By adopting the core ABM principle of 'one to one' marketing you can make highly personalised content that speaks to the individuals, and the pain points, of the companies you are aiming to reach.
In B2B marketing, and account based marketing (ABM) particularly, LinkedIn remains a front runner when it comes to lead generation and acquisition tactics. Its capabilities surrounding key account targeting, and the ability to reach specific job titles, job functions and senioritis within those companies makes it a go-to in a lot of our direct marketing campaigns here at Agent3.
There is always the question though, of how we help our clients to stand out against their competitors in an increasingly crowded marketplace? As LinkedIn becomes an ever more popular channel for B2B digital marketing for the reasons outlined above, standing out from the crowd requires something unique and special.
With over two-thirds of businesses advertising online, social media news feeds are saturated with generic or sales led posts. Differentiation is imperative to capture your audience’s attention. But how?
One word: personalisation.
By adopting the core ABM principle of ‘one to one’ marketing you can make highly personalised content that speaks to the individuals, and the pain points, of the companies you are aiming to reach.
The same as someone calling out your name as you walk down the street, directly calling out the company someone works for, or their job title, or their pain points, will make them stop and look back at your ad.
One to one personalisation
1:1 ABM involves identifying one target company at a time that you know your proposition is well suited to, and marketing to them directly, addressing their pain points and how your business can solve them. For maximum personalisation in advertising, just one company should be reached out to at a time, calling out the company name in both ad copy and imagery to capture the attention of your target audience.
Case study
In a recent campaign we ran for a client using LinkedIn’s new Carousel ad format, generic ads into a large list of accounts resulted in a campaign click through rate (CTR) of 0.58% , while a more targeted approach into a handful of accounts, and using personalised copy and imagery resulted in a CTR of 2.84%. That’s a 390% increase in CTR!
User journey
In order to provide the best possible user experience, continuing the user journey with personalised content is the best way of accelerating leads through the sales pipeline. It’s easy enough to add a company name into ad copy and imagery, but your audience will quickly notice if you follow up with generic content that is no longer tailored.
In the campaign I mentioned earlier we also personalised the landing pages that were linked to from the ads into the smaller group of accounts. Compared to the generic landing pages we used for the larger list of accounts, there was a 234% increase in conversation rate within the first two weeks of being live.
You can also take this one step further by personalising content and nurture emails as well, but that’s another blog in itself.
Sustainability
All sounds great doesn’t it? However there are some drawbacks of creating highly personalised content that you should be aware of. The small audience size associated with targeting just one company at a time means people quickly become exposed to the campaign content and messaging, and campaign performance can begin to decline. To combat this, ad copy and imagery refreshes should be factored into timelines and budgets to present a new look and feel to the campaign before the audience becomes fatigued to your campaign. For best results (budget permitting and dependant on the size of your audience), these should be carried out every month to six weeks to reduce the audiences fatigue.
To really hit the nail on the head with LinkedIn, and wider digital advertising, and whole host of insight can be used, from Business Intelligence to Insight data
One to few personalisation
The increased resource associated with creating more bespoke ad copy and imagery, as well as personalised landing pages and email nurture tracks means one to one advertising isn’t for everyone. Reaching a slightly broader range of companies, with low level personalisation might be more achievable for you.
Audience segmentation
Segment your target audience into clusters, whether it be by industry, job function or member skills, and speak directly to the pain points of the group in your ad copy. Where possible make imagery relevant to the specific audience, whether it be Finance looking at graphs and numbers on a screen, or HR shaking hands with a new team member.
When running a cluster campaign, targeting specific job functions within a long list of target accounts we saw CTRs increase from 0.31% to 0.43% by using messaging and imagery that was relevant to the pain points of specific job functions. Although it’s not the 234% increased CTR we saw with one to one personalisation, the CTR still increased by an impressive 39%. So what I’m trying to say, is even if one to one, highly personalised content isn’t feasible for your business right now, there is still a great deal of value in layering in whatever level of personalisation is doable for you.
Conclusion
When it comes to personalisation in digital advertising the figures speak for themselves. When targeting companies on a one to one basis by calling out the target company name in ad copy and imagery we saw a 390% increase in CTRs. And when personalising landing pages we saw and 234% increase in conversions.
If time and budget allows, the more personalisation you can implement and the more directly you speak to a companies pain points, the more likely a business is to think your solution is right for them.