When building a B2B lead generation campaign, content marketing might not be the first strategy marketers consider. Often, marketers rely on Google Ads, cold calling, and LinkedIn outreach to find and generate quality leads. While those marketing strategies are highly effective, they rely on a solid foundation of content.

Explore how to use content marketing for lead generation by building awareness and priming qualified leads.

What Is Content Marketing for Lead Generation?

A B2B lead generation strategy is identifying and connecting with potential buyers. For example, a marketer generates leads through lead magnets when they can save that buyer’s information for nurturing and eventually converting.

Some B2B lead generation examples include:

  • Newsletter signups
  • Webinars
  • Contact forms
  • Free trials or demos

In each situation, the buyers move from an anonymous audience to an interested lead. By engaging with marketing campaigns, the lead exchanged their contact information for something of value.

Content marketing lead generation strategies use content to convince readers. The readers then download or sign up for the lead magnet. According to a recent report, 70% of B2B marketers generate leads from content.

70% of B2B marketers generate leads from content.

How Content Marketing Complements Lead Generation

Content marketing is more crucial than improving a website’s ranking in search engines. It also raises awareness, builds trust, and moves potential buyers through the sales funnel. Without content marketing, lead generation strategies won’t be as effective.

Content marketing is more effective than ads, according to 80% of decision-makers. That’s because ads focus on a sale while content marketing builds relationships with the audience. Relationship building leads readers to fill out contact forms or download lead magnets, allowing marketers to add that lead to their database. Relationship building also improves the effectiveness of lead generation advertising campaigns.

Why Marketers Need a Lead Generation Content Strategy

Why should a marketer invest in lead generation content instead of sharing the lead magnet through ads and other strategies?

The B2B buyer’s journey is becoming longer and more complex. Marketers are having a more difficult time convincing decision-makers with a single ad or sales pitch. Instead, decision-makers want more research and data before making a sales decision.

Therefore, marketers won’t generate as many leads from lead magnets alone. Instead, they must connect and convince the B2B buyer through quality content. Content marketing lays the foundation of trust before the lead magnet, or lead generation strategy, and converts the buyer.

The Best Types of Lead Generation Content

While any content can generate leads, a few content formats perform better than others. The key to effective lead generation content is quality and research. B2B buyers are most interested in facts that prove why a business’s products or services are the best or specific ways a product will benefit their company.

Creating authority content builds trust and convinces B2B buyers to respond to the lead magnet.

The best B2B lead generation content includes:

  • Case studies
  • White papers
  • Webinars
  • Blog articles
  • Videos
  • Infographics

How to Use Content Marketing for Lead Generation

Use these 12 tips to build a highly effective lead-generation content marketing strategy to build trust and generate quality leads.

1. Establish Lead Generation Goals

A marketing team’s lead generation goals define the campaign’s direction and establish success benchmarks.

Marketers should define the number of leads they want to generate, the purpose of lead generation, the timeframe to generate the leads, and metrics to measure the campaign’s success.

Here are several lead generation goals B2B marketers might use:

  • Generate revenue: Generating quality, conversion-ready leads. Measure the success by revenue generated.
  • Increase brand awareness: Raising awareness about a brand. Measure the success of awareness campaigns through leads generated and increased website traffic.
  • Build databases: Gather essential data to help in marketing strategies. Measure the success through changes in traffic, conversions, and customer experience.

Half of B2B content is for increasing brand awareness. The other half of the content is for nurturing and converting leads.

2. Research the Audience

Lead generation is only effective if the leads are potential buyers. For example, a company that generates 1,000 leads, but only two are B2B decision-makers, did not run a successful campaign. However, a company that only generated 200 leads but converted 100 of those leads had a highly successful lead generation strategy.

Generating the right leads starts with understanding whom to attract before running the lead generation campaign. Marketers create two types of audience identifiers:

  • Ideal Customer Profile: A description of a fictional audience that would make the best buyer. It helps marketers understand WHO to reach and includes information like firmographics, location, and key decision-makers.
  • Buyer Persona: A detailed outline of specific decision-makers helps marketers decide HOW to reach the audience. It includes motivators like pain points, job descriptions, and emotional triggers.

Marketers create these two profiles by looking at their current customer base, surveying their intended audience, looking at the competition, and examining third-party data.

Generating the right leads starts with understanding whom to attract before running the lead generation campaign.

3. Personalize the Content

Personalization is necessary for B2B marketing because it gives the audience a reason to care. According to 78% of consumers, personalized content increases purchase intent.

Personalization takes topics the audience might not be familiar with and turns them into relevant information. When customers see a business’s products and solutions apply to them personally, they’re more likely to respond to lead magnets.

For example, business-centric content would have titles like “5 Features of X Software.” Meanwhile, personalized customer-centric content would have titles like “5 Ways X Software Speeds up Business Operations.” The second option addresses topics from a customer’s viewpoint. It addresses specific challenges and shares customer benefits.

Personalizing content goes a step further than focusing on customers as a whole. Instead, marketers create content for specific customer segments.

For instance, a financial company will have different pain points than a marketing company. Therefore, marketers could address the same topics in their content in several ways to connect with each specific audience segment.

Account-based marketing is one of the more popular strategies B2B marketers employ for personalizing content. Account-based marketing uses ideal customer profiles to identify and target high-value accounts. Then, marketers create personalized content for those accounts to turn them into leads and, eventually, customers.

4. Use Relevant Topics

Keyword research is more valuable than a content optimization tool for search engine rankings. It’s also vital for attracting the right audience to content to ensure quality leads read and respond to the lead magnets.

Marketers use keyword research tools to identify search phrases their target audience uses. Then they create content around those keywords. Keywords research keeps the content relevant to the audience and improves the quality of leads the content generates.

For example, a B2B buyer searching for software solutions for their business will perform different searches than individuals researching software information. So, marketers would use keywords like “for businesses” and “business software” to attract decision-makers to the content.

5. Create Intent-Based Call to Actions

Keyword research also tells marketers the type of lead magnet to use in their lead generating content marketing.

For instance, a decision-maker performing a “how to” search is less likely to sign up for a free trial than a B2B buyer who searches “where to buy data management software.”

B2B audiences have four primary intents when looking for online content:

  • Navigational: Using a company name in the search because the user is looking for a specific page
  • Informational: Looking for general information or research
  • Transactional: Someone ready to act who is looking for a particular product or solution
  • Commercial: Someone who is interested in a product and is looking for more details

Marketers should customize their lead magnet based on the content keyword’s search intent. For example, informational keywords should have a soft call to action, like encouraging the reader to sign up for a newsletter for more information or joining a webinar.

Conversely, transactional and commercial keywords should have a more significant call to action, like signing up for a free trial.

6. Focus On Quality over Algorithms

While keywords are essential for lead generation, the content’s quality plays a more significant role in ranking the content and converting the reader. Bringing the right leads to marketing content is half the battle. The content needs to convince those readers to perform the call to action.

Quality content with industry-leading ideas, authority links, and expert advice will build trust with the reader. Then, when the reader arrives at the lead magnet, they are more likely to respond to the call to action.

7. Create a Full Funnel Strategy

Lead generation can occur at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Sometimes marketers might connect with leads who just met the brand. Other times a business will generate leads who are ready to make a purchase decision.

The most effective content marketing for lead generation combines the journey stage with the buyer’s persona.

“The most effective content marketing for lead generation combines the journey stage with the buyer’s persona.”

8. Make Conversions Easy

Businesses will generate more leads if the lead magnet is clear. For example, content creators might design a banner that attracts attention to the lead magnet.

Otherwise, content writers may make the lead magnet a bold sentence with a link to a webinar, contact form, or other lead magnets. This more subtle option is more effective for a top-of-the-funnel lead generation for raising awareness.

9. Incorporate Multimedia

Multimedia content performs best because it’s more engaging. The audience is more likely to act on the call to action when the content beforehand is engaging.

Some of the most engaging forms of B2B content based on the percentage of marketers who used the asset include:

  • Webinars (58%)
  • Reports (48%)
  • Blog posts (48%)
  • eBooks and White Papers (47%)
  • Case studies (39%)
  • Video (38%)
  • Podcasts (23%)

In 2022, 69% of B2B marketers increased their video marketing investment as that format is quickly becoming one of the most effective marketing strategies.

Marketers often combine formats to boost the performance of the content. For example, a content creator might embed a video in a blog post. That way, marketers are more likely to connect with the target audience and generate quality leads.

10. Use Creative Distribution Strategies

Once marketers create quality content, they must find ways to get it in front of the ideal audience. This task isn’t always as simple as choosing popular keywords. In reality, 90.63% of web pages don’t see any organic search traffic.

Marketers that want to ensure their ideal buyer sees the content and responds to the lead magnet must use more targeted distribution strategies.

Content syndication is highly effective for reaching buyers and raising brand awareness through lead-generation content. Content syndication is sharing content on third-party platforms. For example, a business might republish a blog post on LinkedIn, distribute it across targeted websites through Netline, or post it on a public site like Medium.

“Content syndication is highly effective for reaching buyers and raising brand awareness through lead-generation content.”

These distribution channels allow marketers to reach their audience by sharing content on sites they know the audience regularly visits. Through content distribution, marketers can go to the B2B buyers rather than wait for the buyers to come to them.

