Your lead gen form isn’t the problem. Starting with it is.
You’re making tweaks to the wrong output. Discover where you should focus your attention.
Hey, it’s Jess 👋. Welcome to the Audience First weekly newsletter, helping B2B companies lead with their audience rather than the platform.
You’ll learn how to improve your marketing by starting with your ICP rather than the platform.
If you’re looking to introduce an audience focused approach to your marketing strategy, book an appointment today.
Read time: ~ 4mins
Subscribe and be the first to read future posts:
I keep hearing B2B business owners complaining about the market.
Apparently it’s because everyone’s ads are targeting the same decision makers.
I can’t relate 🫢.
When I audit ad accounts, I see the same thing over and over.
Heavy focus on one ad format
Broad audience targeting
Constant tweaks to your lead form
Believe it or not, it’s not your lead form.
It’s more about how you’re targeting your audience 🤯.
I can help you using my 9+ years’ worth of ad experience ✅.
Or you can DIY with my framework below:
Identify your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Start by defining who you’re selling your product to.
You and I both know it’s not 1 person 🫣.
This is where most B2B marketing teams go wrong.
They build 1 ad for 1 persona.
But a B2B MarTech deal isn’t down to one buyer.
There’s a committee of about 6-10 people, and guess what?
They all have their own opinion 🫠.
For example:
CMO cares about how efficient the budget is ie: cost per pipeline
VP of Demand Gen wants proof of pipeline ie: SQLs
RevOps wants something that won’t break their stack ie: clean data
1 marketing message to all three stakeholders won’t cut it.
And that’s why the market feels saturated.
Everyone is targeting the same single persona 👀.
So before you think about touching your ad format, define your ICP on 3 levels:
Account - what trigger says they might move?
Committee - who’s part of the committee and what do they care about?
Timing - who is ready to buy now vs 6-18 months time?
Once you are super clear, build an audience using internal data.
You can feed the platform with your actual closed-won data.
Shift away from form fill data that isn’t SQL.
Also use the ICP data to create ad assets that speak to the different audience needs.
Once you have your ICP and audience sorted, move on to the ad format.
Choose the right ad format to reach your ICP.
The problem I see time and time again.
One campaign for everything:
Same audience
Same offer
Same format
But the formats have different jobs 😮. Some create demand. One captures it.
If you run them in the wrong order, you’re just harvesting a field you never planted 🌾.
Always try to remember the 95:5 rule.
Only 5% of your market is ready to buy today 💸.
Therefore, most of your budget should be allocated to creating demand for the 95%.
Rather than fighting with everyone for 5% of the market 🤺.
Here’s an example of how I map out LinkedIn:
Demand + Trust Creation: Thought Leader Ads (TLAs)
I use TLA’s to build trust and create demand 👌.
I select a LinkedIn profile of a prominent person in the company ie: CEO, founder or VP.
Then I select an organic post that the expert has already posted.
TLAs only work with live organic content 🫣. It can’t be created from uploading content.
This ad format is good for building trust from a credible voice.
More and more MarTech prospects want to hear from peers 👨🏼🤝👨🏿, rather than just a company logo.
MarTech buyers are the most ad blind audience on the platform 🤦♀️. They build ads for a living 👀.
A polished company ad gets scrolled, but a peer’s honest take gets read.
Reach + Education: Sponsored Content Ads
These are ads that appear natively in the feed. They are separate from your company page.
I like how easy they are to set up, you don’t need much to get started 👏.
You can choose to run sponsored content ads with an image, carousel, document or video.
Once you add text to the asset, you’re good to go 😊. It’s that simple.
Sponsored content ads are the top of the funnel tactic that helps drive attention.
Demand Capture: Lead Gen form
This ad format is attached to sponsored content or an ad message.
I like that LinkedIn prefills the LinkedIn member’s profile details ie: name, email, company etc…
This reduces friction by reducing touch points 💃, making it easier to convert.
You can pull the lead data from the ad platform or you can sync it to a CRM.
The one thing to note is that lead forms don’t create demand. It just captures it.
I usually have clients who want to focus purely on lead gen forms.
But you have to create attention and educate before you start converting through a lead form.
Set up Experiments to Learn + Improve Performance
Experimentation is my favourite part of the whole equation 🙌.
I wish I were as excited about experiments at school 😅.
It’s the part where you learn and improve your marketing efforts.
Sadly this is the part most B2B businesses skip 🫣.
Most marketing teams assume that if the lead form fills are low then it’s not working.
Rather than setting up an intentional experiment, they just tweak the form.
But a form tweak isn’t always the fix 😩.
If the dashboard credits the final click to the lead form, it hasn’t factored in other touchpoints.
So don’t judge the whole campaign by the form’s numbers 👀.
Go back and analyse each touchpoint to learn where your audience is dropping off.
Then set up an experiment around these findings 🤓.
Remember always to set up experiments with this in mind:
Change one variable at a time ie: audience, hook, or format. Not all three.
Give it enough budget and time to mean something before you end it.
Separate your demand creation metrics (reach, engagement, search lift) from your demand capture metrics (SQLs, pipeline). Judging a TLA by lead volume is like weighing yourself to test your eyesight.
That sums up everything for improving your lead performance.
Remember it’s not about the lead form or a “saturated” market.
Get your audience right first, and everything after it (format, budget, results) gets easier.
This week ask yourself:
Are my ads speaking to my ICP’s pain points?
What will trigger my audience to engage?
Have I chosen the correct ad format?
Am I running experiments to learn more about my audience?
If you want to increase your pipeline using an audience focused strategy.
Book a call today → https://calendly.com/launchlanedigital/strategy
Connect with Jess
Is this your first time here? Subscribe (it’s free)
Follow me on LinkedIn for more insights
Strategise with me: Introduce an audience focused approach to your marketing efforts → book an appointment today
Recommend Audience First Marketing to your Readers
An audience first marketing newsletter, helping B2B companies lead with their audience rather than the marketing platform.