Implementing World-Class B2B Content Marketing To Move Your Marketing Needle

Welcome to our blog post on B2B content marketing! If you're in the world of business to business marketing, you're likely familiar with the term content marketing. But what exactly does it mean when it comes to B2B marketing? I’ll preface that the majority of what I’ll discuss today relates more to the impacts of content marketing on your B2B SEO, however we also cover the ability to propagate this world class content via paid media and organic channels to maximise its reach and its impact.

Dive deeper: An introduction to programmatic SEO and how you can use AI content writing technologies to create micro-nuanced content to dominate the search engines

Content marketing is the use of high-quality content to attract, engage, and inform potential customers or clients. Creating content that stands out and delivers value is crucial for building relationships and driving sales. This post will provide insights and tips to help you get started, and to take your strategy to the next level. So, grab a cup of coffee, and let's dive in!

1. The Benefits of Implementing B2B Content Marketing

B2B content marketing is gaining traction as one of the most effective ways to generate leads among potential customers and prospects. It is cost-effective and has the potential to increase brand awareness in a big way. From syndication to content partnerships, through to dominating longer tail search queries which definite the deep nuances of your industry, world class content can position your business and brand in-front of potential new customers much earlier in a research journey then many other forms of marketing.

This is why, in our opinion, every business needs to start investing in content marketing and combining it with B2B analytics if they want to grow their business through more effective marketing.

Content without the right analytics seriously dilutes the potential of what’s the content can be doing for your brand. With the right B2B analytics, you can measure the effectiveness of your content marketing whilst gaining huge insights into which companies are reading which bits of content - offering you a new approach to top of funnel marketing. You can make data-driven decisions about what works and what doesn't. You can create more targeted content that speaks to their needs and interests. You'll also have a better understanding of your target audience. This can help you build lasting relationships with your customers and grow your business, delivering the opportunity to position your brand as the specialist in your industry. If you're not already investing in B2B content marketing and analytics, now is the time to start.

I often think of a strong organic content model as being the opportunity to own the conversation with prospects who are just starting their research journey - and are at that stage where they do not necessarily have any understanding of the market participants and who the ‘big players’ are. At this stage in the journey, if your content is coming up to answer the key questions that these prospects are posing [to Google/their search engine of choice] then you get the first chance to make the all important first impression. Businesses can thus establish thought leadership in their industry using valuable and engaging content, and having being the ‘first port of call’ for the early-stage researcher, they have the chance to make a lasting impression, one which could and should last through to purchasing, even if that is a number of years down the road. This approach - high quality content addressing the full funnel, helps you to build early trust with the audience. But how can businesses know what content resonates best with their target market? That's where B2B analytics comes in.
You can gain insights into what types of content their audience is interested in. This is done by analyzing metrics such as, website traffic, social media engagement and email open rates (yes you should be aiming to capture subscribers and then create automated content journeys, and use website personalisation triggers, but this is a whole topic in-itself)

With this information, businesses can create more targeted and effective content strategies. It allows for driven engagement and conversions. Using B2B analytics in your content marketing efforts is key for keeping up with changing consumer demands. This helps you to stay ahead of the competition.
Businesses can use data-driven insights to create effective strategies that promote their goals. Companies can identify which efforts are generating the most ROI and build upon those tactics for better results. This is done by tracking the performance of content. B2B analytics provides a powerful tool for optimizing content marketing. Enhanced strategies and creating more successful campaigns are just a bonus.

Learn more: Did you know that GA misreports many referring websites as ‘direct traffic’, giving you a false reading on your funnel? Lean more including the impact of dark social on B2B analytics

2. Using B2B Analytics to Create Engaging Content

B2B web analytics platforms like Journey by FunnelFuel combine over 200 data points. There is the chance to get lost in the data and measure data points which ultimately may not matter, yet clearly there’s lots of data within these platforms that can help you write better B2B content. Therefore its important to Identify the metrics that matter the most to your business. Content goals, such as website traffic, lead generation, and revenue are important for many but aren’t necessarily the metrics that you’d be tasked with delivering. It is also important to note, that as attractive as the above 3 goals may sound, they don’t necessarily combine. For example; a content approach tasked with driving upper funnel traffic could be targeting much vaguer keywords and topics then one which is optimised purely for leads and revenue. The latter may require really bespoke content which is aiming right into your deepest use cases, but these may be terms which have a lot less interested parties and thus their ability to drive meaningful traffic is much lower then their broader keywords with possibly less keywords in them. ‘Business hosting’ may capture lots of users and searches, but ‘Hosting for web security clients’ may gather the sorts of truly interested website visitors which could align with your offering and drive post-visit deeper engagement - into leads and sales.

1. Start by setting specific goals and KPIs for your campaigns, and track them.
2. Use analytics tools to measure these important metrics.
3. Collect data on lead generation and track the quality of your leads.
4. Use revenue data to measure the ROI of your campaigns and identify areas for
improvement.

Google Analytics and SEMrush are two of the most used analytics tools for B2B marketers. And for good reason! These platforms offer a wealth of data and insights that can help you optimize your content marketing efforts. They help you get the most out of your campaigns. Google Analytics and SEMrush are instrumental in helping marketers track performance. They tell you what types of content attract the most attention and lead to conversions. It's essential for every B2B marketer to master the usage of these two platforms.

Learn more: Google analytics isn’t fit for purpose for B2B marketers - lets access its flaws and your options for a more all-encompassing platform to drive your success

So, we've established the importance of content marketing. Now let's talk about how we can make sure that the effort we put into creating compelling content is reaching our target audience.

3. Crafting Compelling Blog Posts
B2B content marketing can be challenging. There's an even bigger challenge when it comes to creating content that connects with your target audience. That's why it's crucial to understand your audience before you start writing your blog posts. Straight off the bat, it’s worth noting that the range of applicable topics and the volume of associated queries is often much much lower for B2B clients then our B2C cousins. I’d therefore encourage you to break topics into smaller parts then you may ordinarily do, letting you cover the detail whilst leaving other sub-niche parts of the topic to be covered in requisite detail another day.

You can identify the pain points, challenges, and interests of your target audience. This is done by conducting thorough research. This will help you create content that resonates with them and provides them with value. Utilizing B2B analytics can provide you with insights into what type of content is most effective and engaging to your audience, as well as which of your content writers is doing the best job of engaging. By combining data-driven insights, you can develop a winning content strategy.

Blog posts should use storytelling techniques to keep the audience engaged and interested. Descriptive language and real-world examples of how your product or service can help are key components for success. Anecdotes can be used to make a more personal connection with the reader. This allows them to relate on a deeper level to the content presented. Creating content is not just about showing your ideas or new concepts. The true goal of any content creation is to resonate with the reader.

4. Boosting Content Reach with Social Media Outreach

Great content is timely and expensive to produce and its important to consider the ability to drive ROI. ROI won’t come if your great content is read by nobody. I remember hearing on the industry circuit once that one major brand in the payments space was paying upwards of $500,000 per unique piece of content, which included fancy videos, interviews and other such expensive content forms. Their average number of views over a contents lifetime was <50. They’d need that content to work incredibly hard with each reader to get anywhere working with such low viewer numbers.

I have assumed for the most part in this blog post that the main focus is on creating content for search engine rankings (SEO), but we shouldn’t omit the ability to push our high quality content into social media - both your organisations own social as well as employees who may be willing to share it too.

Identify your target audience and tailor your social media strategy. Before you start any B2B content marketing, it is important that you know who your target audience is so you can create the right content for them. There is a high probability your marketing strategy will not achieve the results you want if you don't understand your audience after all.