Other ways to distribute content to a target audience include email marketing, newsletter sharing, and social media posting. Those three channels are the business’s personal connections to reach interested buyers. So marketers can create middle and bottom-of-the-funnel lead generation content, like promoting trial signups.

11. Track and Analyze the Results

Marketers use the metrics they established in their goals to track and analyze their results. For example, tracking content performance helps marketers know what content is performing best and when to optimize the content.

Marketers often run several versions of the same content to see which version performs best. Businesses call this A/B testing. For example, content creators might compare the webinar signups from a link to a banner ad in the content to see which call to action readers prefer.

12. Continually Update the Content

After investing hours into a B2B lead generation marketing strategy, marketers want the content investment to work as long as possible. Regularly updating content helps content continue to perform well and generate quality leads.

Updating content includes:

  • Refreshing the writing
  • Adding updated statistics
  • Adjusting content optimization to new search engine rules

More and more businesses are including content updates in their content marketing strategy because updated content delivers consistent positive results and new leads.

Review Your Lead Generation Strategy

Behind the Work is a team of expert marketers with the tools and knowledge to create, distribute, and measure expert content that generates quality B2B leads. The marketing strategies attract and acquire a specific target audience to boost conversion rates.

Have an expert marketing strategist review your strategy today.

Advertising of any kind within the healthcare industry can be challenging, especially with all the rules and regulations surrounding it. Healthcare PPC adds another level of complexity.

While it can be tempting to ignore PPC because of its innate challenges, that could be detrimental to the health of your business. Instead, you need to learn the right way to manage your advertising beyond simple word-of-mouth recommendations.

Digital marketing is the way forward for the healthcare industry. According to a 2019 report, Google gets about 70,000 health-related queries every minute. An effective PPC strategy can help capture some of those searches and lead them to your business.

The right digital marketing strategy can lead to long-term growth and increased revenue for your practice.

What Is Healthcare PPC

PPC stands for “pay per click.” These are typically the ads someone sees at the top of their Google search results. A business only pays for the ad space when someone clicks on the ad.

You get to choose which keywords you want to focus on to trigger your ad. For example, if you are part of a pediatric practice in Houston, you could run a PPC ad campaign targeting people who search for “pediatricians in Houston.” If someone Googles that phrase, your PPC ad would be near the top of the page.

Tracking and measuring the results of PPC campaigns is also relatively simple. This means you can quickly gauge how effective your strategy is and make changes if you don’t get the results you want.

6 Best Practices to Maximize Healthcare PPC

If you are looking for ways to maximize your marketing dollars, PPC is a great place to start. However, there are a few strategies and best practices you should keep in mind.

1. Understand Healthcare Paid Search Rules 

Healthcare is a highly regulated industry. There are specific rules and regulations you must follow, or you run the risk of incurring fines and other more serious consequences.

Google has specific paid search policies for healthcare ads. These policies apply to ads related to:

  • Clinical trial recruitment
  • Restricted drug terms 
  • Experimental medical treatments
  • Addiction services
  • Unapproved substances

There are also specific rules surrounding “health in personalized advertising.” This means you cannot target users based on their personal health information, including the following:

  • Chronic health conditions
  • Disabilities
  • Physical or mental health conditions
  • Sexual health

2. Know Your Audience 

One of the benefits of medical PPC and healthcare marketing is that the target audience is generally highly segmented already. Most practices know exactly who their target demographic is. This information can help you target new customers.

To do this, you will need to:

  • Create patient personas: Look through the historical demographic data of your patients and create detailed patient personas. Include information such as profession, healthcare concerns, income, etc. The marketing team can use these personas to create ad campaigns that target your ideal patients.
  • Create relatable messaging: Your ads and overall messaging need to reflect what your potential patients are looking for. Ads for a dental practice should be very different than those for an oncologist.
  • Track your ad performance: One of the best things about PPC advertising is that it is very easy to track. You can do A/B testing to see which ad copy or CTA works the best for your clients and delivers the most conversions.

3. Create Customized Landing Pages 

When someone sees your ad based on specific keywords and then clicks on your ad, they should immediately see relevant information on your website. The best way to do this is to create custom landing pages unique to each set of PPC criteria. Do not send people to your homepage. They will feel lost and not know where to click.

The landing page should have the same or similar wording to the triggering keyword or phrase. For example, if your PPC ad promises free dental x-rays for new patients, users should see the same offer on the landing page.

It should also feature a clean, minimal design with a straightforward CTA that lets users know exactly what they are supposed to do, like schedule an appointment. Be sure to thoroughly test your landing pages from the customer’s perspective. Are there any confusing steps or obstacles? Try to make the journey as smooth and seamless as possible.

4. Use Geotargeting 

While healthcare has shifted more into the digital world the past couple of years, it is still very much a local operation. Using geotargeting in your PPC campaigns is necessary to reach the right audience in the right place.

If someone searches for “urgent care near me” and they are in San Francisco, California, they will get results for urgent care centers near them. If you run an urgent care office near San Francisco, you can create a PPC campaign that delivers your ads to users within your geographic area.

5. Add Ad Extensions 

Ad extensions on the search engine results page (SERP) amplify your content and give users more information. Some of the most common extensions include:

  • Callouts: This is a short 25-character description that supports the main ad copy. You can highlight what your healthcare business has to offer.
  • Structured snippets: Use this area to highlight more of your services.
  • Sitelinks: Along with the main headline link, you can add additional sitelinks near the bottom of your ad. These links lead to specific landing pages, such as “About Us,” “Schedule an Appointment,” etc.
  • Location: Providing your address in your PPC ad is an easy way to let users know if your healthcare business is convenient for them. 
  • Call: With a phone number extension, users can click or tap the number to call you directly. 

6. Optimize Your Ads for Mobile 

According to Pew Research, 85% of Americans use a smartphone. Most of those people use their phones to research information online, including information about their health. Your website and all its landing pages must be optimized for mobile use. This means text, images, and CTAs should display appropriately without users needing to scroll around to find what they need.

Luckily, Google offers responsive search ads which automatically adapt based on the user’s device. You simply need to create multiple headlines and descriptions and the system will choose the best combination for each user.

Expand Your Healthcare PPC Potential with Behind the Work

If healthcare marketing feels overwhelming, don’t worry. Behind the Work is here to help. Just as we would never try to diagnose our own health conditions, we wouldn’t expect medical professionals to do their own marketing.

Our team of marketing experts is here to help your healthcare business with whatever digital marketing needs you have, whether that is SEO optimization, PPC ad campaigns, or anything else. We want to help your potential patients find you and get the expert medical help they need.

Ready to explore the world of healthcare marketing? Contact us today to start improving your online performance.

Contributed by BTW Videography

Hiring is the process of selling your company to ideal candidates.

When these candidates come across your job posting, why should they want to learn more about your company, culture, and benefits? What should they know about your history, and why should they want to be part of your future?

You’ll be hooking the right people if you can confidently answer these questions. Telling a visually interesting story is the best way to capture attention and allow you to make the case that you’re the best company to work for.

That’s why we recommend a recruitment video as part of any hiring campaign.

Many recruiters shy away from video because they think it will take too much technical knowledge or expensive equipment. However, the entire process can be completed with technology you already have access to.

From planning to production, we’ve collected eight easy steps you can follow to create your own engaging recruitment video.

FAQs About Producing a Recruitment Video

If you’d like to skip right to the details, scroll down to find the 8 steps.

How Do I Write a Recruitment Video for a Job?

To create effective company recruitment videos, start by laying out a basic story structure, including:

  • Your origins
  • The principles you believe in
  • Challenges on your road to growth
  • The role that your ideal candidate will play in the future of your business

From there, it’s best to flesh out the story with human interest by letting your employees speak on behalf of your business.

What Should You Include in a Recruiting Video?

You’ll want all the following elements in your recruitment video:

  • Interviews with current employees.
  • A cohesive, visually interesting narrative that tells your company’s story.
  • The culture of your company and why it’s a great place to work.
  • A relatable and optimistic plan for the future.

What Is a Recruitment Video?

Job recruitment videos, also known as video job postings, or work recruitment videos, are videos produced by companies looking to hire candidates for an open position.

How Long Should a Recruiting Video Be?

A recruitment video should be fairly short, about 2-3 minutes long. It should be long enough to communicate key details about your company’s culture and vision without getting too bogged down in minutiae or technical details about the open position.

Without further ado, here are eight simple steps you can take to make your own recruiting video.

Phase One: Planning

As with anything worth doing, it’s better to prepare in advance. Here are four steps you should follow during the planning phase of your recruitment video:

1. Determine Your Audience (Create Personas)

“In order to tell a great story that places your ideal candidate at the heart of the narrative, start with candidate personas.”

A persona is an idealized but fictional candidate representing the perfect employee you’d like to hire.

To design your ideal candidate, ask yourself questions like:

  • Who is my ideal employee on a personal level?
  • What are their career and life goals?
  • What do they need and want in a workplace?
  • How is your company better positioned to fulfill their desires compared to others?

2. Articulate Your Company’s Vision and Culture

After coming up with the ideal candidate persona, you should consider designing the image of the company you’d like to project.

Important factors to consider when developing an identity for your business include your ideal company culture, steps to achieve it, and how your business operations reinforce and feed off that image.

Your culture should feel cohesive with your ideal candidate. They are designed to be a perfect match for one another, so if something about this step feels off, it’s important to take a close look and smooth out any rough edges.

