Now that you are equipped with the steps necessary to execute a successful account-based marketing (ABM) program and you’ve built an all-star ABM team, it’s time to try your hand at your first campaign! With the rise of martech, modern marketers now have a plethora of channels to support their ABM initiatives, from digital tracks to direct mail. Some tools, like Triblio, can orchestrate multiple channels on one platform. Today we’re going to be discussing the benefits of implementing digital advertising and a few principles needed to design excellent ads.
Establish Account-based Ad Objectives
With digital ad campaigns, building awareness for your company is a top priority. However, before jumping in, you’ll first want to establish objectives.
- For Prospects – grow awareness within your target accounts.
- For Pipeline – provide air cover for your AEs and keep your solution/product top of mind as your target accounts enter the consideration process.
- For Clients – enhance client engagement and promote new features.
To make an even bigger impact, combine account-based advertising with web personalization. On average, clickthrough rates are less than 1%. Most people won’t click on your ads. However, some people may think to Google your company name and visit your website. We call that a view-through conversion. When these people come to your site, use web personalization to make sure your target accounts are getting the same messaging across display advertising and your website.
Types of Targeting
When it comes to account-based ads, there are various types of targeting for different amounts of personalization. You’ll first want to ask yourself, how targeted do you want to get? Essentially, this will depend on your goals.
- IP – this is the broadest and most expensive type of account-based advertising. With IP targeting you are looking to reach whole companies. While it’s much more targeted than traditional media outlets like TV or radio, ad spend can still add up when you’re targeting large accounts.
- Persona – persona-based targeting allows you to select specific departments and titles to target.
- Contact – contact-based targeting lets you serve ads to specific people. If you have a large contact database and good email lists, this is the most efficient way to spend your ad budget.
Account-based advertising uses extensive ad networks to follow target stakeholders across the web. You don’t have to worry about selecting the right sites. Instead, IP and cookie data make sure that your ads will appear in front of them as they’re browsing the news or their LinkedIn feeds.
Size Does Matter…
No matter what others say, size really does matter, especially when it comes to designing killer display ads. The top three creative dimensions for a successful ad are 300×250, 728×90, and 160×600. These dimensions account for a major portion of available advertising inventory and ensure that they are optimized to perform. The same can be said about the format of your ads. For still images, you’ll want your creatives to be in jpeg or png format; to add movement to your digital ads, you’ll want to ensure they are gifs and html5.
…And So Do Looks
Digital ads can amplify your goal by promoting who you are, and what better way to do this than to have it spelled out in big, bold letters. When implementing digital ads make sure your logo is front and center and not just an afterthought. By implementing the right dimensions and making sure your logo isn’t hidden amongst your messaging and/or images, your account-based advertising campaign should hit your goals.
Real-World Examples
Now that you have a better understanding of the purpose of account-based display advertising and know how to make killer creatives, we’ll walk you through a real-world example:
Triblio’s Real World ABM Tour is a series of private lunches in major metro areas across the United States. For each campaign, we build an audience that consists of B2B marketers in the area, and then we reach out across multiple channels to invite them to lunch. As air cover for SDR outreach and email invitations, we run display ads like the one above and leverage personalized callouts on the homepage for people in the same audience. We make sure that for each city, the messaging on the creative and website mirrors that of our SDR outreach and emails to show consistency and reinforce the same offers.
Whether you’re going after new acquisitions or promoting cross-sell/upsell opportunities, account-based display advertising can help support your objectives. With low clickthroughs, you won’t be directly driving leads, but expect to see a lift in response rates across your other channels, from organic search to web engagement and SDR outreach. Killer display ads can help increase your online visibility and brand awareness within your target accounts, which is essential in executing successful ABM campaigns.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
![Ben Fettes | Co-Founder, Director & Head of Strategy, The Lumery’s](https://www.martechcube.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/joanne.jpg)
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Joanne Mason
Senior Marketing Specialist at Triblio
Joanne is responsible for the strategic planning and execution of sponsored conferences and custom events for Triblio along with managing Triblio’s social media activity, as well as assist with the development and distribution of marketing communication.