You’re on the wrong ad platform
Find out the right ad platform for your B2B audience
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Throwing money at any ad platform won’t automatically get you more leads.
I know it’s painful to hear 😢. But it’s the truth.
I met a founder who read an article about how an ad platform got another business many new leads.
This instantly made them think they needed to be on that platform too.
Guess who became the bad cop in this scenario 🙋♀️.
I challenged their thinking by asking the famous question. Why?
They sheepishly told me that they read it was good for getting more leads.
This is how B2B businesses end up on the wrong ad platform.
Then they blame the ad platform for not delivering results.
Every ad platform has its way of working.
And it’s not just about choosing an ad platform that is currently hot.
It’s more about targeting your audience based on where they are in the buying process.
The platform doesn’t make the decision. Your audience does.
Choosing the wrong ad platform will cost you.
The best ad platforms that every B2B MarTech business should have as a foundation are:
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn is one of the largest professional networking platforms.
It’s a platform that helps you target your ideal customer before they begin searching for your product or service.
You can either reach your audience organically by creating posts or you can run ads 🤑.
My favourite feature of LinkedIn ads is its ability to target B2B users by job title, seniority, company size, industry, and skills.
There’s no excuse for not being able to find your audience on LinkedIn 👀.
I help MarTech businesses use LinkedIn for creating demand and pipeline.
Here is my simple LinkedIn approach:
→ Awareness - you can increase the share of voice with thought leader ads (TLAs). This helps your audience learn more about you from a thought leader at your company.
→ Consideration - this stage gets your audience engaging through sponsored ads. I like to use a document or images to get a MarTech audience excited
→ Conversions - this is where I capture all my hard work using lead forms. I think it’s better to keep your audience on the LinkedIn platform rather than sending them to your website.
Google Search Ads
Google Ads is more of a demand capture platform.
Your target audience is searching for answers, whether it’s to research or solve their problem.
Google Ads offers different campaign types. But for MarTech brands, I would recommend:
→ Search — this has the highest intent. Bid on keywords, show when someone searches. This is your bottom of the funnel capture play.
→ Demand Gen — mid funnel warming across Gmail/YouTube/Discover for category education and pre-search warming.
→ Performance Max — AI runs across all Google inventory. It is more conversion focused but there is low control/transparency. But I must say it’s getting better! It’s best to start using this once you have a good volume of conversion data.
One MarTech nuance worth flagging here.
Your conversion usually isn’t a “lead”, it’s a free trial or demo request.
And with long MarTech sales cycles, a cheap sign-up can look great but never turn into pipeline.
So feed your conversions back to your CRM and optimise for SQLs and pipeline, not just trials.
A cheap sign-up that never closes is still an expensive mistake.
Microsoft Ads
Microsoft Ads, formerly Bing to those that have been in the game long enough 👵.
It works just like Google search intent, but most people ignore Microsoft Ads.
There’s less competition and clicks tend to be cheaper than Google Ads.
But here’s the real MarTech win 👀.
Microsoft is the only platform besides LinkedIn that lets you layer on LinkedIn profile targeting.
So you can target by job title, company and industry on top of search intent, at a fraction of LinkedIn’s CPC.
When you launch in Microsoft Ads, start with the top performing campaigns from Google Ads.
Just don’t copy and paste your Google campaigns, refine them for the Microsoft audience.
Meta (Facebook + Instagram)
Meta is a different platform to LinkedIn and Google Ads.
Its real job is broad reach and retargeting.
Nobody goes to Meta to search for a MarTech tool.
So it isn’t a cold lead gen platform.
If you try to treat it like one you’ll end up with cheap leads that are hard to close.
Use it to warm up people who already know you, and build lookalikes from your best customers.
It’s cheap and it scales, but the intent is low, so judge it on pipeline, not form fills.
Think of Meta as the platform that keeps you front of mind and feeds your other channels, not the one carrying your pipeline target.
Every ad platform reaches your audience.
But there is one consistent theme across the ad platforms.
Your audience would need to be nurtured through a non-linear funnel.
The funnel should cover the following:
→ Attention - users need to know/like/trust you
→ Educate - use brand content to educate users
→ Convert - invite users to take action
This week ask yourself:
Am I using the best ad platform to reach my audience?
What stage is my audience and what do they need more of?
How well am I creating attention, educating and converting?
If this post made you think about whether you’re using the right ad platform, good!
Let me know if you want help reviewing your ad platform set up.
Otherwise, I will see you next week 😊.
Jess
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