3. Come Up with a Rough Script

You should have a good idea of your final product before you begin video production.

Rather than trying to plan out every detail, focus on creating general guidelines that will shape the video you want.

Start by brainstorming simple ideas like music choices, office settings you can use, and visuals you want to include, such as office amenities or even a shot of your building and surrounding area.

Determine what you’d like to say in your recruitment video.

  • What’s the story of your company? Where have you come from, and where are you going?
  • How does your ideal candidate fit into this narrative? They should have an active role in the future of the company.
  • Don’t be afraid to talk about your challenges. Any good narrative involves a character overcoming problems. Your company has challenges and obstacles on the way to growth. Be open about those challenges and how you plan to overcome them with the right candidate.
  • Keep your video focused on the narrative. Don’t be tempted to include too many details about the position, job responsibilities, or other technical information. This will sap momentum from the video and detract from its ultimate purpose: telling an engaging story.

“Your company has challenges and obstacles on the way to growth. Be open about those challenges and how you plan to overcome them with the right candidate.”

4. Decide Whom to Put in Front of the Camera

No recruitment video can be complete without including the human element. Your current employees are the best resource you have when it comes to selling your company to potential candidates.

  • Ask for volunteers. This part is pretty important. You don’t want anyone in the video who may feel uncomfortable in front of the camera.
  • When asking for volunteers, make sure you keep the tone light. Let your employees know it’s a simple process that won’t take long and will involve them speaking honestly about their experiences at the company.
  • If possible, get someone outside the organization to ask recruitment video questions. This will reduce the pressure on them to feel like they have to answer questions a certain way. Keep in mind that a low-pressure, open-ended interview is the best way to get your employees to relax and relate to the interviewer on a human level.
  • Don’t forget to include some leaders in your video. Highly visible senior leadership gives the impression of a more dynamic organization that appeals to candidates.

“Don’t forget to include some leaders in your video. Highly visible senior leadership gives the impression of a more dynamic organization that appeals to candidates.”

Phase Two: Production

Now that you have a plan for your recruitment video, you’ll need to turn your vision into reality. This is the production phase of how to make a recruitment video.

5. Get Comfortable with Your Equipment

Despite what you may believe, having professional equipment is optional when creating a recruitment video. You can make do with just a couple modern smartphones—one for video and one for audio.

The only way to master the art of creating videos is to practice often. If you’re brand new to the process, here are a few tips for filming your recruitment video:

  • Avoid bad audio at all costs. Sound that is choppy, too loud, or incomprehensible will immediately degrade the quality of your final product and make it feel unprofessional. Record audio and video separately, then synchronize the two in the editing process.
  • Film in landscape, not portrait. Unless you create a recruitment video for social media where a portrait frame is appropriate, you want to avoid it. A wide-screen landscape picture is more visually appealing and will look better and more professional on bigger screens.
  • Keep the camera steady. Try resting your camera on a steady surface or invest in a tripod.
  • Get plenty of broll. In video production, a b-roll is the footage that is interspersed with your main shot. B-roll is important because it infuses the video with momentum and visual interest that a static, unedited shot can’t achieve.
  • Stay organized. Label all your video and audio files consistently, making them easy to reference in the editing process.

6. Be a Hands-off Director

Employee recruitment videos should feel natural and free-flowing while still having defined structures.

  • Keep interviews open-ended. Let employees talk as much as possible. The more freedom they have to search their thoughts and feelings for truthful answers, the more quickly you’ll get them to open up.
  • Be open to changes. You may learn that an idea or shot you wanted to include doesn’t make sense anymore. Be open to changing directions early and often at the suggestion of your employees or collaborators.
  • Minimize cliches and buzzwords. Compared to other methods, the best aspect of a recruitment video is the ease with which you can generate a compelling and engaging narrative. The quickest way to detract from this narrative is to bring the candidate out of it with too many buzzwords or cliches that will make it difficult to focus on what’s truly unique about your company.

7. Show, Don’t Tell

Remember that video is a visual medium, first and foremost. Keep your job recruiting video interesting by showing rather than telling.

For example, imagine an employee you’re interviewing bringing up how much they love the cafeteria. You should overlay that audio with a shot of the cafeteria, removing the need for the candidate to imagine what the cafeteria must look like and making it easy for them to imagine enjoying lunch there instead.

“Remember that video is a visual medium first and foremost. Keep your recruitment video interesting by showing rather than telling.”

8. Include a Specific Call to Action

By specific, we mean direct instruction, so the candidate knows exactly where to go to complete the application process. The less friction here, the more candidates you’ll have access to. Provide a link that is immediately accessible near the video, as well as instructions in the video for how to apply.

For Best Results, Go to the Experts

No matter your level of expertise or what technology you have access to, it’s possible to make a narrative-driven, personalized recruitment video that highlights the culture of your business to potential candidates.

However, if you really want to maximize your results, it might be best to let a professional recruiting video maker handle it for you.

Behind The Work is an inbound agency with a San Diego Videography team specializing in full-service creative campaigns, including professional recruitment videos for companies. We pride ourselves on our ability to collaborate with our clients and seek to fit ourselves into your production or marketing process as a partner first and foremost.

We’ll work alongside you to conceptualize and produce an effective recruitment video that tells the story of your business and relates it in a way that will maximize your recruiting efforts.

For an example of what we can do, take a look at what we created for the University of California. Of the candidates we helped them recruit, 100% were high-quality and still with them two years after the campaign.

To learn more about the services Behind the Work offers and how we can begin creating the perfect recruitment video for you, contact us to talk with one of our team members.

Free trials often lead to higher conversion rates. One study showed that two out of three buyers who used a free trial ended up purchasing the product or service afterward. However, encouraging B2B buyers to sign up for the trial in the first place isn’t always straightforward. Thankfully, PPC for SaaS companies can improve your trial signup rate.

Learn how pay-per-click for SaaS works and how you can use it to increase your trial signups.

Does PPC Work for B2B Marketing?

PPC advertising is effective for both B2C and B2B marketing for a SaaS company.

Reaching primary decision-makers can be difficult as you don’t have as many options as B2C marketing. However, when you use PPC strategies, you have a greater chance of your marketing content with your trial signup appearing in front of the right people, which will boost your B2B marketing strategy.

PPC ads can appear in searches, social media, and third-party websites.

What Are the 8 Types of PPC Ads?

Explore the eight primary PPC examples:

Paid Search Advertising

Search ads are content you sponsor to guarantee it appears at the top of relevant Google searches. This is the most popular type of PPC ad. When they appear at the top of search engine results, they have an “Ad” marker before the URL.

To create Google ads for SaaS businesses, you choose the content you want to sponsor and bid on keywords that you want that content to rank for in the tech niche. When your target B2B audience searches those terms, your content with the trial signup will be one of the top results.

Display Advertising

Display ads are like digital billboards. They appear in advertising widgets on sidebars of third-party websites. They are often images with messages that take the reader to a designated landing page.

Instead of targeting keywords, you target specific people. For example, Google can track users and display your trail signup ad to visitors who had previously visited your site.

Social Media Advertising

Over half the world’s population is on social media, making it an ideal place to advertise your trial. Even B2B companies see a positive return for social ads, with 60% of B2B marketers confirming they received an ROI from paid ads on social media.

Some of the most popular platforms for social media advertising include:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most effective social media channel for B2B marketing as 80% of the members are business decision-makers.

Because social media users enter an extensive amount of personal information, you can target your audience on social media easier. Use filters like location, demographics, interests, and behaviors to find your audience. Your paid content will appear on their feeds with a “Sponsored” tag under your profile.

Retargeting Ads

Not everyone who visits your website will purchase immediately. The average decision-maker will interact with 13 different pieces of content before choosing a vendor.

Remarketing is the strategy you use to bring your website traffic back to your site after they initially left. While there are several ways you can remarket, retargeting tracks the visitor and then displays PPC ads with your content on third-party sites. These reminders of your products and services offer visitors a chance to reconsider their decision and encourage them to return to your site.

About 33% of B2B marketers say they plan on investing in remarketing as part of their PPC strategy.

Instream Advertising

If you have a video ad, you can display it at the start, middle, or end of a YouTube video as a PPC instream ad.

YouTube is one of the top-visited sites globally, just below Google and Facebook, making it another prime spot to post your ads and reach your target audience. Since 70% of B2B buyers say they watch videos in their buyer’s journey, video ads should play a significant role in your PPC campaigns.

Gmail-Sponsored Ads

You can send your marketing content directly to your audience through Gmail-sponsored ads. These ads appear in the recipient’s inbox alongside their other mail but have an “ad” tag to distinguish them. However, since most businesses don’t use Gmail, these PPC ads are primarily for B2C marketing.

Google Shopping Ads

Google shopping ads are paid ads for your products or services. This ad format works best for physical items from ecommerce stores rather than SaaS companies.

Local Service Ads

This PPC ad is for local businesses offering services to help them appear in local search results. SaaS businesses do not qualify for local service ads.

“LinkedIn is the most effective social media channel for B2B marketing as 80% of the members are business decision-makers.”

How Do I Create a SaaS Marketing Plan to Increase Trial Signups?

Paying for an ad only improves your reach but doesn’t guarantee the right audience will click on the ad. So, what are the proven PPC tactics for more effective SaaS marketing?

Use these eight strategies to build a SaaS marketing plan to increase your trial signup rate.