Social media doesn’t have to be organic either. There are a multitude of ways to run some pretty discrete paid channels of media around good content including;

Paid social promotions / boosts
B2B influencer posts
Other paid media like Native adverts

5. Engaging Your Audience with Videos and Graphics

Incorporating visuals in your content marketing strategy can increase audience engagement. It provides an effective medium for conveying complex information in a simplified way. Yet, to make the most of your content marketing strategy, you also need to leverage B2B analytics.
B2B analytics allows you to track the performance of your content marketing campaigns. It also makes data-driven decisions on how to optimize them for better results. With the right B2B analytics tools, you can gain insights into your audience's content preferences and behavior. This includes topics they find most engaging and which channels they prefer to receive content on. You can create a more effective content marketing strategy that resonates with your audience.
Creating videos and graphics that appeal to interests and preferences can help to establish a connection with them. Fostering brand loyalty and creating viral content is an added benefit. But how do you know which videos or graphics would resonate with your audience? That's where B2B analytics come in.
By analyzing data, you can gain insights into what types of content your audience prefers. This information can then influence your content creation strategy. This will then help you create more effective content. Don't underestimate the power of analytics! They can be the key to unlocking the full potential of your content marketing efforts.
B2B analytics tools offer the ability to track the success of your video and graphic content. This is done with view counts, engagement metrics, and conversions. It allows you to check what content works best with your target audience. You can then make necessary changes for future campaigns for more effective results. You are sure to maximize ROI and reach higher levels of success with a data-driven approach. Just make sure to use proper and reliable analytics.

6. Keeping Content Fresh and Relevant
If you're looking to install content marketing and B2B analytics then you should conduct regular content audits. This allows you to identify gaps in your current content strategy that need to be filled with new content. Paying attention to your audience's interests and pain points is essential. Once you understand them, you can then create content that resonates with the audience. This drives profitability for your business.

Be sure to use the appropriate metrics to measure the success of your content and make adjustments as necessary. When you take the time to invest in content marketing and B2B analytics, you'll be well on your way toward achieving your goals.

Identifying gaps in your current content strategy is critical if you want to stay ahead of the competition. Conducting regular content audits will allow you to identify areas that need improvement. This also paves the way for new opportunities that can be capitalized upon.

Thereafter, using data from B2B analytics should be an essential part of your content marketing. It plays a crucial role in any promotion strategy. This will ensure that the content you create reaches and applies to your audience. You will get a better return on investment from all aspects of your content marketing efforts. This all relies on a thorough understanding of what kind of content works best for your target customers.

As the Legality of Google Analytics Gets Called Into Question Again; Here's How To Not Process Any PII With FunnelFuel

Disclaimer: this blog post has been written by digital analysts, not lawyers. The purpose of this article is to explain how to not process any personal data with FunnelFuel in order to avoid going through the GDPR compliance process with FunnelFuel analytics. This work comes from our interpretation of different sources: the official GDPR text and the UK privacy commission: ICO resources. It cannot be considered as professional legal advice. As with GDPR, this information is subject to change. GDPR may also be known as RGPD in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Datenschutz-Grundverordnung, DS-GVO in German, Algemene verordening gegevensbescherming in Dutch, Regolamento generale sulla protezione dei dati in Italian.

Are you looking for a way to not process any personal data with FunnelFuel? If the answer is yes, you’re at the right place. From our understanding, if you are not processing personal data, then you shouldn’t be concerned about GDPR. Our inspiration came from this official reference:

“The principles of data protection should therefore not apply to anonymous information, namely information which does not relate to an identified or identifiable natural person or to personal data rendered anonymous in such a manner that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable. This Regulation does not therefore concern the processing of such anonymous information, including for statistical or research purposes.“

In this blog post we are going to see how you can configure FunnelFuel in order to not process any personal data and what the consequences are.

Not a FunnelFuel user yet? Check out our live demo or start you free 7 day trial now.

Firstly, what is personal data according to the GDPR?

The term “personal data” is predominantly used in Europe.

From: eur-lex.europa.eu

(1) “‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;”

(30) “Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.”

Our interpretation is this means any information that can be linked to and identify a person. “Personal data” covers a wider range of information than Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

What is Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is a term used predominantly in the United States.

The US Office of Privacy and Open Government‘s definition below:

“The term personally identifiable information refers to information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as their name, social security number, biometric records, etc. alone, or when combined with other personal or identifying information which is linked or linkable to a specific individual, such as date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc.”

Curious about PII really means? This PII introduction will walk you through what PII is.

What can be considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?

Full name/usernames
Home address/mailing address
Email address
Credit card numbers
Date of birth
Phone numbers
Login details
Precise locations
Account numbers
Security codes (including biometric records)

What other data is considered “personal data” according to GDPR?

From the above examples we see that all personal data can be PII, but not all PII can be defined as personal data. But to be on the safe side, let’s see what can be considered “personal data” according to GDPR.

As this data is understood to be able to leave some traces and identify the “natural person” they’re associated with, we’ll show you how you can configure your FunnelFuel to ensure such information considered “personal data” is not processed so as to be GDPR compliant.

Let’s see each of them in more detail.

1. IP addresses

IP addresses can indirectly identify an individual. It can also give a good approximation of an individual’s location. IP addresses are however a key lever for de-anonymising corporate traffic, but we believe this satisfies GDPR guidelines because we only de-anonymise organisations with greater then 50 people in the office we're de-anonymising.

Individual peoples IP addresses can be considered personal data, which means you need to anonymise them. To do so, a feature is available within FunnelFuel, where you can anonymise the IP. We recommend that you anonymise at least the last two bytes:

FunnelFuel will not display IP addresses; we transform the IP address of a corporate office into company data and instead display the corporate details and not the associated IP addresses.

What are the consequences of using this feature?

When applying IP anonymisation on two bytes, you will no longer be able to see the full IP in the UI. FunnelFuel's ability to identify and display corporate traffic is also limited, and will be less accurate. We believe that the way we handle corporate traffic and disguard non-corporate traffic renders this feature obsolete, but it does offer a deeper level of GDPR protection.

Moreover, there is a small chance that 2 different visitors with the same device and software configuration will be identified as the same visitor if the anonymised IP address is the same for both.

2. Cookies

It is not clear for us yet if all cookies are considered equal under GDPR and the subsequent privacy updates.

Did you know? FunnelFuel lets you optionally disable the creation of cookies by adding an extra line of code to your tracking code see below.

What are the consequences of using this feature?

FunnelFuel is using a few first party cookies, and the following cookies may hold personal data:

_pk_id : contains a visitor id used to identify unique visitors
_pk_ref : to identify from where they came from

3. Page URLs and page titles

URLs are not mentioned within the official GDPR text. However, we know that according to the different CMS you use, some of them may have URLs which include personal identifiers.

Our strong recommendation would be to navigate away from such CMS systems, as they leave your business widely exposed irrespective of how you use analytics products.

For example:

As a result, you need to find a way to anonymise this data.

There are several ways you can perform this action according to your website. If your website is adding the personal data through query parameters, you can define a rule to exclude them from FunnelFuel.

If the personal data are not included within query parameters, you can use the “setCustomURL” feature and write your code as follow:

See our developer documentation for more information

If you are also processing personal data within the title tag, you can use the following function: “setDocumentTitle”.

What are the consequences of using this feature?

By anonymising the URLs containing personal data, some of your URLs will be grouped together.

4. User ID and custom personal data

User ID is a feature (a tracking code needs to be added) which allows you to identify the same user across different devices.

A User ID needs a corresponding database in order to link a user across different devices, it can be an email, a username, a name, a random number… All that data is either direct or non direct online identifiers and are therefore under the scope of GDPR.

It will be the same situation if you are using custom variables and/or custom dimensions in order to push personal data to the system.

To continue using the User ID feature but not recording personal data, you can consider using a hash function which will anonymise/convert your actual User ID into something like “3jrj3j34434834urj33j3”.

Alternatively, you can enable the feature “Anonymise User IDs”. This feature will be available starting in FunnelFuel 3.5.0:

What are the consequences of using this feature?

Under GDPR, User ID is personal data. Anonymising the User ID using a hash function or our built-in functionality make the User Id pseudo-anonymous, which means it can’t be easily identified to a specific user. As a result, you will still get accurate visits and unique visitors metrics, and the Visitor Profile, but without tracking the original User ID which is personal data.

