How Programmatic Display Ads Enhance Full-Funnel ABM Tactics and Conversion

Are you having trouble measuring the success of your account-based marketing (ABM) programs? Or worse, are your ABM programs only generating vanity metrics that don’t contribute to down-funnel sales pipeline or revenue?

The quality of leads garnered through programmatic display efforts are often under intense scrutiny. However, when you tie display investments to your ABM pipeline, you will reach actual decision-makers at your targeted accounts–and see a lift in other ABM channels.

Begin thinking of your ABM strategy as the engine of your marketing vehicle. Programmatic display is the oil that keeps your ABM motor running and boosts the efficiency of varying components under your marketing hood: social media, third-party demand generation (e.g., CPL campaigns), paid/organic search and email.

Here are a few ways that programmatic display investments enhance full-funnel, cross-channel demand orchestration:

Jump your social media battery: How display affects social media results

58% of B2B audiences use social media channels to research products and services prior to purchase, solidifying social platforms as useful tools for B2B marketing success. However, many B2B marketers mistakenly silo social media and programmatic display efforts in their ABM programs. When unified with display advertising channels, social media platforms can be used to strategically amplify your top content (whitepapers, eBooks, webinars, etc.) to prospects who have previously shown interest in your company.

Social platforms give you the ability to use tracking pixels to gather prospect information and effectively retarget on display networks as they move through the purchase funnel. For example, say a potential customer is interested in attending an awareness-stage webinar hosted by your company and completes a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form to sign up. You can now use tactical messaging sequences to retarget them effectively as they move down funnel and into the consideration stage.

Rev your search strategy: How display efforts boost paid and organic search results

Display advertising is a very effective brand awareness and demand generation tool that boosts overall response rates and ROI on various downstream tactics. Display ads are typically served to audiences at times when they’re not actively searching for your product or service, but meet the requirements of your specified ideal customer profile. Therefore, you must teach audiences about your product or service by delivering high-value content through strategic display ads.

Programmatic display provides brand recall and drives prospective customers to the consideration stage where business decision-makers will be using search engines to research your company. Use data gathered from display campaigns to target contextual keywords in your SEO and PPC campaigns.

Put the pedal to the floor: How programmatic display enhances CPL efforts

Most B2B marketers work with several third-party demand generation partners that host their marketing materials and disseminate gated content to a designated target audience. However, if CPL campaigns are your only demand generation tactic, you’re missing out on holistic cross-channel marketing opportunities.

You can make your account-based demand generation efforts actionable by targeting programmatic display ads to leads gathered from CPL campaigns (e.g., content syndication). Real-time user data and user behavior allows you to deliver targeted messaging via landing pages, whitepapers, eBooks, etc., throughout your ideal customer’s path to purchase.

Nurture contacts gathered from CPL efforts (as well as other targeted job titles at those companies) through targeted display ad campaigns. Serve customized messaging and creative assets to targeted users based on the type of content they or their colleagues downloaded from your content CPL campaigns. For instance, if a decision-maker at a targeted account downloads an awareness stage piece, reinforce the connection through display advertising, by serving display ads to that job title and other relevant roles at that account. By consolidating third-party demand and display, you’ll amass far more contacts to nurture and eventually send to sales. Your sales team will also be able to spark meaningful conversation with potential customers based on the content they engaged with.

Pro-tip: Merge all third-party demand gen partners efforts into one system to eliminate wasted time and manual efforts juggling a variety of vendor platforms.

Get in the fast lane: How display strengthens email marketing campaigns

By combining programmatic display and email efforts to serve targeted accounts down-funnel content (like an eBook, whitepaper or blog post) that addresses their pain-points, you can highlight your competitive advantage and spark meaningful conversations for your sales team.

Use data collected through programmatic display and other top-of-funnel efforts to personalize and distribute messages based on role and function within your target customers organization. Be sure to keep your content digestible, conversational and applicable to target buyers.

Take a moment and imagine your spam folder in your email inbox. What messages turned you off to a product or service that you were originally interested in purchasing? Always remember your goal is to engage with your potential customers, and not bombard them with messaging that is overtly promotional, or worse, not relevant to their specific function within their organization.

Use the Right Mix of Channels to Drive Full-Funnel Pipeline Revenue from Your Display Investment

Put the days of focusing on targets who will never buy your service in your rear-view mirror. Invest in strategic account-based programmatic display and achieve enhanced performance on a variety of ABM channels.

Merge programmatic efforts across various channels to get your message in front of your ideal prospects, increase efficiency and optimize full-funnel conversion. Invest in a strategic display advertising partner and propel pipeline revenue across various ABM channels.