1. Use Comprehensive Analytics

Tracking the buyer’s journey will tell you where your clients came from before they signed up for your trial. Those previous touchpoints will be key channels for displaying your PPC ads to increase the number of buyers ready to sign up.

However, the attribution model you use for tracking your buyers and their touchpoints will impact how you view your channels. An attribution model is how you distribute value from a sale among each contributing channel.

If you use a last-click attribution model, you only attribute the trial signup to the last channel the buyer visited. This model doesn’t consider other stops they made leading up to the trial signup. For example, that same buyer might have spent significant time on social media earlier in their sales journey, making that channel another valuable location for ads.

Seeing the entire journey in your attribution model is the most effective way to choose the best channels for your PPC ads.

Seeing the entire journey in your attribution model is the most effective way to choose the best channels for your PPC ads.”

2. Optimize Your Landing Page

Each PPC ad should have its customized landing page. A landing page is a static page that your traffic arrives at from your PPC ads. If your ads send your visitors to your website, they don’t have any specific direction to go and are more likely to get distracted on your site or lose interest.

However, a landing page removes all distractions like the navigation bar. When visitors arrive, there is only one action to complete, like signing up for your trial.

It can also customize the visitor’s message according to the campaign they come from. For example, if your ad was a PPC ad on LinkedIn that targeted financial decision-makers, your landing page might focus on the financial benefits of your software.

To optimize your landing page fully, you will need to perform A/B testing to see which formats and page setups connect best with your audience. For instance, you can run several ads that lead to a copy of the same landing page. However, each landing page might use a different color trial signup button. You can watch to see which color received the most trial signups.

3. Use a Variety of Ads

The average person sees between 6,000 and 10,000 ads each day. In addition, many of those ads are the same across different platforms. If your buyers see a copy and paste of your ad several times a day for several days, they will quickly develop ad fatigue. Instead of reaching them with your invitation to your trial, you will create a negative response.

To avoid ad fatigue, continually switch up your ads, message, images, and format to keep your ads fresh. Each interaction will feel like a new experience and give you another opportunity to highlight the benefits of your trial and products.

“The average person sees between 6,000 and 10,000 ads each day.”

4. Use Lookalike Audiences

When you use Facebook, take advantage of their lookalike audience feature for PPC ads. It will help you reach more of your target audience with your trial signup.

Lookalike is a feature that analyzes your current social media audience. It then searches Facebook for groups with similar characteristics and shares your ads with that audience.

You can create a custom list of a segment of your audience for Facebook to analyze. Then you can make up to 500 lookalike audiences for each group.

5. Create Multiple Personalized PPC Ads

Roughly 80% of marketers say they saw more sales when they used personalization in their strategies. Personalized PPC ads and landing page content change for each target audience to ensure it has the most relevant message for each decision-maker.

“Roughly 80% of marketers say they saw more sales when they used personalization in their strategies.”

For example, what motivates the head of marketing to sign up for your trial will be different than what motivates the CEO of the same company. Therefore, adjusting your ad to those titles allows you to reach your audience more effectively for a higher conversion rate.

6. Use Negative Keywords

You may already know about keywords, which are search phrases you target in your content to improve your ranking in Google searches. However, you can also use negative keywords in your PPC ads.

Negative keywords are the opposite of keywords you want to rank for. They tell the search algorithm what searches you don’t want your ad to appear in because they aren’t relevant to your products or services. By using negative keywords, you reduce the number of clicks on your ad from visitors who aren’t going to sign up for your trial because the service isn’t designed for their needs.

For example, if you are promoting a cookie tracking software trial, you might include “cookie recipe” as a negative keyword, so the search algorithm doesn’t pull your software up in baking-related queries.

Keyword vs Negative Keyword PPC

7. Track Micro Conversions

Before your buyers sign up for your trial, several micro conversions take place. The first micro conversion is clicking on your ad. Next, you can track how long they stay on your page or whether they scroll through the landing page to read your content.

By tracking these micro conversions, you can identify what parts of your PPC ad are effective and where you are most likely to lose your traffic.

For example, you might see many micro conversions leading up to filling out the form. However, most of your visitors might abandon the trial signup form before completing it. Therefore, you can identify the form as a roadblock to trial signups and work on improving that specific area of your landing page.

8. Create a Lead Qualification Process

Once your target audience signs up for a trial, your job isn’t done. When the trial ends, there is a chance they won’t purchase your product.

Part of your PPC ad campaign should include how to convert trial signups to retainers.

For example, once a buyer fills out the trial signup form, this action might trigger an automated email drip campaign. Through the emails, you nurture the lead and address any remaining roadblocks they may have.

You might also set up a support system where you can quickly resolve any issues and answer questions during the trial experience to ensure it’s as positive as possible.

Making a seamless transition from trial to retainer is also key to converting trial users because if the process is too complicated, they are less likely to complete it.

Optimize Your Trial Signups Using PPC for SaaS

Behind the Work can help you design ad copy and landing pages with a high conversion rate. Work with our B2B marketing experts to create customized content that will help you reach more of your marketing goals.

Contact us to learn more about our SaaS PPC Management service.

B2B professional services create customized offerings for buyers and develop relationships with each business based on trust. While there are several ways to build this relationship, video marketing is quickly becoming one of the top strategies for marketers.

However, is video marketing relevant in B2B marketing, or is it a passing trend among consumers?

Explore the potential of B2B video marketing for professional services and five ways for using video in B2B marketing.

What Is a B2B Marketing Video?

A B2B marketing video promotes your business, introduces your services, and builds trust with your audience. You can share your marketing video on your website, social media, or a third-party website where users can view it. Then, they can use links within the video or in the description to return to your website and sign up for your services.

“A B2B marketing video promotes your business, introduces your services, and builds trust with your audience.”

Is Video Marketing Necessary?

The demand for video content is growing as more buyers prefer the immersive experience that the media format offers rather than traditional channels for interacting with brands. Today, 86% of marketers use video as part of their strategy and plan to continue using it because of its high ROI.

To remain competitive in today’s market, you must incorporate video into your strategy.

Is YouTube Good for B2B Marketing?

The second most visited website is YouTube, the online video hosting giant. It provides the tools and audience you need to launch your next video marketing campaign.

Before you start investing in YouTube, here are a few B2B video marketing statistics you should know about the platform:

  • 30 million users log onto YouTube daily, and two billion monthly
  • Users watch over one billion hours of YouTube content daily
  • There are over 38 million channels on YouTube
  • 90% of digital consumers also use YouTube

Among that large audience are your B2B buyers, looking for relevant content in their industry. You can position yourself as a leader by providing that content through the most popular video site.

Why Is Video Important in B2B Marketing?

Here are four benefits to including video as part of your B2B marketing efforts:

Increases Lead Engagement

Videos are one of the best content formats for encouraging engagement.

For example, videos on Facebook have the highest engagement rate, videos on Instagram receive twice the engagement of regular photo posts, and tweets with videos see ten times the engagement as those without.

Engagement shows your viewers are interested in your message and trust your brand. It also lets you know whether most of your viewers are having a positive experience.

The ideal video length for engagement is within two minutes. After that, many viewers tend to leave. However, if viewers stay at least six minutes, they will most likely remain for the full video.

Addresses Different Learning Methods

Not everyone learns the same way. Roughly 65% of the population are visual learners. Visual learners retain information by viewing images, videos, and charts.

“Roughly 65% of the population are visual learners.”

You are missing a large demographic if all your touchpoints are only text emails, blog posts, or phone calls. Bloggers publish over 6 million new posts daily, and the average office worker receives over 121 emails daily. You want your content to be memorable despite the oversaturation of digital media, which requires a mix of strategies and an incorporation of media.

Adding a visual touchpoint through a B2B marketing video ensures that most of your audience will retain the information and remember your professional services brand.

Improves Your Search Ranking

On average, 68% of online experiences start with a search engine. So before your buyers ever find your brand, they will be on a search engine like Google looking for solutions or learning information in their industry.

The more content you create, the greater your chance of ranking in those searches. In addition, over half of website traffic comes from organic searches, which means search engine optimization should be a high priority in your B2B marketing efforts to drive new traffic to your site.

Video in your blog posts and web pages improves your site’s ranking in search engines. It also ensures the traffic you attract stays on those pages longer as it keeps them engaged.

In addition to supporting other content, video also ranks in a search engine by itself. YouTube videos appear in search queries based on the keywords you use in your closed captions, description, and title, as well as the video’s engagement rate.

Works Well with Social Media

Since 59% of the world’s population is on social media, spending an average of two and a half hours each day browsing content, it should be a core part of your marketing strategy. However, reaching your target audience isn’t always easy as there are millions of users and competing content.

Video content helps cut through the noise by adding an engaging touchpoint to your social media channels. To ensure your video appears in front of the right audience, you can sponsor the content and use filters such as profession and location to target your B2B buyers.

The top social media marketing platform is LinkedIn. There are over 630 million professionals on this social channel. In addition, 80% of them are decision-makers in their businesses. If you are looking for the best channel to share your B2B video content, consider adding LinkedIn to the top of your list.

Builds Trust with B2B Buyers

Trust and authority are the cornerstones of a buyer relationship. They need to trust your brand and recommendations and see you as a leader in your industry before they are willing to invest in your services.

“Trust and authority are the cornerstones of a buyer relationship.”