5. Ecommerce order IDs

Order IDs are the reference number assigned to the products/services bought by your customers. As this information can be crossed with your internal database, it is considered as an online identifier and is therefore under the scope of GDPR. As for User ID, you can anonymise order IDs using our built-in functionality to Anonymise Order IDs (see section 4. about User Id).

What are the consequences of anonymising order ID?

It really depends on your former use of order IDs. If you were not using them in the past then you should not see any difference.

6. Location

Based on the IP address of a visitor, FunnelFuel can detect the visitors location. Location data is problematic for privacy as this technology has become quite accurate and can detect not only the city a visitor is from, but sometimes an even more precise position of a visitor.

In order to not leave any accurate traces, we strongly recommend you to enable the IP anonymisation feature. Next, you need to enable the setting “Also use the anonymised IP address when enriching visits”. You find this setting directly below the IP anonymisation. This is important as otherwise the full IP address will be used to geolocate a visitor.

What are the consequences of anonymising location data?

The more bytes you anonymise from the IP, the more anonymised your location will be. When you remove two bytes as suggested, the city and region location reports will not be as accurate. In some cases even the country may not be detected correctly anymore.

7. Heatmaps & Session Recordings

Heatmaps & Session Recording is a premium feature in FunnelFuel allowing you to see where users click, hover, type and scroll. With session recordings you can then replay their actions in a video.

Heatmaps & Session Recordings are under the scope of GDPR as they can disclose in some specific cases (for example: filling a contact form) personal data:

To avoid this, FunnelFuel will anonymise all keystrokes which a user enters into a form field unless you specifically whitelist a field. Many fields that could contain personal data, such as a credit card, phone number, email address, password, social security number, and more are always anonymised and not recorded.

See our configuration guide for more information

Note that a page may still show personal information within the page as part of regular content (not a form element). For example an address, or the profile page of a forum user. We have added a feature which allows you to set an HTML attribute “data-FunnelFuel-mask” to anonymise any personal content shown in the UI.

What are the consequences of using this feature?

Mainly, you will not be able to see in plain text what people are entering into your forms.

What should you do with past data?

Once more, we have to say that we are not lawyers. So do not take our answers as legal advice. From: ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/document.cfm?doc_id=50053

“For example, as the GDPR requires that a controller must be able to demonstrate that valid consent was obtained, all presumed consents of which no references are kept will automatically be below the consent standard of the GDPR and will need to be renewed.”

Our interpretation is that, if you were previously relying on consent, unless you can demonstrate that valid consent was obtained, you need to get the consent back (which is almost impossible) or you need to anonymise or remove that data.

To anonymise previously tracked data, we are actively working on a feature to do just that directly within FunnelFuel. Alternatively, you may also set up the deletion of logs after a certain amount of time.

We really hope you enjoyed reading this article. GDPR is still on the go and we are pretty sure you have a lot of questions about it. You probably would like to share our vision about it. So do not hesitate to ask us through our contact form to see how we are interpreting GDPR at FunnelFuel and InnoCraft.

FunnelFuel Analytics and GDPR

If you’re still wondering whether FunnelFuel is the best option for you, check out our live demo or start you free 21-day trial now – no credit card required.

FunnelFuel Analytics provides safeguards to ensure you stay on top of privacy trends; are GDPR compliant; and can protect your users’ privacy.

6 simple ways to use analytics to radically improve your B2B marketing strategy

In today's digital age, it's more important than ever to make sure your B2B marketing strategy is up-to-date. Using next-gen B2B analytics can help you analyse your campaigns and make sure you're getting the most out of your efforts. In this blog post, we'll explore how to use analytics like Journey to improve your B2B marketing strategy.

Before we dive in, we should define what we mean when we talk about analytics products, especially as they pertain to B2B. There are generalist solutions like Google Analytics, which provide some of what we present below, and there are also more specific products aimed at the B2B market, and these contain the toolkits which allow you to take on board all of what we'll talk about today.

Dive Deeper: How to optimise your B2B conversion rate using heat maps, screen recordings and A/B testing

Understanding Your B2B Audience with Analytics

The successful implementation of an analytics platform is not dissimilar to the implementation of a paid media program, it requires planning, set-up, customisation and implementation. In the same way that you would segment audiences, identify and targeted named accounts (ABM marketing), build retargeting pools, build lookalike models and such tactics for media buying, you want to be approaching your analytics platform to build the same segments. Matching your web targeting with your analytics set-up ensures that you can really compare what your ad spend is delivering when you dive into your insights platform.

So to really understand your B2B audience, start by examining the analytics behind each segment and customers on-site interactions. This will provide you with insights into the types of customers that are most likely to convert, as well as how best to target them through marketing campaigns and product offerings.

Creating a target account list to focus on the types of customers that provide the most value can help you narrow your marketing efforts, creating more personalised and cost effective campaigns. By understanding customer interactions and building a target account list, you can ensure B2B marketing campaigns are tailored to specific audiences and maximise their effectiveness, whilst also maximising their alignment with things like the correct landing page for their market segment, based on firmographic data and other such identifiers.

Top tips: How to Design a B2B Landing Page That Converts: Best Practices Ready For 2023

Leveraging analytics to determine where potential customer segments exist and which ones are most likely to purchase from you is the real name of the insights and analytics game. By understanding what these customer segments want and need, you can create tailored campaigns specifically designed to capture their attention and drive conversions. Once this data is really understood, there are options out there that give you the tools to target these segments precisely, such as LinkedIn ads and programmatic ads, so long as you have engaged with a specific ABM DSP. Click here to read more about the FunnelFuel ABM DSP and how it enables named account targeting, B2B contextual advertising and dynamic creative which can call out the companies you're targeting by name as well as by their intent stage to drive substantially higher ad engagement.

Optimise your on-site website experience for each market segment to radically improve the conversion rate on your website

A/B testing is a great tool to help you evaluate different strategies so you can determine which ones are most effective for B2B marketing and which ones are most effective for each segment that you are addressing in-market. This way, you can ensure your campaigns are tailored to the needs of your target audience and maximise your ROI, both in terms of the tactics you use to target named accounts and also the on-site experience that you give them when they click on your ad.

Whilst we wouldn't advocate that you forget about tracking customer engagement metrics on the media side, like click-through rates, impressions, and clicks - we believe ultimately the barometer of the media buying tactics performance is better measured on your website, using metrics like dwell time, bounce rates, and deep segmentation of the stage of the funnel that your prospect is on, using tools like goals and funnels, as these can provide valuable insights into how effective your marketing efforts are at reaching your target audience and engaging them with your message.

Besides tracking customer engagement metrics like click-through rates, open rates and bounce rates, B2B analytics can be a powerful tool for gaining valuable insights about the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. B2B analytics can provide insight into who is engaged with your message, how and when they are engaging, and how your messages are resonating with the target audience. B2B analytics can provide invaluable information to help you craft more focused B2B marketing campaigns that are better tuned to engage your target audience and drive profitable growth.

Then when you engage with tools like our A/B testing tool, you get to see how different pages resonate with this web traffic, letting you optimise the site for everyone whilst potentially identifying which types of messaging is resonating with different market sectors, verticals and audiences. Subtle text and image changes to align the same landing page with say a banking client vs a corporate finance client may help drive that all important extra layer of engagement, leading to downloads, video views, form fills and demo sessions getting booked - in other words all of the ultimate goals which move the prospect through your funnel.

Measuring Performance and ROI in B2B using cookieless tracking which aligns with the longer B2B sales cycles

Measuring ROI is an essential part of any successful B2B marketing campaign. However most attribution is still measured against cookies, and yet the average length of a cookies shelf life is just 30 days verses a sales cycle of 2 years. Additionally on average, a B2B sales cycle has 7 decision makers in its decision making universe, yet cookies act as 1:1 attribution with devices and browsers (not even individuals) - so all of this is to say, you need a cookieless next generation B2B insights portal like Journey to do this sort of tracking

In order to maximise ROI, it is important to have an analytics platform that can track and measure performance across multiple channels. B2B conversion rate optimisation is an important factor to consider when it comes to B2B marketing, as it helps you understand how each channel contributes to overall success. With the right analytics platform, B2B marketers can gain insight into which channels are performing the best, allowing them to fine-tune their strategy and maximise ROI. Additionally, B2B marketers can use this data to identify areas of improvement and make changes that could increase their conversion rate.

