B2B Brand
Marketing Guide

How does it differ to organic media?

Organic media refers to any content that naturally attracts viewers without paid promotion. This includes:

• Social media posts: Regular updates, photos, videos, and interactions on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn that grow your audience naturally.‍
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): Optimising website content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) naturally, without paying for placement. This involves using keywords, creating quality content, and optimizing website structure. ‍
• Content marketing: Publishing articles, blogs, videos, and podcasts that aim to attract and engage audiences through useful and engaging content. ‍
• Word of mouth: Encouraging customers to share their experiences naturally with others, often amplified by excellent customer service or standout products. ‍
• User-generated content: Content created by users, such as reviews, testimonials, or social media posts, that indirectly promotes your brand.

Paid media is an effective tool that should be used to support your digital marketing strategy, NOT replace it.  

For instance, if you choose to run Google Ads, you will still need to ensure that your landing page you’re driving traffic to aligns with the objective of the campaign and that technically and on an on-page SEO basis it’s still set up correctly.  

If you’re an SME with limited budgets, paid media campaigns can still be an effective tool to help you speed up your business objectives.  

Try following these simple instructions to maximise your campaign with minimal budget:  

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Define clear objectives: make sure before setting up any campaigns that you know what you want to get from this. For instance, if you want to run a lead generation campaign where you get people to sign up to a subscription, make sure that your campaign is set up to reflect this. Drive the traffic to the correct page, make the user journey clear and add relevant CTAs to ensure that your prospects are completing your desired actions.  

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Market research: the key here is to make sure you’re not losing opportunities by targeting the wrong channels. For instance, if you work predominantly in the B2B sector – you might look to target LinkedIn over Instagram due to the nature of its audience. So making sure you know where your customers are will ensure your campaigns aren’t spending in the wrong places.  

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Targeted advertising: the next step is to make sure you’re targeting the right audience, and you know where your audience is to guarantee the accuracy of your advertising.  

For instance, you’ve set up a vegan protein shake company and want to target people in the health and wellness sector.  You’ve launched an extensive online advertising campaign across various platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads and decided to target a broad audience under the category ‘health and wellness enthusiasts’ to maximise reach.

You’ve noticed that your campaign is getting lots of impressions but not many click throughs or conversions. After researching your target audience, you have decided this could be due to ‘health and wellness’ being a highly searched term, but the category is very broad, and many people may not be specifically interested in protein shakes. They could be interested in less processed options or other things that encapsulates wellness, such as meditation.  

So, you amend your targeting to cover gym goers, body builders, supplements and adjust your ad copy and wait to see how these tweaks affect your campaign.  

The result? Your campaign performance has increased dramatically and you’re seeing more conversions, impressions and engagement.  

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Setting your budget: most paid media platforms allow you to set daily / lifetime budgets, meaning you can set up the maximum amount you’re willing to spend per day and not have to worry about going over your budget.  

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Create compelling content: in effect, your ad content needs to sell the click, the landing page needs to sell the desired action, your sales team need to sell the product. So, ensure that your ads are created and executed to work up intrigue or match the buyer’s intent. Do keyword research to make sure that your ad engages the right people and make sure the images/videos that accompany are eye-catching and make people want to find out more.  

“People don’t watch ads, they watch things that interest them.”  

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Monitor and optimise: you should be checking your ads at least once per day, analysing the data and seeing whether there are areas that you could be falling short. The data can provide lots of information about the performance of your ads, landing pages or even your offering.

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‍Example:  You’re running a lead generation campaign. Your ad is getting low amounts of impressions and click throughs, but on the page it is seeing high levels of engagement and conversions.  

This could mean that you may want to analyse your keywords, because your chosen search terms may not be generating enough impressions. It does, however, mean that your landing page is effectively set up for conversions and engagement – because the few people who do land on the page are following the desired path.  ‍

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Test automated bidding strategies: on many paid media platforms, you have the opportunity to select automated bidding strategies which harness machine learning to optimise the times and costs put behind your ads at any given time. For someone new to paid advertising and restricted by budget, this can be a great option.

Key takeaways: 

• Ad content is the most important element of successful campaigns
• Your ad needs to sell the click, your landing page needs to sell the product/service/desired action
• You don't need huge budgets to run successful campaigns
• Constantly analyse, track and optimise your campaigns to make best use of your budget