Video helps build that trust by developing a relationship through personal interactions on video. It gives you a fresh way to interact with your buyers and deliver messages. In addition, because they can see a face and someone’s eyes as they speak, it also improves the experience of receiving information.

Studies revealed the power of eye contact in communication. Some of the benefits of showing your eyes when communicating include:

  • Sharing emotions without speaking
  • Appearing more honest
  • Increasing your persuasive power
  • Improving understanding
  • Building respect

How To Use Video in B2B Professional Service Marketing

Use these five strategies for incorporating video into your B2B professional service marketing:

Types of Video Content

1. Thought Leadership Content

Roughly half of decision makers spend over an hour interacting with thought leadership content each week. Thought leadership is content where experts speak on a topic in their niche for the education and inspiration of others.

When you create thought leadership content, you establish yourself as an authority in your field. Your clients will see your content and learn to respect your opinion.

You can publish short-form thought leadership on YouTube or as short business-to-business marketing videos on your website. These are snippets of ideas and inspiration you share through video. They work well as complements to other content.

However, some of the most effective B2B video thought leadership are webinars. About 91% of marketers who use webinars say they saw great success with the format. Webinars allow you to dive deeper into a subject as most attendees prefer them to last around 45 minutes. In addition, they can be live events or on-demand, allowing you to share the webinar on YouTube and your website even after the event ends.

2. Monthly Video Blogs

About 94% of people will watch a video to help them understand a business and its services. Instead of only publishing regularly written blogs, you can add video content to your monthly or weekly schedule.

Regularly published video blogs can cover a wide array of subjects, just as you would on your website’s blog. For example, you can explain how your services work or talk about why businesses need services like yours, which creates demand.

Your monthly video blogs might also include training to help current customers continue benefiting from your services and maximize their returns. For example, if you offer content creation services, you can post videos on effective lead nurturing and follow-up strategies. These will help your customers convert the leads your content brought in.

3. Client Testimonials

Your buyers will conduct online research before choosing what services they will buy. About 92% of buyers will read reviews as part of that research. In addition, 95% of people say that reviews influence their decision.

Example of Client Testimonial

Sharing reviews on your website can build trust with future buyers as it shows you are a reliable company. Reviews also sometimes share specific ways others can benefit from your services.

However, you can add another layer of authenticity to your reviews by creating video client testimonials. As with your video content, testimonials are more trustworthy when the audience can see the speaker. They have more faith that the previous client is providing an authentic review and that the experience was positive because they can see the client’s body language and eyes while they share their experience.

Case studies are one of the most effective B2B content types. They are testimonials about past customers and how your brand helped that client succeed. In addition, it can serve as a roadmap for future clients looking for the same results and build trust with buyers since it provides specific ways your services benefit businesses.

4. Company Introductions

When you meet clients in person, your first act is reaching out your hand, making eye contact, and introducing yourself.

However, when a client’s first interaction with your brand is your website, you don’t have a chance to offer that hand of trust. Instead, you rely on your website to give a positive first impression. One way to make your visitor’s acquaintance is through an introduction video.

An introduction video appears on your about page or landing pages as a greeting to new customers. It gives them a friendly face to see while introducing them to who you are and what services you offer.

The ideal introduction video should be between two and three minutes long. Keep it professional yet remain human throughout. In the end, provide a clear call to action. These might be directions for contacting you or a specific service they could sign up for.

5. Talent Acquisitions

The expert team supporting your business is a crucial part of your outstanding services. However, finding that talent is getting more difficult in today’s labor shortage. There are 3.4 million fewer Americans working today than there were in 2020.

Because of the competitive market, you want your business to stand out to attract the best in your industry.

Video promotions for your business give job seekers an inside look at who you are as a company, what you stand for, and what your company culture is. It helps potential employees know whether they are a good fit and can attract new employees because the engaging format stands out in stark contrast to the thousands of plain text job listings.

Add Video to Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

The upward trends in video marketing show that B2B video isn’t going away anytime soon. Therefore, those in B2B professional services marketing should adopt video into their strategy to remain competitive and stand out in today’s immersive multimedia society.

Contact us to learn about our video content solutions for B2B professional services.

So, What’s a Nascar Slide?

Essentially, a Nascar slide is the part of the sales deck or webpage that showcases all the companies that have worked with you. These are typically displayed as a series of logos, much like a Nascar vehicle is embellished with sponsorship logos. It’s part brand pride and part trust with current opportunities during the buying process. More importantly, there is a right way to demonstrate which brand you are working with and the wrong way. This blog is designed to help you navigate building out your own Nascar Slide and which companies should be featured during your sales process and on your website.

When deciding which companies make the cut, ask yourself – Who visits my website? Surely, its qualified leads, 100% of the time right? Realistically, you will get current clients, family & friends, referrals, leads and let’s not forget to mention competitors perusing your site. For that reason, we need to take care of the types of clients you present to the world.

There is always the argument that if you’re doing a great job for your clients you should not have to worry about them leaving for your competitors – even though as marketers, we like to think conservatively with the information we give to competition. By mitigating risk, we think protecting your company from losing key accounts is ideal – Yup, we have a little competitor paranoia in us.

What are some key features to think about when building your Nascar Slide? Below, read some helpful rules that should go into consideration before sharing your Nascar slides with the public:

Customize for the client you want to serve

Start by segmenting your clients. Some of the ways we do this is by separating clients based on Industry type, employee size, or revenue size. Present clients that are similar to prospects you’re presenting to. For example, if you are presenting to a small plumber in Phoenix, showcase plumbers you’re currently working with across the country that are the same size in your Nascar Slide. This will build trust and assure the client you understand their niche industry and size.

Need Help Building Out Your Nascar Slide?

Present the information, but don’t share it permanently

Present your clients to potentials in a way that your competitors can’t get a hand on it. Use Zoom or Google Meets to present your sales deck, but don’t share your client list to your opportunity to hold onto, as that may eventually find its way to someone who shouldn’t have it.

Forming relationships with prospects is an exercise in trust – ideally, you want to establish a mutually beneficial partnership that accounts for potential leakages. This will obviously be different on the layout of a web page – keep your most loyal accounts here for immediate reference.

Look to show off size in the public places

Clients like Microsoft or Oracle are great to have on your slide because they have several thousand employees and it becomes hard to pinpoint who at the organization is the buyer that is working with your company. Also, it may show the enterprise work you’re looking for.

However, this can work against you if your pitching to a small business and telling them you work with giant companies. Use giants on the website and other places that are more public but ensure it’s a good fit for your organization. If you serve smaller companies and are showing off much larger ones you might send the wrong message to the clients you are trying to attract.  

Share for Quality, Not Quantity

It’s nice to showcase how you work with thousands of clients –there are clear advantages for doing this for several types of industries like SaaS. However, we prefer to see a more intimate group of high authority companies. For example, if you are serving hospitality, it may be enough to say you work with Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt, rather than listing off hundreds of smaller clients with less brand recognition.

Positive Referrals Only

Lastly, only put clients on your site that will advocate for your company. Expect that in some cases, prospects might ask for referrals, or they may know several people at a company you say you’re working with and they may reach out to find out how the relationship is working out. There’s no faster way to lose confidence in a brand than by reaching out to someone who claims to have given a positive referral, only to find that they think otherwise.

We are a firm believer that in B2B ,prospects want to work with companies they trust and know. Your Nascar slide will help them build the trust in your organization by showing that you have the experience in working with other clients.

What are some simple ways that your company can begin implementing Nascar slides immediately? 120/80 can help. We are a full-service digital marketing agency specializing in a broad range of solutions that have proven to drive leads and conversions in B2B. For proof of our success, look no further than our Nascar slides!

Software as a Service (SaaS) companies provide an invaluable offering. Clients can access beneficial internet applications without the complexity and bandwidth limitations of having to download and manage expensive software. It’s becoming such a popular tool that SaaS applications make up over 70% of total company software use. Of course, the only way for these businesses to thrive is to ensure that acquisition numbers exceed B2B SaaS churn rates.

Every subscription-based company must be aware of B2B SaaS churn rates to secure their overall success and longevity. Keeping an eye on how many people terminate their subscriptions gives marketers important insight into current performance and revenue growth forecasting. SaaS churn rates tell a powerful story about what aspect of the customer experience is failing and what changes you need to make to attract new prospects and retain current customers. As a result, it’s an effective tool for enhancing your digital marketing efforts.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of B2B SaaS churn rates, how to calculate them, and how they impact acquisition and market positioning for continued success.

SaaS churn rates tell a powerful story about what aspect of the customer experience is failing and what changes you need to make to attract new prospects and retain current customers.

What Exactly is SaaS Churn Rate?

SaaS churn rate (also known as attrition) is the rate at which customers cancel their subscriptions during a certain amount of time. While an occasional loss may not seem impactful in the big picture of your business plan, if left unchecked, B2B SaaS churn rates can ultimately destroy your business. After all, if you’re not doing anything to retain the customers you acquire, there’s no way for you to stay afloat, let alone grow and expand.

Churn rate doesn’t just reflect lost revenue. It also means you’re spending more on customer acquisition, which can cost up to five times more than customer retention. Keep a close eye on high SaaS churn rates because they can be detrimental to your bottom line.

Types of SaaS Churn Rates

There are essentially two main types of SaaS churn rates:

  • Customer level: A customer completely ends their relationship with your brand.
  • Subscription level: A customer remains with you but changes the level of their subscription.