Utilising an analytics platform provides visibility into the effectiveness of campaigns, so that marketers can adapt strategies and tactics to optimise results. Having the right metrics in place helps to ensure that the marketing program is tailored specifically to achieving objectives. B2B marketing requires a dynamic creative approach that is tailored to the specific needs of each individual customer, allowing B2B marketers to personalise their campaign strategies and messages. With the right metrics in place, B2B marketers can accurately measure the success of their campaigns and identify opportunities for improvement. This will help B2B marketers achieve their target goals, while also improving the customer experience.

By tracking conversion rates, click-through rates and total cost of customer acquisition, marketers are able to make informed decisions about which channels are most effective for their B2B marketing campaigns and how best to adjust budgets and resources in order to reach goals Again, B2B marketing campaigns can be optimised for conversions by tracking key metrics such as conversion rates, click-through rates and total cost of customer acquisition. By leveraging this data, marketers are able to make informed decisions about which B2B advertising channels are most effective in reaching their target goals and how best to adjust their budgets and resources accordingly. B2B conversion rate optimisation is an essential part of a B2B marketing strategy.

Analysing Channel Performance for B2B Marketing Strategies

Analysing channel performance is essential for B2B marketing strategy development in order to identify which channels you should prioritise and invest more resources in. B2B analytics provide key insights into the customer base, helping B2B marketers understand what channels, messages and content is resonating with their target audience. Having access to B2B analytics can also help B2B marketers see where their competitors are excelling and identify ways to differentiate from them. B2B analytics can also inform B2B marketers on the best way to utilise ad spend for maximum ROI. With B2B analytics, B2B marketers are able to optimise their marketing strategies in order to get the most out of their efforts.

For example, by assessing the number of leads generated by each channel and understanding the cost associated with each channel, you can identify which channels are delivering the best ROI and focus on optimising those channels to drive better results. Moreover, B2B conversion rate optimisation can be achieved by using metrics to measure the success of B2B marketing channels. For example, by assessing the number of leads generated by each channel and understanding the cost associated with each channel, you can identify which channels are delivering the best ROI and focus on optimising those channels to drive better results. This will help businesses make informed decisions that will lead to improved B2B marketing performance.

Leveraging Data to Create Targeted Content Strategies

Leveraging data-driven insights to create targeted content strategies allows businesses to increase their visibility and engagement with potential customers. By leveraging customer data to curate relevant information, businesses can create more effective campaigns that lead to higher conversion rates, A/B testing being an essential element of the successful B2B marketing strategy. A/B testing involves comparing two variations of a campaign to understand which version drives best customer engagement. A/B testing gives businesses the opportunity to refine their content strategies and tailor them to their customers' preferences, ultimately leading to improved conversion rates and an increased customer base.

Knowing which content resonates with customers is key to developing a successful targeted content strategy. Data-driven insights can help identify the right topics, channels, formats, and timing for content that will bring maximum results. This allows businesses to tailor their content strategies to the needs of their target audience and build trust with them over time Furthermore, Account Based marketing (ABM) is a great tool to use in B2B marketing. This method enables businesses to develop highly personalized campaigns and content that is tailored to their customers’ needs and preferences. The data-driven insights that ABM provides are essential in understanding what type of content resonates with customers and how best to target them. Investing time into understanding the target audience can help build trust with them over time and lay the foundation for a successful targeted content strategy.

Optimising Ad Spend Based on B2B Analytics

Increasing ad spends needs to be considered in the context of a holistic B2B plan. For example, understanding the target audience and their buying journey is essential for optimising ad spends. B2B marketing requires a careful and comprehensive evaluation of the customer's needs, interests, and budget in order to create an effective B2B strategy. This evaluation helps marketers better understand how to effectively reach their B2B audience, which can result in more conversions and improved ROI. Additionally, B2B marketing requires the implementation of effective tactics like SEO, content marketing, email campaigns, social media advertising, and more to ensure effective visibility for B2B prospects. Ultimately, B2B marketers must be able to successfully assess their B2B marketing campaigns in order to ensure their ad spends are being used effectively and achieving desired results.

Once B2B analytics are collected and analysed, use the insights to inform ad targeting and budgeting decisions. This will ensure that ads reach the intended audience and drive desired outcomes such as increased leads, sales, or ROI Moreover, B2B analytics are key to successful B2B marketing. With B2B analytics collected and analysed, businesses can use the insights to ensure that their ads reach the right audience and drive the desired outcomes such as increased leads, sales, or ROI. B2B analytics proves to be an invaluable tool for B2B marketing as it allows decision-makers to adjust their marketing strategy accordingly.

Defining Success Metrics for Improved Results

When setting success metrics for B2B marketing initiatives, it is important to think beyond just conventional key performance indicators (KPIs) such as website visits and leads, and instead focus on goals that reflect the desired outcomes of the campaign such as brand awareness and customer satisfaction. To ensure a successful B2B marketing strategy, it is essential to have a clear ideal customer profile that outlines the ideal traits and characteristics of the ideal customer. Additionally, performing an in-depth analysis of the customer journey and identifying potential pain points can help maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of campaigns, resulting in increased ROI. Lastly, it is also important to be aware of industry trends so that campaigns are designed with up-to-date strategies tailored for maximum impact.

To ensure that these success metrics accurately capture the impact of our efforts, we must pay close attention to the nuances of each goal and define success in terms of concrete measures that can be tracked and evaluated over time. This will enable us to effectively measure our progress towards achieving our desired results and identify areas for improvement Thereafter, our B2B marketing success can be accurately gauged and improved upon by focusing on the target account list. Close attention to the goals and concrete measures of success must be taken into account in order to effectively and meaningfully evaluate progress. Evaluating our efforts with these specific parameters in mind will ensure that we are taking the necessary steps to reach our desired results.

Wrapping up

In conclusion, leveraging analytics can be an incredibly powerful tool when managing your B2B marketing strategy. Utilising the data from analytics will help you improve your campaigns and target the right audiences with the right messages. This in turn will help you get more out of your efforts and ensure that your B2B marketing strategy is as effective as possible.

Improving Your B2B Marketing Strategies on a Tight Budget

Everyone knows that marketing can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be. With the right strategies, you can get a lot of mileage out of even a small budget. In this blog post, we'll look at some of the best tips and tricks for effectively marketing your B2B business on a tight budget. Keep reading to find out how you can get the most bang for your buck!

2023 is the tear of the budget cut, and CMO's everywhere, from the smallest B2B services to the biggest multinational companies are wrestling with budgets which have been eroded by inflation and further reduced by business uncertainty and the loom threats of recession.

However there are practical ways to make your budgets work as hard as possible, even in these most challenging of times.

Maximising Your Budget

To make your budget work harder for you, start by setting a sensible spending limit that allows you to cover your basic needs while also building in some wiggle room for unexpected expenses. When it comes to digital media budgets, you can achieve more then you may think with comparatively small budgets but you also need to make sure you're spending enough to drive learnings, insights and optimisations. Once you have a budget in place, think about better ways to allocate your resources. Consider investing in better ad creative to better engage your market or exploring more cost-effective methods of production. Taking a few extra steps to dig deep and find better ways to manage finances will ensure that you are getting maximum value from every dollar spent. Ultimately, if you're serving less ads (ie spending less money) then those ads you do serve need to really resonate, and have the best chance of driving actions from your target market. This is undoubtedly where the power of great creative kicks in, and why this is one area that we would not recommend making cuts in.

Managed service media can make costs more forecastable and enable you to dedicate more of your investment to media vs in-house execution

Growing your brand on a budget doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive – with a few simple strategies and tactics, you can create a powerful presence without breaking the bank. By utilising managed service providers, you can make your budget work harder to increase your brand’s visibility. Managed service providers can help align your company’s goals with market opportunities, whilst leveraging internal expertise and thus allowing for effective cost management and utilisation of resources. Furthermore, managed services can provide insights into how to effectively target customers and potential resources that may have gone unnoticed or the insights can be derived across a greater pool of media execution compared to what you can achieve directly. As such, utilising managed services can help you maximise the potential of your budget and create an effective digital marketing plan to further your brand visibility without breaking the bank.

