On June 10, 2020, Neuger was very excited to begin the new Neuger CO.LAB session schedule, starting with the topic of Digital Advertising. We were delighted with the success of our first session, which tallied about 40 participants. Not only were the numbers encouraging, but the detailed discussion and active participation of the large group allowed for a very beneficial and worthwhile experience for everyone involved. We are eager to continue hosting Neuger CO.LAB and offer a space for learning and collaboration for our diverse topics.
Session One Hosts
- Wendy Placko, New Business Development & Digital Project Lead at Neuger
- Christine Lekatz, Vice President & Senior Communications Counselor at Neuger
Main Discussion Points
- Choose the right platform for your desired audience: Reddit can be a preferred mode for tech-based companies. It is crucial to research what your desired audience’s tendencies have been with sharing, advertising, and communicating to choose the right media platform to use.
- Select image uploads for social media platforms: square size ads generally perform the best across platforms.
- A/B testing: A/B testing uses the same ad with a slightly different approach. A/B testing depends on industry and bandwidth, but if you have the option, always do it – especially if you are not receiving desired results.
- Digital advertising and traditional media: it is very important to be multifaceted. Direct mail is still quite effective; billboards are still a viable way to advertise. It is smart to have several avenues of outreach because it takes the consumer 8-10 times, on average, to see an advertisement and actually interact with it.
- Posting opportunities on social media/hiring: it is important to understand now that the business world and the personal/social world are starting to overlap on the internet. With the increasing popularity of various social media platforms, it is smart to expand your presence for advertising, hiring, etc. to those platforms that your client base is spending the most time on. It is very easy to have multiple platforms under the same campaign (Facebook & Instagram, specifically).
Key Discussion Questions
Q: How does digital marketing work for a B2B company as opposed to B2C?
- Most ad platforms are designed for business to consumer. Targeting and data are key for conversion from business to business.
- Facebook and Google recently released the option of creating a custom audience list, which takes the information of everyone who is already in your system (prospects, past clients, event participants, etc.) and does its best to match that information to their social media user accounts. After matching, it then pumps your ads into those users’ feeds at a higher rate, which leads to very positive conversion rates. Lookalike lists are an option after creating a custom list; the program identifies users with similar interests and tendencies and pumps your ads into their feeds.
- For most B2B, we recommend Facebook, Google Ads, and then more specific sites.
- IP tracking is beneficial, as well as services that take email addresses and turn them into IP addresses.
Q: What should my budget be?
- In planning a digital ad budget, it is good to start by identifying revenue goals, fundraising goals or outreach goals for the ad. Think specifically about how many people you want to target/how many clicks you want.
- Analyze what your past conversion rates have been with advertisements, which will help you determine what your larger reach should be. For example, say you want to register 1000 potential clients for an event, but your conversion rate has floated around one to two percent. Plan your outreach numbers with your conversion rate in mind so that you hit your clicks target.
- Determine if you want an overall budget, quarterly budget, daily budget, etc.
- Search for resources that outline typical budget benchmarks or click through rates by industry.
- What are your ad goals for lead development and general awareness? Identify the driving purpose of your ad campaigns.
Q: Where do you find industry average information to gauge how your campaign is doing?
- Here are some helpful resources:
In Summary
We want to thank all who participated again and for allowing us to share our Digital Advertising insights while also giving us a chance to learn more about other digital ad perspectives in various industries. We hope that you join us again in our future Neuger CO.LAB sessions.