During the first two years of the pandemic, Facebook’s CPM rose by 33%. It signals the rising costs of digital advertising for all types of businesses – especially B2B. To stay competitive, you need to rethink your ad creatives. They need to perform well to make up for the rising costs.
The way B2B buyers find information about products is changing. The new approach makes people reluctant to click on ads. The behavior towards advertising is changing – making ad creatives the most crucial part of a campaign, especially when targeting seems to become more limited on ad platforms like Meta (formerly Facebook) due to privacy concerns.
Creatives are something that people see before they click on your ad. Since most customers will not see the ad after clicking on it, creatives are becoming more important than ever.
In this guide, we will share four ways you can design your ad creatives to make your campaigns more effective.
The Less Engaged Audience
Today’s online world is way less engaged than ever before. Audiences, especially B2B clients, are lurking and scrolling more than clicking.
When they need to find information about products online, they prefer their peers on dark social (platforms like Discord, Reddit, and Youtube; where they are difficult to track).
Most B2B prospects want to get product information before making a buying decision. They do not want to identify as a “known lead” before becoming ready to buy.
Previously, customers learned about products through gated content. But as of now, the reluctance to share personal information and an exodus to dark social has made some platforms less engaged than ever.
All this puts pressure on the creative side of the advertising campaigns. Your creatives need to make up for the loss. Improving your ad creatives is one of the easiest and least costly ways to supercharge your ad performance. Read on to learn the four ways you can enhance your ad creatives for more effective B2B campaigns.
1. Design For Scrollers
A mistake most advertisers make in their creatives is that they don’t provide complete information about the creative. Whereas carousels, videos, and GIFs become enormous value providers as ad creatives.
As a B2B company, your ads have to provide some value. It can be in the form of an e-book, an industry report, or even a product brochure. But companies aim to build email lists to target them afterward. To do that, they lock that valuable piece of content with an online form that requires them to enter their email.
A large portion (70%+) of the people who see your ad will never click on it. Most probably, they don’t want a series of endless emails popping into their inbox. Consecutively, they don’t bother to click on your ad.
So, instead of sharing gated content, share that valuable advice/information using a modern ad creative. It can be a carousel, a video, or even GIF. RStudio’s advertisements are a great example of using Video and Text to make your ads more effective by only improving creatives.
2. Stand Out From the Crowd
Your ads need to stand out. Most of your audience will see your ad while they scroll social media or Google something. So, you must ensure that your ads are eye-catching and grab their attention.
Ad creatives failing to grab the audience’s attention result in expensive campaigns. The decreasing CTR impacts your campaign and the cost per click increases. If your CTR decreases because your copy/creative is not eye-catching, or your audience is tired of seeing the same ads for long periods of time, updating your creative frequently is a great way to keep your ads engaging so you don’t become a victim of ad fatigue
After all, you are probably spending tens of thousands of dollars on an ad – what’s wrong with spending some extra bucks to make them look good? It will make your campaigns more effective and your brand more visible.
3. Be Relatable
If your product/service is about helping salespeople get more leads – your ad creative should not talk about problems that the HR function faces – it should be focused on the core audience. Your ad creatives need to be relevant to the customers you are trying to reach.
Being relevant and relatable with your creatives has a great payoff in improving ad performance.
Want a hot tip? If you’re an advertiser and aren’t sure what your B2B audience can relate to, ask your SDRs, they talk on the phone with prospects all day long. Ask them what things typically come up during demos or sales calls and see how you can sprinkle those things into your campaigns.
4. Segment and Create Accordingly
Companies segment their customers into categories and then launch advertising campaigns accordingly. Segmenting and targeting your audience properly is another key to success for any ad campaign.
But segmenting/targeting should not be limited to ad campaigns. Your ad creatives need to be optimized and created by keeping in mind the different segments.
To sum it up, your ad creatives need to contain value, be helpful, stand out from the crowd and be relatable to the customers.