3 Reasons to Include Ads in Your Outbound Strategy
For many years in the row, the most profitable public companies in the world remain Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, and Facebook. One could expect that this should have changed after the pandemic, but things turned out differently. In fact, they even managed to increase their assets and market value. How is it possible? The main reason is that in their hands they have the oil of the 21st century—data.
A huge amount of data available to most people and organizations around the world has completely changed how we handle B2B communications nowadays. If before, the outcome of a sale depended only on the salesperson’s persuasive skills and talent, today, to conduct a successful marketing campaign, you have to master implementing digital advertisement.
When targeted at the right audience, these ads can be extremely profitable. In 2020, Google alone has helped to provide $426 billion of economic activity for two million U.S. organizations. This huge sum of money indicates only one thing—if you still don't use any type of paid advertisement as your outbound channel, you should do it immediately. And the best way to get started with it is through using PPC (pay-per-click) ads.
Digital Advertisement Types to Choose for Outbound
Before going into details about why to include ad campaigns as another outbound channel in the future, it’s important to understand that there are dozens of different types of ads, with various strong sides and effects you should be aware of.
Search ads
When you google something, in most cases, the first few websites displayed on the search engine results page (SERP) are text ads. This is one of the simplest and most widely used types of digital advertisement called search ads. If you want to quickly boost the attendance of certain landing pages of your website, dig deeper into this topic.
Social Media Ads
No good B2B company ignores the power of social media ads. These are the highly targeted ads that appear in the recipient’s feed, profile, stories, and other places while they use the platform. These ads can be displayed on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The last one is considered to be the leading social media channel with 92% of B2B marketers actively using it.
Programmatic display ads
Another type of digital ad worth including in the outbound campaign is programmatic display ads. These are image-based banners that are placed on different external platforms and social media where your target audience is consolidated. These ads can be placed through the Google Display Network or any other ad network you prefer. However, keep in mind that not everyone appreciates this type of advertising, often considering it irritating and not personalized.
Pre-targeting ads
Some of the smartest outbound prospecting efforts blend account-based marketing (ABM) advertising with lead generation through pre-targeting ads. The goal is to serve ads to prospects on a named account list before they receive a cold email or cold call. By doing this, companies can create higher brand awareness and manufacture attention so that outbound touches feel more familiar.
Read more about: How to Increase Brand Awareness Before Sending the First Cold Email
Retargeted ads
Retargeting is another strategy in paid advertising that can encompass display, social, and paid search to a precisely targeted audience. These ads are displayed only to those prospects who are familiar with the company and the product already and have completed a certain action on the website before, like filling out a form, visiting a landing page, or reading your blog.
All the types of ads briefly explained above are just variations of PPC—a model of advertising where you pay for each click received on your ad. To simplify, let’s refer to all these ads as PPC.
Why PPC Should Be Part of Your Outbound Mix
Now that you know what types of PPC ads there are, you might ask yourself: Why do so many companies choose this channel to achieve their business goals? Here are three exceptional reasons:
1. PPC is a great place to get initial brand exposure.
Paid ads are often considered to be a smart go-to-market strategy to test new ideas. That's because they rely on targeting what potential customers and buyer personas would be searching for related to a company's solutions or services. That explains why almost 45% of small businesses use PPC ads as part of their outbound campaign. Even more, search ads, for example, increase brand awareness by as much as 80%.
If you are still figuring out how to associate your brand with your business, there is no quicker way to define what keywords are indirectly or directly related to your brand than PPC. Once you find out what messages your audience reacts to the most, you can base your long-term marketing strategy on it and increase the chances that it is going to be successful.
2. Outbound PPC complements inbound efforts.
You might think, what’s the point of investing money in PPC when you could better direct all your resources to creating awesome content and still get the desired results? Our answer is simple—you don’t have to choose at all. In fact, CIENCE research found out that 17% of inbound deals were closed with the help of outbound, or what we refer to as an outbound assist. Imagine that you can actually increase the number of closed inbound deals by 17% if you stop neglecting these outbound channels that can ultimately make a huge difference in your revenue.
Besides that, some paid ads like search ads are so popular, and the keyword competition is so high, that it gets even harder for organic traffic to get the first-page rank in the SERP. This is especially the case if you’re just starting out and your website’s domain rate isn’t as strong as your competitor’s, for example.
3. PPC delivers fast results.
Even if you launched your website yesterday, when done smartly, PPC can bring first results immediately. Depending on your desired goals and the metrics you use to track these achievements, build your first paid ad campaign and enjoy speedy results.
If your goals are to increase brand awareness and nurture new leads, here is an expert hack for beginners: Run LinkedIn ads based on firmographic data that mirrors your ideal customer profile (ICP). Run it for a couple of weeks full throttle, and then dial it down to a simmer. Within some time, hit those companies and titles according to that ICP with outbound messaging. You will be surprised how much more prepared your prospects will be to talk with you once they’ve already heard of your company.
Ignite Your Outbound Campaigns with PPC Ads
PPC has a variety of different types of ads, some of which are listed above. Among all of them, there should be at least a few that can bring you extreme value: to increase brand awareness, define your audience, boost site traffic, and double your sales. Paid ads are a good way to start your marketing campaign, complement inbound channels, and deliver fast and efficient results—but only when you know how to do it right. Without this knowledge, PPC might cost you thousands and bring nothing in return. If you are not ready to risk it, contact CIENCE experts and start firing those outbound campaigns.