click of a button is part of the appeal of social media advertising.
B2B marketers should take note. According to Meta, more than 200 million companies regularly use their social media platforms. Facebook is constantly developing its advertising metrics to address the sector. Now it’s gone a step further introducing an upgrade to their B2B targeting facilities too. You can now can add the following to your ad set audiences:
Social media advertising is an important marketing tool but for the most impact it should be used as part of an integrated, multi-channel campaign. Read on to find out more.
In the past, one of the few ways to measure the success of a marketing campaign was through direct response advertising. Marketers created targeted campaigns using demographic data, postcode maps, magazine readerships. They elicited a direct response which was then used as justification to continue, or dis-continue, a particular campaign.
David Ogilvy (the father of advertising) wrote “no marketing copy should ever leave your office without first being vetted by a direct response expert”. That’s how he built the famous Ogilvy & Mather marketing agency with just a few thousand dollars and a small list of prospects. He spent the early years of his career writing copy for direct mail, developing his marketing talent with painstaking hours spent researching target markets, eliciting direct responses from his prospects. Ogilvy’s early mail campaigns taught him how to write copy that sells. It was a skill that served him well for his entire career until he retired to his 16th century chateau, among the lavender fields of southwest France.
These days, we’re lucky. Direct response is just as important, but we can measure it in many more ways. To Ogilvy, direct response meant picking up the phone or returning a coupon. Now online advertising platforms offer detailed metrics on almost every aspect of a campaign, reach, impressions, click through, bounce rate, conversions. We can only guess at what the great man would have done with such a wealth of data.
With these kinds of tools at our disposal, the issue we face is not so much how to measure, it’s how to reach the right people in the first place. Interestingly enough, the solution to that problem got a little easier recently when Meta announced new targeting tools for B2B advertisers on Facebook.
According to Meta’s official data:
“More than 200 million businesses and 2.9 billion people use our apps daily. Meta is a destination for B2B marketers looking to drive engagement and establish a connection with their customers.”
With numbers like that, targeting is more important than ever.
Returning to the example of David Ogilvy, every great marketer must be aware that targeting is more than just finding the right person in an organisation. It’s also about working out which channels to use, and the answer to that is rarely, if ever, a single route. Ogilvy used every tool available to him, from traditional advertising through to telemarketing, TV and radio, mail campaigns and even PR stunts. He used every trick in the book, in fact he wrote several of the very first books on marketing and advertising.
Well targeted multi-channel marketing offers far greater ROI than using just one single means of communication. Facebook adverts can be used alongside Direct Mail, Telemarketing, Email campaigns, each with a tailored message suitable for that media. Multichannel campaigns are much more effective at communicating your brand values, your mission, and above all, generating a long term, sustainable return on investment.
Thanks to Meta’s new B2B advertising tools, the social media channel can be targeted with precision. To achieve that same level of accuracy for the other channels, you need high quality data. That’s where we can help. Our business data lists will give you access to more than 4 million decision makers in over 2000 markets.
Find out how we can help your organization create multi-channel marketing campaigns that really get results. Contact us, we’ve got a team of marketing experts and strategists on hand ready take your business to the next level.