Managed service went out of vogue for a number of years, when the market had a huge focus on in-housing expertise. In reality, few clients have the consistent spend thresholds needed to really drive the economies of scale that in-house promised, and they're instead left executing media buying in their own echo chamber, losing the insights that wider agency input can bring

At the start of any project, it’s important to take stock of your current resources – both tangible and intangible – and think about how they can contribute to building your brand. Making your budget work harder is an essential part of the process. To do so, you should identify the most cost-effective ways to achieve your objectives and seek out opportunities to achieve more with less.

From leveraging existing relationships to finding free or low-cost design and marketing tools, there are lots of ways to make your budget work harder for you when it comes to brand-building. It is important to consider the 2023 recession. While preparing for a downturn can feel daunting, there are many proactive steps businesses can take now to ensure they remain resilient during the 2023 recession. Now is the time to plan and develop targeted strategies that allow businesses to not only survive but thrive in the years ahead.

Ensure that the right attention goes into your landing pages, so that they work s hard as possible at converting the traffic which you drive into them

Making our budget work harder starts with understanding what resources are available to us. Knowing every detail of our budget is key to leveraging these resources to their fullest potential. We can do this by better optimising our landing pages to better target potential customers, which will result in better return on investment. Additionally, better resource allocation allows us to better allocate funds towards better quality assets and those that directly contribute to increased revenue.

Ultimately, we can get away with slightly poorer performing landing pages when we can afford to send more traffic to them. A lower conversion rate can yield the same absolute number of leads, but in these times of tighter budgets, if we're going to hit our goals, we will need to have very high performing landing pages.

Doing this can help us make smarter decisions on how to best use our funds, such as investing in new technologies, hiring additional staff, or making changes to certain processes to improve efficiency. All of these tactics can help us optimise the funds we already have and make our budget work harder for us Thus, if we plan ahead and plan wisely for 2023, we can make our budget work harder for us.

Reaching Customers on a Shoestring Budget

In order to reach customers on a shoestring budget, it's essential to focus on leveraging digital marketing strategies such as organic social media, email campaigns, search engine optimisation and targeted, highly specific paid media tactics, which yield the biggest 'bang for the buck' like ABM. Additionally, conversion rate optimisation is an effective way to make the most out of your budget. By improving conversion rates, you will be able to get more out of every dollar spent on marketing activities. This entails creating appealing content, running A/B testing, and making sure website design and layout are super-engaging and highly intuitive. Moreover, conversion rate optimisation can focus on improving conversion rates at each step of the customer journey. Doing so ensures that no conversion opportunities are overlooked, thus allowing you to make your budget work harder for you.

Stretching Advertising Dollars - make paid media sweat harder

When it comes to stretching advertising dollars, it's important to focus on targeting the right audience. This means researching potential customers and understanding their needs and wants so that you can tailor your ads accordingly. Additionally, conversion rate optimisation can help ensure that your budget works harder. By analysing website traffic, conversion paths and user behaviour, you can identify user trends to help optimise conversion rates. This means more effective conversion opportunities and a better return on investment.

Another way to make your advertising dollars go further is by taking advantage of digital and social media platforms, which are often less expensive than traditional methods such as television and radio. When advertising on these platforms, its critical to combine highly specific and precise targeting with brilliant creative, ensuring you can target their lowest hanging fruit.

Finally, tracking your return on investment (ROI) is essential for optimising your marketing spend. Keep a close eye on how many leads or conversions you're getting from each of your campaigns so that you can adjust as necessary and ensure that you're getting the most bang for your buck Furthermore, it's paramount that you closely monitor your ROI when attempting to make your budget work harder. By tracking how many leads or conversions you receive from each of your campaigns, you can make adjustments accordingly and ensure that you are getting the greatest value for your dollar.

Top Tip; never rely on the media buying platform to provide the conversion data - they are biassed and use attribution techniques designed to ensure they come out looking great. Platforms like Journey provide cookieless attribution, long sales cycle management, multi-touch attribution and other such tools needed to understand how the marketing mix combines to drive value

To Conclude

In conclusion, there are many different strategies you can use to successfully market your B2B business on a tight budget. From leveraging the power of social media, to creating effective copywriting content and utilising managed service solutions from best-in-class vendors, there are many ways to spread the word about your business without breaking the bank. With a bit of research, creativity and hard work, you can create a successful marketing strategy that will drive leads and sales for your business.

How to really measure the performance of your B2B media buying strategy

Media buying is an important part of any B2B marketing strategy, but how do you know if it’s doing its job? Analysing the performance of your media buying efforts can give you valuable insight into how to optimise your strategy and get the most out of your marketing budget. In this blog post, we’ll discuss different methods for measuring the success of your media buying strategy.

Benefits of Measuring B2B Media Buying Performance

Measuring B2B media buying performance is essential to understanding and optimising the effectiveness of both current and future campaigns. Measuring, in our experience around B2B has too often been limited to 'platform metrics'; time and time again, we see clients coming to our media buying division who have been working with vendors who feedback on metrics as limited as 'cost per click' and such like. This limited horizon leads to platforms chasing cheap clicks, because they don't measure and optimise to what actually matters; on-site performance.

By leveraging data-driven insights from programmatic advertising, attribution, the programmatic bidstream, and analytics tools like Journey, companies can accurately measure the performance of each campaign and adjust their strategy accordingly.

For example, funnel analysis is a tool used within Journey to measure the success of campaigns by tracking and optimising funnel performance, allowing marketers to determine which steps in the funnel are driving conversions. Further, data-driven insights from bilateral bidding exchanges and programmatic advertising platforms allow companies to access valuable information regarding their campaigns, including reach and impression data, enabling them to make informed decisions when it comes to their media buying strategy.

Leveraging data-driven insights from programmatic advertising and analytics tools help businesses to identify the most cost-effective platforms for their campaigns, as well as which marketing channels are most effective in driving conversions. Additionally, it allows them to understand how their campaigns are performing compared to competitors’ strategies, allowing for a more informed decision-making process when allocating resources However, high quality engagements are not always easy to achieve with B2B programmatic advertising, as B2B attribution and analytics tools often need to be leveraged in order to accurately measure campaign effectiveness. By using data-driven insights from these tools, businesses can identify the most cost-effective platforms for their campaigns while also understanding which channels are most successful in driving conversions. Additionally, this data gives them an insight into how their campaigns perform compared to those of competitors, helping them make more informed decisions when allocating resources.

Utilising Programmatic Advertising for B2B Media Buying

Programmatic advertising is an automated way to buy, measure, and optimise media in real-time. This makes it a great choice for B2B media buying, as it enables marketers to quickly and efficiently allocate budget to the most effective sources of demand. The drawback has been media participation; many leading B2B publisher resources have not been available to buy on 'open exchanges', and the technology behind programmatic has been entirely focussed on consumer media buying (B2C). This is what we have changed here at FunnelFuel; leveraging bespoke technology built for B2B, married with unique B2B data sets to uncover business users within the anonymity of the big open programmatic world, and leveraging analytics tools to fuel 24/7 always-on optimisation - we have made B2B programmatic work, finally.

With effective B2B programmatic advertising, B2B marketers can benefit from sophisticated analytics for better insights, increase ROI with advanced attribution models, and gain a competitive advantage by leveraging real-time data. As such, programmatic advertising is an effective way for B2B organisations to interact with prospects, advertise products and services efficiently, and design targeted digital marketing strategies that result in measurable business outcomes.