Factors that Affect B2B SaaS Churn Rates

With either type, several factors can impact SaaS churn rates, including:

  • Seasonality: Churn rates may increase or decrease at certain times of the year.
  • Growth initiatives: If you launch an acquisition campaign, new members could skew data.
  • Demographics: Some people may simply be a better fit for your services than others.
  • Subscription level: Lower-tier services tend to have a higher churn rate than higher tiers.
  • Contract type: Short-term contracts may have higher termination rates than long-term subscriptions.

You can track factors to look for trends and patterns that enable you to plan your marketing efforts accordingly. Meanwhile, other factors that impact churn rates are customer-based and often unpredictable, including:

  • Financial issues: Customers can no longer afford their subscriptions.
  • Changed needs: Your product no longer meets the customer’s needs.
  • Poor customer experience: If someone has a negative experience, they’re likely to terminate their subscription.

Track all of these factors to identify areas of improvement that are in your control and what changes to make to attract new prospects, maintain happy customers, and reduce SaaS churn rates.

“Churn rate doesn’t just reflect lost revenue; it also means you’re spending more on customer acquisition, which can cost up to five times more than customer retention.”

How to Calculate Churn Rate for SaaS

Because there are so many variables that can affect its outcome, B2B SaaS churn rates can be a complex concept. However, it’s a fairly easy figure to calculate. First, you’ll need to determine the amount of time you want to evaluate (monthly or annually). Then, you’ll need to identify the total number of customers you had at the beginning of that time and the total number of customers you lost in that amount of time. Those numbers will then work into the SaaS churn rate formula as follows:

(Lost Customers / Total Customers at the Start of Time Period) x 100 = Churn Rate

Let’s say you’re wanting to determine your monthly churn rate. If your business had 300 customers at the start of the month and you lost 20 by the end, you would divide 20 by 300. Then, you would multiply that answer (.07) by 100, for a total of a 7% monthly churn rate.

(20 / 300) x 100 = 7%

To keep track of your churn rates, you can maintain a spreadsheet with these figures, or you could simplify the calculating and tracking of your SaaS churn rates with a tool like ProfitWell. This cloud-based app delivers your subscription and financial metrics on one dashboard and can help optimize your pricing and reduce cancellations for lower churn rate.

The goal, of course, is to have the lowest churn rate possible. An acceptable average SaaS churn rate is typically anywhere from 2% to 8%. Anything higher than that could have a significant impact on your monthly recurring revenue.

Churn rate calculations are most beneficial when conducted over a longer timeframe. Short-term results on a daily or weekly basis won’t reveal much insight. But quarterly or annual churn can reveal far-reaching trends and yearly performance. You can see whether your marketing strategy is working and the efficacy of customer retention efforts.

Churn Rate Visibility Improves Acquisition Efforts

SaaS churn rates impact every aspect of your business. They provide the information you need to:

  • Improve customer service: If customers are leaving due to a negative experience, you can re-evaluate your customer service efforts.
  • Rethink customer onboarding: Create a new, smoother, more user-friendly onboarding process that makes customers excited to be new subscribers.
  • Provide better training: When teams don’t silo information and sales and support staff are on the same page, your company can provide a better experience for customers.
  • Seek feedback: At key points along the customer journey, you can check in and see what you could do better to satisfy your current customers.
  • Build deeper relationships: Connect with your customers on a more personal level and build relationships that last.
  • Incentivize current customers: Discount offers and giveaways can entice customers to stay.

Churn rates allow you to learn critical information about ways to improve your approach and current systems to better serve your customers, provide a more personalized experience, and encourage customer loyalty. This is important because 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.

B2B SaaS churn rates are especially important to marketers. By tracking churn rates and understanding customer behavior, you can adjust your business processes and marketing approach to improve the acquisition of qualified deals with higher customer lifetime value (CLV). A KPI for every SaaS company, CLV is the average amount of money you can expect to earn from one customer throughout the duration of their relationship with your brand. The greater the CLV, the more profitable the customer.

Knowing CLV helps you assess your marketing efforts and provides insight into important KPIs that help you plan current and future marketing strategies for optimal results. It gives you a better idea about your company’s overall profitability and can help you discover ways to increase ROI while decreasing customer acquisition costs. Even just knowing customer lifetime (how long a customer will be with your company) can be an asset. Use churn rate to calculate your customer lifetime as follows:

Customer Lifetime = 1 / Churn Rate

If your churn rate is 7%, then your customer lifetime is 1 / .07 = 14.28 months (or a little over one year). Understanding how long you have with your customer helps you plan an effective marketing strategy to not only make the most of the time you have with them, but to also create a retention strategy that entices them to maintain their subscription even longer.

Churn rates allow you to learn critical information about ways to improve your approach and current systems to better serve your customers, provide a more personalized experience, and encourage customer loyalty.

Implement a CRM for Marketing Insights

One of the best ways to combat high B2B SaaS churn rates is to focus on retention through customer relationship management (CRM). A growing industry valued at $69.31 billion, CRM is software that helps you manage all relationships and engagement with prospective and current customers. CRM systems like HubSpot can help you make deeper connections with your audience, streamline operations and processes, and improve revenue generation.

Ultimately, CRM systems help you track your customer’s experience throughout their journey. CRM provides invaluable data that helps you identify areas of high churn and gives clues as to what caused it. Through CRM, you can:

  • Maintain open communication: Customers can give you invaluable feedback to shape your marketing efforts.
  • Understand your customers: Learn the needs, expectations, and preferences of your audience.
  • Channel people through the sales funnel: A better experience helps convert customers.

You also gain access to original advertising sources and can review messaging, channels, and placement to see what about your message didn’t resonate with your audience. You can review bounce rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement to determine which ads yielded high conversions and which ones fell flat.

Conversely, you can compare high churn ads with low churn ads to determine what aspects of your campaign are performing well and what edits you can make to improve overall performance. All of this gives you the information you need to make necessary adjustments and course corrections to ensure your marketing efforts are effective, impactful, and successful.

How Churn Rates Help You Understand Market Positioning

Churn accounts help you understand a lot about market positioning and messaging. Looking at lost accounts can show you why customers canceled their subscriptions and, even more, whether they left you for a competitor. If customers are choosing competing brands over yours, you know you need to take action to secure better market positioning.

Exit surveys can tell you why people left your company, providing you with an opportunity to make intentional and purposeful changes that help set you apart from your competition. You may need to review your price point, assess your customer service, or come up with innovative ideas to reimagine your products and services to better meet evolving consumer needs.

This data can also let you know whether your messaging is resonating with your audience. Wording, tone of voice, and technical explanations may not be connecting with your customers. You might not be adequately presenting the benefits of your services, so customers aren’t seeing the full value of your offerings. In this way, churn rates can help you educate clients about best use cases, so they have the confidence they need to subscribe to your services.

Churn rate also helps you gain an understanding of your customer base. You can learn purchase behavior, habits, and see common reasons for purchases and terminations. All of this helps you qualify potential clients and target the people most likely to benefit from your offerings. Targeting the right audience ensures higher success rates and lower churn rates, resulting in more revenue and continued growth.

“Churn rates can help you qualify potential clients and target the people most likely to benefit from your offerings.”

Reduce Your B2B SaaS Churn Rates

Churn rates provide invaluable metrics that can shape your business operations and marketing strategies for better customer acquisition, higher retention, and greater revenue generation. Behind the Work provides digital marketing solutions for B2B SaaS clients that attract quality leads and help grow your organization. Enhance your digital marketing strategy with data from B2B SaaS churn rates to boost your overall performance.

Visit Behind the Work today to learn more about how we can help SaaS churn rates.

There was a time when all a manufacturer had to do was focus on innovation and sell quality products at affordable prices. However, to stand out in today’s competitive online marketplace, companies need to focus on digital marketing in the manufacturing industry. After all, it’s likely that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales will take place using digital channels. Not only is a digital manufacturing marketing strategy essential, but marketing for manufacturers must include technical expertise.

The manufacturing industry targets a niche audience with very specific products and services. As a result, technical expertise is key to communicating not only to prospective buyers but also to designers and engineers. Companies have to be able to explain features and functions of (sometimes) highly complex products and processes so buyers understand what they’re purchasing, so technical teams can design and build them. For this reason, a successful manufacturing marketing strategy relies on a complete understanding of the technical aspects of the business and the products they sell.

Learn how technical expertise impacts marketing for manufacturers and helps in attracting, retaining, and growing current accounts for continued success.

“The manufacturing industry targets a niche audience with very specific products and services.”

What is the Role of Marketing in the Manufacturing Industry?

Marketing for manufacturers is all about communicating the benefits of a company’s product to its prospective buyers. It’s one thing to create the best widget in the industry, but if it doesn’t provide value to your audience, it won’t sell. A successful marketing plan for manufacturing companies helps to connect with consumers, remove barriers surrounding understanding, and provide useful solutions to buyers for higher conversions and business growth.

To clearly communicate how a manufacturer’s products deliver value, marketers have to understand how they work. Marketing for manufacturers is interesting because, in this industry, marketers must be able to explain technical concepts to people who are also technically minded, as well as laymen who may not fully understand what products do or how they function. By having a thorough understanding of the technicality of the products they promote, marketers can bridge the gap and appeal to all levels of the audience.

Tracking the buyer’s journey will tell you where your clients came from before they signed up for your trial. Those previous touchpoints will be key channels for displaying your PPC ads to increase the number of buyers ready to sign up.

