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Are you looking to drive a greater return from your paid ads?
The answer often lies outside of the ad platforms themselves.
Here are 10 actionable tips to improve ad performance outside the ad managers.
Let’s dive into it! 👇
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Tip #1: Unleash the Power of GA4’s Page Path Report
- Tip #2: Leverage Multiple Data Sources to Measure Performance
- Tip #3: Work with the Product or Service Team to Design Lead Magnets
- Tip #4: Meet with Sales & Customer Success for Insights
- Tip #5: Get Hands-on with Your Product or Service
- Tip #6: Dive Into CRM Metrics for a Holistic View
- Tip #7: Get Regular Insights from the Sales team
- Tip #8: Link Marketing Efforts to Business Results
- Tip #9: Incorporate Leading Indicators into Your Success Metrics
- Tip #10: Practice Patience
- Conclusion
- Resources for mastering B2B advertising
Tip #1: Unleash the Power of GA4’s Page Path Report
Have you ever wondered how visitors wander around your site before hitting that sweet 'convert' button?
In B2B, it's pretty rare for someone to convert after just one page visit. So, imagine discovering that a whopping 90% of your future clients check out your pricing page before deciding you're the one.
That's your cue! With this intel, you can strategically place pricing info where it matters most, like in your ads or on key landing pages. It's all about making that path to conversion as smooth as possible.
GA4's Page Path report is like a treasure map showing you the most popular pit stops.
You can access the page path report by signing into your GA4 account, on the left-hand side, click on “explore” and select the pre-made template called “path exploration”.
In the example below, we can see out of 1,958 page views, we had 17 form submissions ↓
Bonus tip from episode insights: Tools like Hotjar can be like a pair of X-ray glasses for your website. They let you peek into how users navigate your pages, showing you exactly where they bounce off or get hooked. This information can help tweak your landing page by identifying unaddressed user concerns or areas for expansion.
Tip #2: Leverage Multiple Data Sources to Measure Performance
Effective marketing decisions require more than just ad platform insights.
The in-platform metrics are a great starting point, but what you gain out of it is quite limited.
You can get the initial results for optimization such as CTR, CPC, frequency, open rate, or impression share depending on the channel, but the true source of data would have to be combined with CRM data.
By bringing together data from Google Analytics 4 and your CRM, you can create a multidimensional view of your campaigns' effectiveness.
This is more important than ever before with the deprecation of third-party cookies.
Bonus tip from episode insights:
Ideally, you would have at least 3 supporting data points to back up recommendations.
This is especially true for recommendations that will require a major lift.
Tip #3: Work with the Product or Service Team to Design Lead Magnets
A lead magnet involves providing valuable content in return for information such as a name, email address, job title, and company name.
To stand out, we need to create offerings that genuinely attract and provide value to our audience, moving beyond ebooks and webinars to create lead magnets that are both informative and irresistible.
Rather than offering an e-book that your prospect may or may not find valuable, try offering resources or workshops that speak to the prospect’s unique pain points.
This shift not only aligns with consumer preferences but also sets the stage for more meaningful interactions.
Now, the question still remains: "Do content lead magnets contribute to the pipeline?"
For most B2B SaaS companies, less than 5% of content actually leads to pipeline conversions.
The most effective conversions come from meetings that address the prospect's real issues without any intention of selling them something (absolutely no hidden agendas!).
Tip #4: Meet with Sales & Customer Success for Insights
Use the insights from the Sales and CS team to fine-tune your strategy, offers, audience, ad copy, or any key piece of information that might be misaligned with current campaigns.
Understanding customer pain points, questions, and feedback directly can guide you in creating content that resonates deeply and addresses real needs.
Sales and CS teams possess in-depth knowledge about the demographics, pain points, and motivations of existing customers.
Marketers can leverage this information to refine buyer personas, ensuring that marketing messages and content resonate effectively with target audiences.
Tip #5: Get Hands-on with Your Product or Service
There’s no substitute for experiencing what you’re marketing firsthand.
Dive into demos, use the product daily, or participate in the service being offered.
This deep dive helps you understand the nuances and unique selling points from a user's perspective.
Understanding the core value of the product or services will help you communicate the value proposition when writing your ad copy.
It also provides your clients with a fresh perspective to fill any potential gaps.
If you are not sold on the product/service, then how can you sell it to someone else?
Tip #6: Dive Into CRM Metrics for a Holistic View
Regularly reviewing CRM data helps you see the real-world impact of your campaigns.
This feedback loop is crucial for making data-driven decisions that can improve campaign performance and ROI over time.
3 key metrics you should always consider as a B2B Marketer:
- Pipeline-to-spend ratio
- Average time to close
- Average deal size
If you have not already, request CRM access from your clients so you have context around the key metrics and speak the same language as your clients.
As a marketer, you must connect all activities directly to revenue since that's ultimately what matters most to businesses.
It will make clients see you as a strategic partner in their business.
Tip #7: Get Regular Insights from the Sales team
Adding on to tip #4, the sales team’s daily interactions with prospects and customers are a treasure of insights that can refine your marketing approach.
Often, marketing and sales operate in silos, even though they're both working towards the same goal.
Having a monthly or quarterly meeting with your main point of contact (POC) can help close the gap, but if that is not possible then download the CRM notes to make necessary adjustments to your campaigns.
Bonus tip from episode insights:
If you've got a substantial list of prospects who passed on your offering due to specific reasons (ex: product gaps), you can build an audience list of these closed lost customers and run ads against them when you roll out a new product feature that addresses those concerns.
Tip #8: Link Marketing Efforts to Business Results
Awareness campaigns might not deliver immediate conversions, but their role in nurturing leads and supporting the customer journey is crucial.
Work with other Marketing team members to build case studies and analytics to illustrate how awareness campaigns contribute to overall business goals.
A compelling way to validate the impact of awareness campaigns is to assess the performance disparity between remarketing campaigns and cold audience initiatives.
For example, showing a significantly lower cost per demo from prospects with prior brand exposure can justify the investment for awareness campaigns.
Tip #9: Incorporate Leading Indicators into Your Success Metrics
By understanding what early success looks like, you can refine your strategies in real time, ensuring your marketing efforts are always moving in the right direction.
These leading indicators could be top-of-funnel metrics such as:
- Clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Engagement rate
Leading indicators are vital for navigating the complex B2B landscape, offering the insights needed to steer your marketing efforts toward success, even when immediate sales results are not visible.
Tip #10: Practice Patience
B2B sales cycles are naturally longer than B2C, requiring a mindset that values persistence and long-term strategy over instant results.
By analyzing attribution data and understanding the nuances of traffic sources, you can refine the strategies.
The key is to establish a robust measurement system and integrate leading indicators to track progress.
Recognize and celebrate the small milestones along the way to keep morale high and maintain focus on the long-term goals.
Conclusion
Yielding results for your B2B SaaS marketing is not about quick wins; it's a marathon, not a sprint.
Deeply understanding your product, closely aligning with sales and customer success teams, and strategically utilizing a variety of data sources lay the foundation for sustainable success.
Real growth comes from consistently applying insights, adjusting based on performance indicators, and staying committed to your long-term vision.
Here's to marketing smarter, not harder, and seeing your efforts pay off!
Resources for mastering B2B advertising
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