Comprehensive attribution capabilities are critical for understanding the performance of programmatic campaigns. Leveraging these insights can help marketers understand what efforts are delivering the best ROI and adjust their strategies accordingly. When it comes to B2B programmatic advertising, B2B attribution offers invaluable insights on the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. With B2B attribution, marketers can track customer journeys, measure the performance of various channels, and optimise their B2B strategy in real time. In addition to B2B attribution, B2B analytics can provide deeper insights into campaign performance, enabling B2B businesses to better understand their audiences and tailor their campaigns accordingly. By utilising B2B programmatic advertising, B2B attribution, and B2B analytics together, marketers can make more informed decisions and maximise their ROI.

By combining attribution data with analytics, marketers can gain a holistic view of their programmatic campaigns and identify areas of improvement Meanwhile, B2B programmatic advertising is more effective when marketers combine attribution data with analytics. This comprehensive approach to data analysis allows marketers to gain a holistic view of their programmatic campaigns and identify areas of improvement. With this data, businesses can implement strategies that provide increased ROI on their investment in programmatic advertising, thus creating a better overall marketing success.

Strengthening Your B2B Attribution Strategy

B2B attribution boils down to understanding which parts of the marketing journey and stack are driving the outcomes you're seeking, whilst understanding how these channels, formats and executions work synergistically to power outcomes rather then viewing each in its own data silo. This can be a powerful tool to maximise the ROI of your organisation’s marketing efforts. It can identify which channels and tactics are most effective in driving conversions that result in sales, allowing you to optimise your programmatic advertising strategy. Through B2B attribution, you can gain valuable insights into which B2B campaigns and strategies are driving the most value for your company. By leveraging analytics, you can measure the performance and effectiveness of your B2B campaigns, as well as identify areas where you can increase performance and allocate resources more effectively.

To ensure your programmatic advertising is optimised based on attribution data, it's important to have the right technology in place - such as Journey, our B2B central nervous system - to capture and analyse relevant insights from customer behaviors and interactions with your advertisements. Having B2B analytics in place is essential for understanding how your programmatic advertising impacts the customer journey. A DMP allows for the aggregation and analysis of valuable B2B data sets, helping to identify which advertisements are driving conversions and improving ROI. Furthermore, with the right B2B attribution model, it's possible to track customer behaviors more effectively and adjust your advertising strategies accordingly. By leveraging B2B programmatic advertising as part of an overall marketing mix, businesses can better understand their customers, improve targeting accuracy and maximise return on investment.

With a comprehensive B2B analytics platform, you can leverage additional analytics capabilities such as predictive modelling, CRO tools, and segmentation to further refine your programmatic advertising strategy for improved performance across channels. Besides B2B analytics, a comprehensive B2B analytics platform can also offer additional capabilities such as named account tracking and life scores to help refine your B2B programmatic advertising for improved performance.

Leveraging B2B Analytics to Optimise Performance

Leveraging B2B analytics can provide insights into how to optimise performance with programmatic advertising, such as understanding the cost per lead (CPL) and how different channels contribute to conversions. This data enables b2b advertisers to make informed decisions about their budget allocation and campaign strategies in order to maximise ROI. As such, B2B analytics can offer an in-depth view of the entire customer journey, tracking attributions and conversions across media channels. Additionally, advertisers can better understand why certain campaigns resonate more with audiences, identify duplicates, and detect fraudulent activities. By leveraging B2B analytics and leveraging programmatic advertising strategies, marketers can improve their campaigns and reach more potential customers.

Best Practices for Measuring B2B Media Buying Performance

Measuring B2B media buying performance is essential to understand the effectiveness of campaigns, which allows for optimisation and improvement of future efforts. To do this, marketers need to focus on programmatic advertising, attribution, and analytics when selecting best practices. This can include funnel analysis, a data-driven approach which is popular among B2Bs as it enables tracing of campaigns from the initial touchpoint to successful conversion. Programmatic advertising allows for automation, improved targeting, and a more efficient use of budget and resources. Attribution helps understand which channels are most effective in engaging the target audience, helping to optimise future campaigns. Analytics then provides real-time insights into audience behavior, helping to inform media buying decisions and maximise ROI.

Programmatic advertising provides access to a large selection of inventory from various marketplaces, allowing buyers to be precise in their targeting. This helps inform key decisions related to budgeting and optimisation that can have a positive impact on performance. Through B2B analytics, buyers can gain further insight into the impact of their campaigns and make more informed decisions on B2B attribution. By utilising B2B analytics, marketers can determine what messaging resonates most with their target audience, optimise their strategies to ensure the greatest ROI, and measure the success of their programmatic advertising campaigns.

Attribution is used to uncover the relationship between media channels and customer behavior over time to determine which marketing efforts are paying off the most. By combining attribution with analytics capabilities, marketers can get as granular as needed with their data insights to identify areas for improvement and maximise ROI on media spending across all channels Again, high quality engagements are essential when it comes to b2p programmatic advertising. By utilising powerful b2p attribution and analytics capabilities, marketers are able to gain valuable insights into customer behavior, enabling them to better understand the relationship between media channels and customer actions. This data can then be used to optimise media spending and maximise ROI while identifying areas for improvement.

Keeping Pace with the Evolving Landscape of B2B Media Buying

Keeping pace with the evolving landscape of B2B media buying requires adoption of programmatic advertising and attribution technologies. These technologies enable marketers to more effectively target, measure, and optimise campaigns across multiple channels in real-time. With high-quality engagements and granular B2B analytics, B2B marketers have unprecedented access to high-value customer insights that can drive high ROI on programmatic campaigns. By adopting programmatic advertising and attribution technologies, B2B marketers can stay ahead of the competition and maximise their lead generation efforts with high quality results.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a number of different ways to measure the performance of your B2B media buying strategy. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, so it’s important to understand each one before making any decisions about which metrics to use. By using the right metrics, you’ll be better able to determine what’s working and what’s not in your media buying efforts, giving you the insight you need to improve your strategy and increase ROI.

B2B feels like the segment that ad-tech left behind, but now with dedicated technology built to analyse on-site behaviour (Journey - our B2B CNS!) and a built-for-purpose ABM DSP - the capabilities to really optimise and measure what is important to a B2B marketer has finally arrived

The Ultimate B2B Marketing Glossary Cheat-Sheet: All the Must-Know Terminology

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If you're trying to get into the world of B2B marketing, you may be feeling overwhelmed by all the industry terminology. Don't worry - we've got you covered! In this blog post, we'll provide you with a cheat sheet of all the must-know terminology so you can become a B2B marketing pro in no time. Read on to learn more!

Introduction to B2B Marketing Terminology

B2B marketing terminology is an important part of understanding and navigating the world of business-to-business marketing. It's important to understand the various terms and acronyms used in the industry so you can effectively communicate with your customers and partners. Mobile optimisation is one of the most important terms in the B2b glossary, as mobile devices are becoming more and more popular for business transactions. Being mobile-friendly is essential for any business, so understanding mobile optimisation is key to achieving success in B2b marketing. By having an optimised mobile experience, businesses can reach more customers and better engage with them. Ultimately, mobile optimisation is essential for any business that wants to stay competitive in today's market.

To help you get up to speed, here are some of the most common B2B marketing terms and their definitions:

Lead Generation - The process of acquiring new leads for a business through various methods such as direct contact, online campaigns, content creation, or other forms of advertising; Prospecting – The process of identifying potential customers who may be interested in your product or service; Lead Nurturing – The process of nurturing leads throughout the sales cycle by providing relevant information and offers that will help move them closer to making a purchase Moreover, with the introduction of Chatbot technology, lead nurturing has become even easier. Chatbots can be programmed to provide personalized offers to leads that have been identified and qualified as prospects, allowing businesses to engage with potential customers in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. By taking advantage of Chatbot technology, businesses are able to build relationships with prospects and increase their chances of closing a sale.

A-C: Essential Marketing Terms

A/B Testing: A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a webpage, email, or other digital asset to measure the performance of one against the other. This helps marketers understand which version performs better, helping them make data-driven decisions about their marketing efforts. Predictive Content and Qualified Leads are also important to understand in the context of B2B marketing. Predictive Content is a method of using trends and insights to serve relevant content to the right customers at the right time. Qualified Leads are defined as prospects who have provided contact information and indicated interest in a product or service, making them a higher value lead compared to an unqualified lead. With the help of A/B testing, Predictive Content, and Qualified Leads, effective B2B marketing strategies can be developed and improved upon.