However, the attribution model you use for tracking your buyers and their touchpoints will impact how you view your channels. An attribution model is how you distribute value from a sale among each contributing channel.

If you use a last-click attribution model, you only attribute the trial signup to the last channel the buyer visited. This model doesn’t consider other stops they made leading up to the trial signup. For example, that same buyer might have spent significant time on social media earlier in their sales journey, making that channel another valuable location for ads.

Seeing the entire journey in your attribution model is the most effective way to choose the best channels for your PPC ads.

By having a thorough understanding of the technicality of the products they promote, marketers can bridge the gap and appeal to all levels of the audience.”

Ultimately, a marketer’s job is to attract, retain, and grow current accounts for sustainability and longevity. Ways to do this effectively include:

  • Know your audience: marketers must know the demographics, background, and level of technical experience their audience has to create custom content that resonates and delivers value
  • Build an online presence: remain active on digital channels and consistently publish informative, useful information that educates, explains, and informs
  • Post authoritative content: position yourself as an industry leader with expert content that shares trends, forecasts, and findings

Manufacturing marketers who incorporate technical expertise help to earn credibility, build consumer trust, and develop customer loyalty. All of this helps to drive more business to the company and convert more prospects to customers.

How to Leverage Technical Expertise in Marketing for Manufacturers

One of the most effective ways to attract new prospects and retain current customers is to create a positive user experience. Typically this means delivering value and solving problems in a way that reduces friction and results in happy customers. In manufacturing, the buying process lends itself to several opportunities for consumer frustration.

Making sense of confusing technical drawings and complex industrial design while trying to purchase expensive industrial equipment can be an aggravating process. Luckily, a B2B marketing strategy provides several ways to eliminate those frustrations and earn loyal customers. Here are two ways a manufacturing marketing agency can leverage technical expertise for customer satisfaction.

1. Whitepapers

Whitepapers are educational, objective, long-form reports that focus not on selling a product but on providing solutions. They’re a terrific way to leverage your technical knowledge, as their expert-level data helps explain confusing technical data in a way that audience members can understand. Whitepapers help to:

  • Identify your customer’s problem and its greater impact
  • Recommend a solution
  • Provide research and credible statistics to support the solution

Readers can download your whitepapers from your website (often in exchange for customer contact information). Although not specifically a sales tool, whitepapers can be a powerful aspect of a sales strategy for manufacturing companies. They can help you create a contact list of prospective customers and serve as a resource that builds customer trust and loyalty.

Whitepapers that describe advanced capability and technical processes are especially beneficial as a marketing tool because they:

  • Build your reputation: position yourself as an industry expert and thought leader in your field
  • Gain consumer confidence: authority content helps people feel more certain in their purchase decision
  • Drive website traffic: people will visit your site to seek out your expert-level content
  • Generate revenue: buyers can see why your solutions are superior and will choose you over your competitor

Well-written whitepapers that explain technical concepts in a way your audience can understand help to deliver value while reducing friction.

2. Video Tutorials

One of the greatest drawbacks to a digital marketplace is the inability of buyers to test a product before they make a purchase. This is especially detrimental in the manufacturing industry, where features and functionality can be difficult to envision from a photograph or technical description. Video content can be instrumental in converting customers because it allows people to see firsthand the mechanics of how something works. There are currently more than 244 billion digital video viewers in America. Videos are engaging, entertaining, and demonstrative.

“Video content can be instrumental in converting customers because it allows people to see firsthand the mechanics of how something works.”

In manufacturing, video tutorials can do everything from show how a product works to how to submit files for processing. Seeing an actual demonstration gives buyers the confidence they need to commit to a purchase. In fact, video convinces 77% of consumers to buy. As a marketing tool, video tutorials can:

  • Help you connect with your customer
  • Provide invaluable information that converts
  • Set you apart from the competition
  • Boost SEO for greater visibility
  • Generate revenue

Videos are highly shareable, so they’re an effective tool to boost manufacturing marketing. They’re effective for the manufacturing industry because they can present information in three different, yet equally powerful, ways:

  • Explainer video: short videos that express how your company or products solve problems
  • How-to video: step-by-step instructions that teach viewers technical processes or ideas that are too complex for text descriptions
  • Demo video: shows people how to use a product or complete a task

Through video content, you can connect with consumers on a more personal level and give a face and personality to your brand. This helps build trust and earn credibility, leading to strong customer relationships that last.

How Do You Market an Industrial Company?

Just like any business, marketing is crucial to the current and future success of your company. You have to know your audience, their needs and pain points, preferences, and buying habits. Use that information to identify solutions you provide that benefit them and deliver value. Create custom content that is relevant to their needs and alleviates their concerns. Learn where they’re spending their time online and reach them with your messaging on those channels.

The digital age has made it easier than ever to connect with prospective buyers. The Thomas Register of Manufacturers is the leading comprehensive directory of American and Canadian manufacturers. Google adopted the registry (originally a set of bound books) and renamed it ThomasNet, now an online resource. As a result, companies can reach younger procurement officers and digital marketing can add enterprise clients where it was once not possible to do so.

Think about your unique traits that help you stand out from the competition. Highlight features, services, or technical expertise you have that nobody else can offer. Remember to always keep your customers in mind and deliver solutions that meet their needs. Building relationships will produce benefits that last beyond sales.

Building relationships will produce benefits that last beyond sales.

How Can Manufacturing Increase Revenue?

With 638,583 American manufacturing businesses currently in operation, you have to find ways to set yourself apart from the competition. Digital marketing and marketers with technical expertise are key to attracting more business to your manufacturing company. Here are three ways manufacturing can increase revenue.

1. Create a Positive Experience

One way to drive sales is to ensure your customers are satisfied with their experience with your brand. Customer relationship management (CRM) is critical in attracting new prospects and retaining current customers. CRM for manufacturers helps you manage all interactions with your audience, which yields the following benefits:

  • Improved sales performance: all conversations are located in one place so teams have access to all information and no sales opportunities fall through the cracks
  • Forecast future sales: seeing potential deals can help you plan for upcoming demand
  • Smoother supply chain: CRM provides visibility and insights about operations and processes

CRM systems help you ensure you’re providing a positive customer experience, which in turn sets you apart from the competition and drives business your way.

2. Innovation

Your manufacturing business should be constantly finding new and creative ways to solve your audience’s problems. Whether it’s a matter of improving the features of your current products or coming up with entirely new solutions, the company that stays ahead of the competition will attract the attention of the buyers in need.

Innovation can also revolve around your processes and operations. Find ways to streamline your efforts to make things run more smoothly and efficiently. These kinds of creative solutions can attract the attention of other industry leaders who want to learn from your ideas. They can also entice customers looking for a more effective way of doing business to give your brand a try.

Whether it’s new products or new processes, you have to be able to explain these new ideas to your audience. Use research to back up your claims and reputable resources to prove your findings. When you have the ideas, tools, and technical expertise, you’ll entice buyers to convert, thus generating more revenue for your business.

3. Strengthen Your Online Presence

With such a focus on digital interactions in today’s marketplace, if you want to generate more revenue, you have to strengthen your online presence. Use SEO to earn higher search engine ranking placement so you can increase visibility and drive more traffic to your site. Craft compelling content that includes high-performing keywords so your material aligns with online searches. Incorporate quality backlinks that offer valuable resources to your readers.

Engage your audience on social media platforms. Highly targetable and easy to share information, social media is a great way to build brand awareness and identity while learning more about your prospective customers. Chat threads and forums will reveal candid feedback about you and your competitors. Discover common industry concerns or problems and learn how you can develop a solution that would earn customers and generate more revenue.

Maximize Your Marketing for Manufacturers

An effective digital marketing strategy combined with technical expertise is a winning combination for attracting new prospects, retaining current customers, and growing current accounts. Behind The Work is a manufacturing marketing agency that can help position manufacturers to succeed with technical expertise. Enhance your digital marketing strategy and generate more revenue for your manufacturing business.

Ready to improve your performance? Visit Behind The Work today.

Search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads are two of the top strategies for getting your content in front of the right audience. They aren’t competing strategies but complementary solutions depending on your marketing goals and needs.

SEO is a long-term and cost-efficient strategy for overall growth, whereas PPC offers quick, short-term solutions for messages you want to spread immediately or strategically.

Explore these two strategies in more detail and how long you can expect before you see results to help you decide which solution is best for reaching your audience on your schedule.

SEO Timeline: Long-Term and Cost Efficient

SEO is the best source of high-quality leads, according to 60% of marketers. It’s an organic process of finding readers by ranking in search queries. Since 68% of online experiences start with a search engine, platforms like Google and Bing are powerful tools for reaching your audience.

Unfortunately, SEO isn’t a simple solution that yields immediate results. Instead, it takes careful planning and patience, but the long-term results are worth the wait.

How Long Does SEO Optimization Take?

On average, you can expect results from SEO after four to six months. After that, you will continue to see your traffic grow for months and years to come.

SEO is more cost-efficient than most other strategies. You will initially invest money to hire content creators and the tools for researching and publishing content. Then after you post the content, you have very few additional costs except for refreshing the piece to keep it relevant and well-ranking and the cost of new content creation.

