So your B2B business will become a high-performing organisation in paid advertising
– iInterview with our new ads-Erik, the expert Skewer
Paid advertising can feel like a jungle of bidding, keywords, target audiences, networks and data points. We’ve therefore had a chat with our new advertising specialist, Erik Spett, to sort out the basics. What are ads – and how do you get good at them? What’s the difference between paid and organic visibility? And what mindset should a B2B company adopt to get the most out of its paid advertising?
Let’s ask Erik – it’s as simple as that!
Hi Erik! Would you like to start by introducing yourself briefly?
Hello! My name is Erik Spett and I’m 34 years old. I’m originally from Umeå, but I’ve been living in Barcelona for some time now. It’s stormy and rainy here at the moment, but otherwise Barcelona is absolutely beautiful and it feels like a real treat to be able to work from here.
And what exactly do you do here at seodr.?
I am a senior digital marketing manager, which means I help companies with their digital marketing from start to finish. My job involves a great deal of technology, creativity and analysis – I analyse campaign results, target audiences and conversion data, amongst other things – but it is also a role that involves close contact with clients.
Let’s start with the basics. What are ads?
Ads refers to digital advertising via paid adverts. Google was essentially the only player in the market until Meta entered the scene ten to fifteen years ago. Today, paid adverts can be displayed not only on Google but also on platforms such as Bing, YouTube, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), LinkedIn and TikTok. Now, several AI tools, led by ChatGPT, are also emerging as advertising platforms, and this development is progressing rapidly.
How do you know which platform is best suited to B2B advertising?
Part of my job involves precisely this: choosing an advertising platform based on where the customers are. For a company that sells make-up to young people, Meta and TikTok might work best. For a B2B company in the industrial sector, Google or LinkedIn are probably better, as that is where the decision-makers are active.
What is the difference between ads and traditional marketing, such as advertising posters or TV adverts?
Ads have two major strengths: the first is that you can see in black and white exactly what you get out of them. If you put up a poster on a bus, you don’t know who sees it or how many people see it, or how many purchases result from that particular advert. The same applies to TV adverts. You can estimate how many people see the advert, but it’s difficult to know how many actually make a purchase afterwards.
With digital marketing, you know how many people have seen the advert, how many have clicked on it and, with good tracking, how many have actually made a purchase. That’s when you can really see that an investment of 1,000 kronor in adverts has generated a return of 10,000 kronor, for example.
The second strength is that you can target the advert. Bus posters are seen by everyone, but with digital advertising, as we often say, you avoid wasting money on the wrong audience. In short, advertising is all about getting the right person to see the right advert at the right time.
How do you decide who to target with your B2B advert? Do you set it so that the advert is shown to all men aged between 20 and 40, for example?
That’s how things were done in the past, but today the work is largely based on Google’s search network, which can be seen as a precursor to modern AI. The search network learns who buys what. Take a B2B company that sells industrial components as an example: the first thing the search network does is find out who usually buys similar components – for example, their age, what device they use and what they are searching for. Using that information, Google finds similar people and shows the adverts to them specifically. Google uses many different signals to determine which people are most relevant – people usually talk about around a thousand different signals.
It almost sounds as if Google can read minds?
That is exactly what many people believe. And that The fact that Google is so good at understanding what people are looking for is a very strong argument in favour of using Google Ads and similar platforms.
Right, I’m a B2B entrepreneur and want to get started with ads. What should I bear in mind?
Mistakes at the start can prove costly, so start off carefully.
Here are my top tips for getting the most out of ads:
- Set clear goals. The most common mistake is not setting any goals at all. Ask yourself what you expect. If you invest 100,000 kronor and get nothing in return, how long will you carry on? Work out what you’re prepared to pay for a conversion, such as a purchase or a completed contact form
- Make sure the tracking is working. Google learns from those who click and buy, so you need to be able to track them. Setting up tracking is essential for a professional account.
- Hire an agency. Ads are a jungle, even for those of us who work in the field. It’s hard to become good at ads on your own, but luckily there are experts who know what they’re doing!
In B2B, the purchasing process can be quite lengthy. So how do adverts work in that context?
In the B2B sector, it is common for purchasing processes to take up to a year, which is why remarketing is used. If someone has visited your website but hasn’t got in touch, we continue to show them relevant adverts over time. This helps you stay top of mind until they’re ready to take the next step and contact the company.
It’s simply a matter of being there throughout the entire buying journey and being the company the customer thinks of when the time comes to make a decision.
And once you’ve managed to drive traffic to your website via adverts, is the job done?
No, adverts are like a shop window. Ads make people stop and take a look, but it’s the website that completes the purchase. Good ads and good SEO on the site go hand in hand, because it’s the ads that bring the customer through the door, but it’s the website that makes the customer decide to actually buy.
Do you want to get noticed in the right way? Have a chat with Erik!
Do you want to get more out of your adverts, or are you not sure where to start? Get in touch with us! Erik and the rest of the team will be happy to help you with both SEO and adverts, so that you’re seen by the right buyers and don’t end up wasting your money.