[button link="https://funnelfuel.io/b2b-web-analytics/" type="big" color="black" newwindow="yes"] Journey by FunnelFuel is a 'central nervous system' for B2B marketing, providing enterprise-class analytics, 24/7 media optimisation and conversion rate optimisation tools, including A/B testing, heat-maps and session recordings. Click here to learn more (opens in a new tab/window to not interrupt your reading of this glossary article)[/button]

Account Based Marketing is a B2B marketing approach which addresses pre-defined accounts and tailors the marketing message to the stage of the funnel that the client is in, including post purchase. Learn more here in our 'in a nutshell' series - what is ABM?

Go deeper: 5 pro tips to win at Account Based Marketing in 2023

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO): Conversion rate optimisation is the process of improving the performance of webpages or emails so that more visitors take desired actions such as making a purchase or subscribing to an email list. By understanding user behavior and improving conversion rates, marketers can grow their business. Predictive Content, the presentation of content to users based on their interests, can dramatically increase the effectiveness of CRO. Similarly, Qualified Lead generation strategies allow marketers to create meaningful leads which can be converted into customers more quickly. In this way, CRO helps to improve overall ROI and make marketing activities more efficient.

Go deeper: The most advanced conversion rate optimisation tactics for B2B marketers, to help make your website work harder and drive more results

Call-To-Action (CTA): A call-to-action (CTA) is any element on a website or in an email that encourages users to take an action, such as filling out a form, subscribing to an email list, downloading an asset, or making a purchase. CTAs are essential for driving conversions and achieving marketing goals Thereafter, dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) is a term used to describe the process of personalising a website or email with dynamic content based on user data. By identifying relevant CTAs for each user segment, DCO can help to drive better performance and better conversion rates. Understanding the fundamentals of call-to-action (CTA) is essential for marketing teams who want to take advantage of DCO and all its advantages.

[learn_more caption="FunnelFuel Co-Founders Insight On The Importance Of CTA Optimisation "] Insight from FunnelFuel's co-founder, Mike Harty: Talking CTA texts sounds like an almost stupidly small point in the grand scheme of B2B marketing, but we operate in a highly competitive space where winning ITDM attention is ever-harder. Marginal gains from exploring different CTA messages and text/button colour combinations DOES make a big difference. Interaction movements of 0.5% at scale add-up, meaning if you can optimise the page so 0.5% more people who read it end up clicking your button, then we're talking about 0.5% more prospects turning into MCL's and flowing through your funnel, or 0.5% more sales calls or 0.5% more free trials. Our Journey analytics products anonymously [ie without looking at specific sites, instead pulling all the data to a top level view for analysis] tracks a lot of web based actions on B2B websites, across both pure-play publishing and client sites. Anonymous exploration of this data shows that the clients who use our Journey tools to explore the impact of testing different CTA texts are the ones who are generating the most ROI from their marketing efforts, across both paid media and organic. [/learn_more]

Go deeper: How to use A/B testing, heatmaps and session recordings to drive better results from your website within a week

D-F: Must-Know Concepts

“D” stands for Demand-Side Platform (DSP), which is a type of software used by advertisers to buy ads programmatically. Users of this platform can manage and track ROI, view analytics, and compare different data sources, as well as segment their audience and tailor messaging for particular segments. Audience segmentation is an important tool in the demand-side platform, allowing advertisers to reach their target audiences more effectively. With audience segmentation, they can adjust their ad placement so that their message reaches the right consumers at the right time. The demand-side platform is a powerful resource for any business trying to maximise the impact of their advertising campaigns.

[button link="https://funnelfuel.io/next-generation-b2b-programmatic-marketing/" type="big" color="purple" newwindow="yes"] Learn more about the FunnelFuel ABM DSP - a programmatic media buying platform designed only for B2B. Bringing LinkedIn level targeting to programmatic media, opening up greater scale at considerably cheaper rates for B2B marketers, our DSP enables named-account targeting, dynamic content optimisation for B2B and deep contextual targeting against our 161 level B2B taxonomy. Click here to learn more! (opens in a new tab/window to not interrupt the rest of this glossary article)[/button]

“E” stands for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This system helps businesses manage and integrate their many different processes into one central system with the goal of increasing efficiency and decreasing costs. An ERP system provides the structure that business needs to better track and manage data, streamline operations, and improve customer relationships. This powerful tool can be used to track inventory, manage supply chain, and optimise accounting functions, and the best ones integrate back into your marketing stack to ensure that marketing matches the current capabilities of the business. With an ERP system in place, businesses can make quicker decisions based on up-to-date data in order to maximise efficiency and profitability. As such, this tool is invaluable for any business looking to increase their operational efficiency.

“F” stands for forecasting, which is the process of predicting future market trends based on past performance and other factors. To accurately forecast future market trends, businesses must have a solid understanding of their industry landscape as well as customer needs and preferences Thereafter, TOFU and MOFU are important acronyms to keep in mind when applying your forecast future market trends to your current new business led marketing tactics. TOFU stands for "top of funnel", which is the beginning stage of the customer journey when they are just exploring options and getting familiar with their needs. MOFU stands for "middle of funnel" and refers to the customer's attempt to elucidate what they need and determine their buying criteria. TOFU helps with identifying potential customers or prospects, while MOFU focuses on providing targeted information that helps customers make decisions. Forecasting future market trends requires a thorough understanding of TOFU and MOFU, so businesses must have a solid understanding of their industry landscape as well as customer needs and preferences.

G-I: Critical Strategies

G-I critical strategies involve making decisions that are designed to result in long-term success and sustainability by evaluating the risks and rewards of each potential move. Blocklisted IPs are a prime example of such a risk assessment. Blocklisted IPs refer to IP addresses that have been identified as either malicious or suspicious by ISPs or other authorities, or if you're doing named account targeting / ABM using IP targeting, this can indicate that IP data isn't available in a particular environment. As businesses operate in a globally connected environment, it is important for organisations to understand the risks of Blocklisted IPs and put into place strategies to mitigate them. These strategies may include regularly monitoring Blocklisted IPs and enforcing security protocols, such as two-factor authentication, to ensure the safety of data and information.

For example, organisations can use G-I strategies to determine what changes should be made to their business operations, marketing tactics, and technology implementations in order to stay competitive over time Next, TOFU (Top of the Funnel) and MOFU (Middle of the Funnel) are two important acronyms that organisations should keep in mind when creating their G-I strategies. As we stated above, TOFU is the initial step in the buying process, while MOFU is where companies can get more specific with their offers and start to build relationships with potential customers. By understanding TOFU/MOFU and how it fits into their G-I strategies, organisations can set themselves up for success in staying competitive over time.

J-L: Crucial Mechanics and Processes

J Curve: A graph that illustrates the relationship between the total cost of a project and its timeline. The ‘J’ shape of the graph is due to the fact that many projects begin with a large investment upfront followed by lower costs as the project develops, before increasing again in its final stages. Not always associated with marketing, but it does have a strong crossover, especially in B2B. It is invaluable to businesses when approaching their marketing efforts, as it can be used to pursue dynamic creative optimisation (requires a full top of funnel to begin segmentation) and for businesses who are launching a new product or service, whereby fast and significant early exposure is key, followed by a strong push to bring nurtured accounts to a close. By plotting out the project timeline and cost, businesses can make informed decisions about their budget and adjust accordingly. The J Curve is a major part of any B2b glossary and essential for successful marketing management.

Kanban: A scheduling system developed by Toyota whereby work is organised and tracked through visual cues such as cards or boards. Kanban helps teams manage their workflow efficiently by providing them with an easy way to track progress, organise tasks, and identify potential bottlenecks in production processes. smart B2B marketers are taking Kanban approaches and applying them to their marketing funnels, using them to apply lead scoring and to drive creative decisioning to make their messages clearer.