SEO Timeline Template

Here is an average six-month SEO timeline:

Month 1

Planning Your SEO

  • Research high-traffic, low-competition keywords for your industry
  • Brainstorm content ideas
  • Review content that is currently ranking well in your industry
  • Examine the content on your website for pages and pieces you might optimize

Month 2

Prepare Your Website

  • Create a content calendar of your keywords and topics
  • Begin optimizing your website to help it rank well and be recognized as an authority

Month 3

Create Content

  • Start creating content for your website
  • Continue keyword research for future content
  • Gather data as you see results

Month 4

Start Seeing Results

  • Optimize your website and content from the reports you collect
  • Continue creating new content
  • Link to your past content and website pages to improve your ranking

Month 5

Expand Your SEO

  • Start expanding your SEO strategy to other channels like forums, social media, and industry websites.
  • Continue creating new content and using internal linking

Month 6

Analyze Your Results

  • Take time to analyze your results and adjust your strategy if necessary
  • Continue researching and creating new content

Year 1

Refresh Your Content

  • Analyze your SEO results and readjust if necessary
  • Update and refresh old content to keep it ranking high

How to Speed Up the Process

There are several factors influencing your timeline that can either speed it up or make it take longer, including:

  • How much content you already have online
  • What other channels you are using (social media, guest posting)
  • How much traffic and competition your keywords have
  • How high is the quality of your internal and external links are
  • The quality of your content

For example, if you create quality content for a keyword with high traffic but very little competition, you might immediately see a boost in traffic. However, if you are in a highly competitive industry, you would wait several months to build your online authority and grow your ranking before seeing a return from your strategy.

Websites that already have online authority will also see results faster than new websites with little or no online content, traffic, and authority.

PPC Timeline: Short-term and Targeted

PPC ads require a higher investment, but you can see results almost immediately. Even though PPC costs more, many businesses see a $2 return for every dollar they spend on Google Ads. Two of the most popular platforms for PPC are Google and Facebook, accounting for over 60% of ad spend.

How Long Does PPC Take to Work?

To maximize your return, you should plan for a three-month timeline for your PPC content. Giving time for research before posting your ads will increase the effectiveness and return of your ads.

PPC Timeline Template

Consider the following three-month timeline for your PPC strategy:

Month 1

Research Your Audience

  • Gather data insights about your market and audience
  • If you don’t have data, consider running a broad campaign for data collection purposes
  • Create an ideal customer profile
  • Find the best channels for reaching your audience

Month 2

Prepare Your Ads

  • Research keywords with high impressions and low competition
  • Create optimized ads that target your audience based on the data you gathered
  • Start bidding on your platforms of choice based on cost-per-click and keywords

Month 3

Publish Your Ads

  • Start publishing your ads and seeing results
  • Begin with a broad audience, then optimize your future ads as you see results
  • Gather data for future ad campaigns

How to Improve Your PPC Results

If you want to maximize your PPC results, you must take the time to research and understand your audience. Just because you are paying for an ad doesn’t guarantee results or that you will reach the right audience.

Data collection from past PPC ads will speed up future PPC timelines. For example, some businesses running their first PPC campaigns didn’t see results until after six months because they had very little data to use when creating their ads. However, you can see results in three or fewer months with the proper research and data.

Running more complex campaigns can also increase your timeline. For instance, how long does Google ads take to review? On average, they approve ads within one business day, but larger campaigns will take longer to create and get approval for.

PPC and SEO Working Together

PPC and SEO differences help them work together better. Your SEO strategy is an ongoing process on your website to continue attracting visitors. The longer you use SEO, the greater results you will see. Over time, you might see results within just a few days of publishing new content if you already spent the time and effort on previous content that helped your website rank well.

PPC campaigns work well for short-term goals or when you have SEO downtime. For instance, around holidays or special promotions, you can use a PPC campaign to attract a new wave of visitors. This new traffic will in return help boost your SEO rankings.

How Long Should You Run a PPC Campaign?

You will want to run your PPC campaigns for three to twelve months. This schedule gives your ad time to generate traffic and yield enough data to improve future ad campaigns. It also provides time for you to generate enough impressions for Google, Facebook, and other ad providers to rank your ad quality higher, improving your ad auction performance.

Improve the Performance of Your SEO and PPC Campaigns

Are your SEO and PPC timelines not meeting your expectations?

Finding the right balance between SEO and PPC for your marketing strategies takes time as you test and analyze the results of past campaigns and adjust your processes. Getting the right tools is essential for staying on top of search trends and maximizing the return from your SEO and PPC campaigns.

Contact us to learn about our SEO and PPC solutions to improve the performance of your marketing campaigns.

Even if you aren’t trying to reach a global audience, your online presence is vital for generating leads and attracting new customers. However, a local digital advertising strategy will differ from other digital marketing strategies because you have a narrower audience and target specific channels.

Explore how local digital advertising can help your business and learn six local advertising ideas to get you started.

What Is Local Digital Advertising?

Local digital advertising is an online marketing strategy that targets local customers through paid content. It works well for small businesses or those with local services who don’t need to reach customers on the national or international level.

Paying for a general ad that will appear in someone’s search query on the other side of the country wastes time and resources. Instead, you can target those within your community through digital local advertising efforts that combine knowledge of local searches with popular channels in your community. This maximizes your returns by reaching quality leads most likely to purchase from you.

The Importance of Having a Local Online Presence

Your online presence is essential for providing information, attracting leads, and communicating with customers. About 85% of consumers perform online research before making a purchase. If your business doesn’t appear in those searches, you will miss out on potential new customers. You don’t need to have a broad audience group for digital advertising to be effective. Even small businesses or those with a niche audience can benefit from local digital ads.

Digital advertising is one way to spread brand awareness and guarantee you show up in more searches. It works best alongside other advertising methods. Direct mail is the most effective form of local advertising, making up 22.7% of ad revenue. Online local advertising comes in second at 17% of revenue but continues to grow in popularity.

6 Ways to Get Started with Local Digital Advertising

Use these six local advertising examples to start your business’s local area digital marketing efforts:

PPC Using Local Search Keywords

Over 76% of customers who search for a local business will visit that business within 24 hours. Tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush will give local keyword that your potential customers often use. Google is on your side and will often prioritize local results in search queries but targeting your location through keywords will increase your rankings further.

Your location-specific keyword should include industry terms and synonyms, like your products or services. You can create a long-tail keyword with less competition by adding popular modifiers, like the terms “best,” “one-day delivery,” or a specific occasion. To make the search local, add a location to your keyword.

For example, a small bakery in Virginia could use the keyword “best cupcakes in Arlington” in their advertising to get their content in front of their community.

Once you find your keywords, you have several options for how you use these phrases. You can get free local advertising by using those keywords throughout your online content. Otherwise, you can invest in Google ads or other PPC options where you bid on keywords for your ads. When you set up your PPC ad on Google or other search engine, be sure to include location settings that focus on a specific zip code or region.

Google My Business Listing

About 46% of Google searches are looking for local results. Google pulls search results from online content and its own database called Google My Business. This is a collection of business listings that help consumers find information, including:

  • Hours of operation
  • Contact information
  • Reviews
  • Products
  • Special accommodations
  • Directions
  • Images

Your business profile is a way to update customers in real-time and connect with potential customers. You can also communicate directly with customers through your profile.

Local Directory Listings

While Google My Business is one of the most popular online business directories, it isn’t your only option. There are several other directory sites to consider for increasing your visibility. Nearly 88% of consumers shop locally once a week, and 90% of purchases occur within 15 miles from a consumer’s home or office.

The number of directories you are part of increases your chances of appearing in searches.

Improve your local advertising by claiming and promoting your listings on sites like:

  • Yelp
  • Apple Maps
  • LinkedIn Company Directory
  • Bing
  • HubSpot
  • Yellowbook
  • Moz
  • Angi
  • Foursquare
  • Yahoo
  • MapQuest
  • Better Business Bureau
  • Thumbtack
  • Nextdoor

Pay careful attention to all your business profile options and take advantage of every profile area. Anything you enter in your profile can be a local keyword search term and improves your rankings and relevance for users.

Local Influencer Advertising

The

Social Media Ads

Over 4.48 billion people use social media. That is over half of the world’s population. Facebook is the most popular social media platform, with over 2.9 million users, followed by YouTube with 2.5 million users.

About 62% of businesses use Facebook for their marketing, with some reporting conversion rates of 9.2%. One of the reasons it is so successful for advertising is that about 15% of consumers use the platform for finding and purchasing products. Additionally, Instagram is also a popular channel for advertising as 70% of shoppers use it to discover new products.

If you advertise through a social media platform, use settings to target a specific location. Since users often enter an address when creating their profile, you have greater control over who sees your ad because of more available consumer data for targeted ad placement

Local Advertising Sites

What other digital platforms and local advertising apps are available in your community? Explore what your neighbors watch, listen to, and read to discover new places where you can purchase an advertising spot.

For example, podcasts offer opportunities to reach new audiences with little competition. One news report showed that only 15% of advertisers use streaming audio ads. However, this low number isn’t because it isn’t effective, but because most don’t understand how to purchase spots on channels like local podcasts.

Local podcasts offer more control than other audio advertisements, which can help with targeting local audiences. Because of the low awareness about this channel, you also have less competition.

Create a Local Advertising Strategy That Converts

Knowing where you will advertise is only half of the process. The next step is to create content that resonates with your audience and leads to conversions.

Contact our content specialists to create effective local advertisements for your business.