Sam Choi 7 July 2016

Categories Advertising, B2B, Social Media, Strategy & Operations

How to Increase Engagement with Top Prospects Using Social Ads

This is part II of our four part series, “How to Drive B2B Pipeline with Social Ads”. In Part I we discussed how to generate scalable revenue by targeting the right prospects. Today we’ll uncover 3 surefire ways to increase engagement with the top 20% of prospects and lower acquisition costs.

Nurturing Existing Prospects

Customer acquisition is one of the most costly aspects of any business. B2B marketers tend to align marketing goals based on a cost per lead acquisition model.  This usually means dedicating budgets and resources to keep the top of the sales funnel full.

Yet, acquisition is just one piece to the customer lifecycle. Continually trying to add new prospects to your database drains cash and manpower.

New prospects may be aware of your brand, but you still need to win their trust. Your job is to show how your product/service solves a problem in their life (and worth the $$).

Be more efficient with your ad dollars. Re-engage and target leads who’ve shown an interest in your product/service, but haven’t purchased. Focus on each step the customer lifecycle to avoid a leaky marketing funnel.

Engagio’s Jon Miller, created one of my favorite customer lifecycle visualizations. In the image below, Miller showcases how an Account-Based Funnel acquisition model moves prospects to customers.

Why spend the majority of time and budget generating new contacts, when you have a database full of them?

In a study, Online Marketing Institute found it takes  7 to 13+ touches before a prospect becomes a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). Ensure you’re reaching segments who have established an initial interaction with your brand.

For example: a prospect visited your website, engaged with content, and filled out a form. This prospect is not only familiar with your offering, but wants to explore the benefits of your product/service.

So, how do I actually get in front of my warm prospects?

Social advertising, if done right, allows advertisers to funnel highly qualified prospects into a well-oiled, profitable sale’s pipeline.

The B2B PPC manager understands why multiple points of engagement positively impact bottom line, but struggle with the how. The challenge here is figuring out how to deliver relevant ad content that (gently) reminds warm leads of their initial interest.

Let’s look at a few ways you can reach, nurture, and accelerate the buying process for your ideal prospect base.

Website Visitor Retargeting

Here’s a frustrating stat: did you know up to 98% of your web visitors do not complete your desired action on the initial visit? If your only focus is new acquisitions, there’s a risk in spending tons of cash for an unconverted visitor (or lost opportunity).

Focusing on new acquisition in this way is costly, inefficient, and results in either poor quality or a low conversion rate.

However, all hope is not lost.

You have the ability to reintroduce your brand or repackage an offer to previous web visitors, even if they have not filled out a capture form.

But first, we need to lay some groundwork.

How to Setup Up Social Web Tracking

Facebook and Twitter Ads offer direct re-targeting options using a simple snippet of code to run across your entire web property.
Once those pixels are implemented across the selected website pages, you can start building custom audiences based on:

• Keywords in the URL
• Last visit date
• Exact step reached last in the conversion funnel. Such as filling out a webinar form.

Pro Tip: Use Google Tag Manager to install all your social web tracking code. Google created a tool designed to help marketers easily update tracking code in real-time, without the need of a web developer. And the best part is that Google gives it away for free.

Need a quick refresher on Facebook Website Custom Audiences? Learn how to map campaign goals to each Facebook Custom Audience: How to Remarket on Facebook with Website Custom Audiences.

How to Create a Facebook Website Custom Audience

The steps below include how to create and install a new Facebook pixel and how to refine website visitors into a defined audience.

Steps to Create a Facebook Website Custom Audience

1. Log in to your Facebook Business Manager or Facebook Ads account. Route to your desired Facebook Ads account.
2. Pull down the Ads Manager tab to reveal the Audiences menu option.
3. Select Website Traffic as your desired audience type.
4. Take a pause and review your options . You want to create the best audience segment to reach with your advertising campaign, right?
   • Try breaking down audience segments into micro-segments using different match type combinations.
   • It’s important to test, and even micro-segment, your audiences to pinpoint similar buying patterns or top performers for a given campaign objective.

Two main levers to consider:

1. Web page visited
2. Last visit date

Web Page Visited

The default option is to create a Website Custom Audience: the web pages with the Facebook pixel will track all visitors.  This is a great option for websites with very low traffic. But, if the domain is a few years old, it’s likely worth refining your audiences further.

Instead, examine your options for segmentation by website page visited, or missed.

There are a few ways to use this:

• If you organize your web pages by product lines or featured content, you can segment by page to see the ad content that best resonates with web visitors’ interest.
  • For example, sponsor a LinkedIn Ads guide, targeting ] web visitors who visited our LinkedIn Ads section of the website.
• Exclude targeting web visitors who reached a desired conversion flow – such as reaching a “Thank You” page after a form submission.
• Triggering the next sequence in a series of drip retargeting messages based on pages consumed.
  • Learn how to build social ad retargeting drip campaigns.

Last Visit Date

While it’s not a hard and fast rule: web visitors who visited your site several weeks/month ago, may not plan on returning any time soon. However, someone who recently visited within the last month could still be shopping around for their ideal solution.

Create a unique website custom audiences by segmenting web visits by last visited date.

Here’s some suggested segments to test:

• Visitors from 1-3 days ago
• Visitors from up to 15 days ago
• Visitors from up to 30 days ago
  • Ensure to exclude the other segments as negatively targeted audiences when testing.

How to Create a Twitter Website Tailored Audience

We’re going to apply the same method we used in the previous section to build a Website Tailored Audience for Twitter Ads.

Steps to Create A Website Tailored Audience

1. Log into your Twitter Ads ad account
2. Pull down the Tools menu to reveal the Audience manager. Click through.
3. Within the Audience Manager, click on the “Create new audience” button.
4. Select the option, “Create a Website Tailored Audience”.

Much like Facebook, Twitter allows you to create unique Web Tailored Audiences based on web page visited or the days since the last visit.

Segmenting Your Database by Campaign or Lifecycle Status

Savvy digital marketers feel very comfortable wheeling around inside of their marketing automation or CRM systems, filtering lists to reveal the best fit prospects to include within a campaign.

Much like prepping an email campaign, marketers can advertise to a select group of prospects from their database on Facebook & Twitter using custom/tailored audiences.

Different Ways to Segment Your Database

Campaign Member

Essentially, this is aligning paid social advertising with email and other mediums, around a focused campaign objective.

For example, you may be promoting an upcoming webinar to select Directors of Marketing in your database in a particular Industry. Using campaign member filtering, you can couple your email outreach with highly targeted social promotion.

Lead Lifecycle Status

Advertisers should tailor content based on where that prospect is in the buying process. For example, a lead who reads your blog to learn more about a specific topic, but sure to serve up content that speaks to this interest.

Instead of launching an awareness campaign or driving demo requests, tailor your message based on the prospect’s stage in the buyer’s journey.

Learn more tricks of the trade in our guide to using Marketo’s Ad Bridge.

Account

Account-Based Marketing is one of the hottest trending topics in B2B circles today. This strategy champions personalized engagement among top decision makers and influencers in target account (company) lists.

For example, you want to reach the entire marketing team at Adobe to increase awareness of your Marketing Automation solution.

Learn how to run account based marketing plays in our post, “Account-Based Marketing, Focus on Pipeline, Not Leads”.

How to Create a Custom/Tailored Audiences From Your Database

1. Export a .CSV file with the group of prospects you want to target.
   • Be sure to include important fields from your CRM or Marketing Automation tool like: first name, email address, and phone number.
2. Upload the list as a Custom Audience in Facebook and a Tailored Audience in Twitter Ads.