When it comes to a B2B campaign, you can’t just go in and slap some ad creative together. You have to think about your audience and how they’re going to respond.
We know, we know—you’ve been told this a million times before. But if you’re not doing it, you might be missing out on some serious business opportunities!
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.
Ad creative is one of the most important components of any B2B campaign. It’s something that can make or break a campaign, and the right ad creative can make all the difference between a successful and unsuccessful campaign.
But what makes good ad creative? Having a great idea or having a lot of budgets isn’t enough. The secret to creating excellent ad creative is knowing how to segment your audience and create content accordingly. Make sure you’re being relatable, stand out from the crowd, and design for scrollers so that your audience gets what they want!
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. 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, 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.
2. Segment and Create Accordingly
One of the most common mistakes that marketers make is trying to target every single customer in their database. While it might seem like a good idea at first glance, this tactic can backfire if you don’t do it right. Instead, focus on segmenting your customers based on their interests and needs—even if they don’t fit into one specific category (like companies looking for email marketing tools). Then create ads that focus on those groups specifically.
Segmenting your audience is key to creating effective creative for your B2B campaigns. When you know where your customers are coming from and what they need, you can then create ads specifically for them—and there will be less chance of confusing or annoying them!
3. Design For Scrollers
A lot of people do not read ads on their phones or tablets, but instead, scroll through them and skip over them. To make sure that you get their attention, design your ad creative so that it will catch their eye as they scroll through it.
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.
4. Be Relatable
Your customers are people too! They’re probably just as busy as you are and have a lot of things going on in their lives that they’re trying to balance. That’s why it’s important for your ad creative to speak directly to them—to make them feel like they’re part of something special with you and your brand.
People like ads that they can relate to, so design your ads in a way that makes them relatable.
To sum it up, your ad creatives must be helpful, valuable, relatable, and stand out from the crowd.
If you’re stuck with stale ad creatives that stopped performing – try GetAds, our sister company. They deliver frictionless image and video ads that supercharge your campaigns while saving you thousands of dollars!