Making the Most of Your Marketing Budget
By Aaron Mason, PCM
Being a marketing department of one person can be a daunting job. In a small to mid-market B2B environment can be even more daunting because many of the marketing avenues that B2C marketers use can, at best, have diluted effectiveness for B2B marketers. What’s worse is that all too often marketing/advertising agencies don’t fully realize the B2C/B2B differences and frequently push for the wrong avenues. Your executives and owners want a good ROI from your marketing budget, and you are at a dead end on where to go. So, what do you do? Now to clarify, the list below largely assumes you have a current website. That means a website that has had a design update in the last three years, five years at most. If this is not the case, the recommendations below can still be utilized in most cases; but an older website is less likely to see good results.
1. Google Ads- Search
Utilizing Google Ads Search campaigns is great way to increase website traffic. One of the great things about Google Ads is that you can put as little or as much money towards it as you want.
The ultimate goal in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is to increase conversions. To be able to see how your campaign is doing, you’ll need to get you website set up with Google Analytics. If you don’t have the technical expertise necessary, your web designer can ad the necessary codes or you can find any number of freelancers on sites like Upwork. These freelancers come in many price ranges and can do this particular job fairly quickly. But, back to conversions. Basic conversions, or goals, can be as simple as;
· Visiting multiple pages
· Clicking a “contact” button
· Length of time on the website
Of course, the only way you are going to increase conversions is by having the right audience. How do you have the get the right audience? By having the right keywords. How will you know if you have the right keywords? In Google Analytics (or GA), your Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate will tell you A LOT about your website audience.
If you do a quick google search, most blogs you read will give you a generic conversion rate benchmark of 2 – 4%. There are several issues with this number, but for the needs of those reading this article, that’s a fine place to start. If your conversion rate is below 2%, that is red flag number one on your audience quality. There’s really no limit to how high you want your conversion rate to be, as long as you have your goals set properly. If you have goals set that most website visitors will meet, you have the wrong goals. You need to set very specific goals that will indicate whether or not visitors are interested. If you have these goals, there is no limit to how high you want your conversion rate to go.
Like conversion rate, a quick google search of bounce rate will give you a generic range of 15 – 80%. Bounce rate can wildly vary by industry and so on, but a good B2B rule of thumb is 50 – 70%, with 60% being the Goldilocks number. If your bounce rate is higher than 70%, that’s read flag number two for audience quality.
Setting the right keywords for your business and industry are extremely important. Google Ads has a Keyword Planner and there are several independent online tools you can use as well. Most marketing agencies can get keywords as well, if that’s a route you can and want to take.
One final thought is that contrary to popular belief, running Google Ads does NOT directly increase or otherwise affect organic rankings. Moz has a great article and video on how Google Ads affects organic rankings.
2. Social Media
Social media is one of the easiest, cheapest, and effective methods for increased brand awareness, thought leadership, and even lead generation. In B2B marketing the “big four” are the ones I usually recommend professionals focus on; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You want to set a goal to post at least once per week at minimum. Preferably you should be posting daily. You need to keep fresh content on your social accounts so that clients and partners know you’re active and relevant. Social Media Marketing tools like Hootsuite and Sendible are easy to use and relatively inexpensive.
For most B2B marketers, I normally don’t recommend advertising on the first three. The only advertising avenue on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram I usually recommend for small-mid market businesses is to gain followers. You can target the ads to get in front of the right audience, but if you do this I would recommend it be a once or twice a year thing, not long-term. LinkedIn is a different story.
LinkedIn advertising can be a highly effective way to increase brand awareness and lead generation. This is because LinkedIn Advertising is capable of being ultra-targeted. You can narrow your audience by location, industry, job title, job function, seniority, education, and more! Let’s look at an example. Let’s say I am the marketing manager for an industrial lubricants company. This is my sample audience;
LOCATION: Texas
COMPANY INDUSTRIES: Agriculture, Construction, Energy & Mining, Manufacturing, Transportation
JOB FUNCTION: Engineering, Finance, Operations, Product Management, Project & Program Management, Purchasing
JOB SENIORITY: Senior, Manager, Director, VP, CXO, Owner, Partner
TARGET AUDIENCE SIZE: 450,000
Based off of the criteria I have selected, I know that ads for my industrial lubricants company can be seen by 450,000 individuals. Spending just $25 per day on Single Image or Video ads, I can expect up to 130,000 impressions and up to 550 clicks of my ad(s) per month. If it wasn’t as targeted as is, this wouldn’t be impressive. But we know that these 550 clicks per month are of senior level individuals most likely to be in decision making positions. The last thing about LinkedIn is that, like Google Ads, you can put as much or as little money as you want and are able.
3. Event Marketing
One of the more traditional avenues, event marketing can be a great way to get in front of clients and prospects. Setting up a booth, having some brochures and giveaways can go a long way in developing new relationships when budgets are tight. There’s no one place to go to find B2B events, it really depends on the industry. Joining and being involved in industry/trade associations and your local chamber of commerce is a great place to start. A simple google search for “YOUR INDUSTRY trade shows and events in YOUR REGION” can also help if you’re struggling to find them.
Booths at events like these tend to go anywhere from $250 - $1,000. Do your research on the events that interest you and just try to attend the ones with historically good attendance rates, which again will vary by industry. Make sure to promote your attendance for each event in the weeks prior to each event.
4. Content Marketing
It is highly important to keep your website and social media up to date with fresh content. New blog posts, how-to articles, new products/services, press releases, etc. are all good ways to get content up and keep people interested. You don’t have to be a great writer to do this, but if you really aren’t comfortable in creative writing you can always outsource it for a relatively low cost.
Video marketing and creative images is another great form of content marketing. Learning software like Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and other tools is relatively easy given enough time. The providers usually have multiple how-to videos and YouTube is crawling with how-to videos on all of the software you can imagine.
Content marketing is an absolute must for several reasons; it is the heart of SEO, it increases thought leadership, and
5. Email Marketing
Once you have the content, email marketing is a great way to keep the latest news and information in front of clients and prospects. Sending a monthly email containing blog articles, videos, press releases, and any other information from the previous month is best practice for our industry. Try to keep emails with sales promotions or other specific information separate and targeted to the right audiences.
Email marketing platforms like ConstantContact and MailChimp are easy to use and have multiple price packages.
BONUS - Chatbot
For marketers in the small market businesses, this may be a little out of reach price wise. But for anyone in the B2B marketing space, I would suggest at least exploring adding a chatbot to your website. I know what you’re thinking… “chatbots aren’t for my industry.” Trust me, we didn’t think it would work in Construction either, but it does!
DRIFT is by chatbot of choice. In less than two months, we had over 250 interactions with the chatbot, including 50 project inquiries and 10 projects we bid on. Drift is highly customizable and has a great user experience for marketers and website visitors alike. You can customize conversations with pre-set buttons for visitors and set the bot with helpful responses.
For us with a marketing department of one, the feature to personally chat with everyone personally isn’t really feasible. But it is still there. You can download the app and be notified every time someone interacts and jump in if necessary.
I hope all of this was helpful! Feel free to contact me via LinkedIn if you have any questions or comments. I'm always open for some constructive criticism. For full disclosure, I have not been compensated in any way for any of the product suggestions made. Each one is something I have personally used and recommend because I believe in the product or service.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aaron Mason is the Marketing Manager for Bob Moore Construction in Dallas-Fort Worth. An 8-year sales & marketing professional, Aaron is a Professional Certified Marketer in Marketing Management by the American Marketing Association, Google Ads Certified, Google Analytics Certified, and a Social Marketing Certified Professional by Hootsuite.