M-Z: The Nitty Gritty of B2B Marketing

Using Marketing Automation to Streamline Messaging: By using marketing automation, you can easily create targeted messages for specific groups and individuals, which increases the effectiveness of your B2B marketing efforts. Marketing automation platforms such as HubSpot, Marketo and Oracle Marketing Cloud enable you to streamline your B2B communication process, allowing you to plan and execute campaigns more efficiently. Marketing automation can also be used to send automated email messages, track website activity and activity on social networks - all of which helps to create a comprehensive view of customer interactions. By automating your marketing outreach, you can quickly segment leads, craft targeted messages and track the success of each message in real-time. This type of targeted messaging helps you build relationships with prospects and better understand the impact of your B2B marketing strategies.

Nurturing Relationships with Prospects: Through the use of well-crafted emails, webinars, and content campaigns, you can nurture relationships with prospects and build trust between your business and potential customers Besides building relationships and trust, utilising a b2B glossary in your email, webinars, and content campaigns can help to ensure that you communicate the correct terminology and accurately portray your message. A b2b glossary of terms allows companies to provide prospects with further details that convey the intent behind their messages. Having a defined vocabulary that is regularly used helps create an understanding between both parties fostering stronger relationships. Employing a b2b glossary is a great tool for nurturing and maintaining relationships with prospects in order to grow your business.

Wrapping up

In conclusion, this B2B marketing glossary cheat-sheet is here to help anyone who’s new to the world of B2B marketing. It’s important to understand the terminology, definitions, and meanings in order to keep up with the industry’s trends and changes. With this cheat-sheet, you’re sure to be a pro in the field of B2B marketing and stay up-to-date with the latest industry terms.

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How to Design a B2B Landing Page That Converts: Best Practices Ready For 2023

A well-designed landing page is a powerful tool that can help you generate leads, close deals, and boost your bottom line. But what goes into designing a B2B landing page that actually converts? In this blog post, we'll explore some of the key elements that you should consider when designing your next B2B landing page.

However before we even address how to lay out your landing page, lets start by addressing the need for speed - or in this case, the need to get your landing page loading rapidly

The Importance of Page Load Speed for Conversions

In the age of instant gratification, website visitors expect a fast, seamless online experience. If your website doesn't deliver, they'll go elsewhere. In fact, 40% of web users will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. And for every second that it takes for your page to load, you could be losing up to 7% in conversions. So, how can you ensure that your website is loading as quickly as possible? Let's take a look.

There are a number of factors that can affect page load speed, including image size, server response time, and code structure. By optimising each of these elements, you can dramatically improve your page load speed—and your conversion rate. Here are a few tips:

Images: Make sure your images are no larger than they need to be. Resize them before uploading them to your site. And use a tool like JPEGmini to reduce file size without sacrificing quality.

Server Response Time: A slow server can drag down your page speed. Make sure you're using a reliable hosting provider with fast servers. You can also use a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute your content around the world and improve loading times for visitors who are far from your server.

Code Structure: Clean, well-organized code will load faster than messy code. If you're not a coder yourself, hire a professional to help you streamline your code and improve your page speed.

B2B landing Page Design - 7 Best Practices

Optimise the offer is the first thing that visitors will see when they land on your page, so it's important to make sure that it's clear, concise, and relevant to their needs. Your headline should be specific enough to let visitors know what they can expect to find on your page, but not so specific that it turns them off. A strong offer should be conveyed in the headline to capture intent early. Presenting this in a strong hero image helps graphically to hammer it home
The body copy needs to hammer home your UVP - the body is where you'll really get to sell your product or service. This is your chance to explain why your offering is the best solution to their problem. Be sure to use persuasive language and strong calls-to-action throughout your body copy to encourage visitors to take the next step.
Leveraging micro-conversions to build killer segments, to let you build sub-landing pages that address specific parts of your solution. These are linked to the content, things like opt-ins, trade-offs for the email in return for exciting content and other such enticing angles helps create goals that you can measure in analytics, helping to measure a prospects progression through the funnel. This segmentation is key for driving real results, and the greater the segmentation the more micro landing pages you can build - landing pages which specifically address very precise needs
Find ways to demo without actually demo-ing - demos take time, cost money and are fraught with no-shows, postponements and re-arrangements. This is fine, and part of the game however you need to catch researchers at their moment of intrigue - right now! - and show them the basics of what they are trying to suss out. A good automated demo on the landing page lessons the burden on the actual live demos, and lets prospects come to the real demo's with much greater purchase intent. Don't just chase demos linked to easy to opt-in-to online calendars
Your page should be highly visual, also include images or videos that help communicate your message. People are more likely to remember information that they see, so visuals can be a powerful way to reinforce your key points. Just be sure to use high-quality images that are relevant to your message. Videos are even better, and tracking users who view these videos opens up powerful performance marketing segments to buy ads against.
Let visitors see real results and nail social proof - results sell, and real, credible and independently presented 'reviews' (I appreciate we're talking B2B and not some widget being sold via Instagram ads) but this still matters in B2B. Ensure you have social proof and real reviews that present the solution to the biggest challenges that you solve for clients.
Finally, don't forget to include ONE strong call-to-action (CTA) on your page. Your CTA should be prominently displayed and easy to spot so that visitors know exactly what you want them to do next. Make sure your CTA is relevant to the rest of your page content and includes persuasive language that encourages visitors to take action. This has to be one action and one action only - a good landing page should be focussed on only one outcome and that needs to be very clear in your CTA's.

Conclusion:
A well-designed B2B landing page can be a powerful tool for generating leads and closing deals. When designing your next landing page, keep the following elements in mind: headlines, body copy, visuals, and calls-to-action. By including these elements on your page, you'll be well on your way to designing a b2b landing page that converts.

B2B Conversion Rate Optimisation Techniques - How To Get Your Site Working Harder For Your Brand

If you're involved in marketing for a business-to-business (B2B) organisation or you work in an agency with B2B clients, then you need to be doing or encouraging the organisation to practice conversion rate optimisation (CRO). CRO is all about increasing the percentage of visitors to your website who take the desired action, whether that's making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, booking a demo or downloading a white paper.

In other words, CRO is the process of turning website visitors into paying customers. And in today's competitive marketplace, it's more important than ever to make sure that your B2B organisation is doing everything it can to optimise its conversion rate.

So what exactly is involved in CRO? Before we do, lets ensure we really know what it is and what it entails

What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

Conversion rate optimisation is the process of increasing the percentage of visitors to your website who take the desired action. This could be anything from making a purchase to signing up for a newsletter or downloading a white paper. In other words, CRO is all about turning website visitors into paying customers. In business, the goal is always to increase revenue while reducing costs. One of the most effective ways to do this is through conversion rate optimisation (CRO)

Since even a small increase in conversion rate can have a significant impact on revenue, CRO is an essential tool for any business that wants to stay competitive.

How Does B2B Conversion Rate Optimisation Work?

There are two main components to CRO: data collection and analysis, and experimentation.

1. Data Collection and Analysis: The first step in any CRO initiative is to collect data on website traffic and user behaviour. This data can be collected using Google Analytics or other similar tools. Once the data has been collected, it needs to be analysed to identify areas where conversion rates can be improved.

2. Experimentation: The second step in CRO is experimentation. This involves testing different changes on the website—such as changes to copy, design, or layout—to see which ones have the biggest impact on conversion rates. Experimentation is important because it allows businesses to make informed decisions about what changes to make to their website.

Why B2B clients Should Care About Conversion Rate Optimisation?

CRO is something often talked about in B2C and Direct to Consumer circles, where marketers have long strived to make every dollar work harder, especially in super competitive landscapes like social media ads. B2B marketers seem as a general rule to get to CRO later in their journeys, yet the role it can and should play in B2B is arguably greater than it plays in B2C. There are therefore several reasons why B2B marketers should care about conversion rate optimisation:

1. Shorter sales cycles: The most obvious reason to care about CRO is that it can lead to increased revenue. Even a small increase in conversion rate can have a significant impact on revenue, so CRO is an essential tool for any business that wants to stay competitive. However CRO implemented right is breaking down the funnel steps that lead to revenue - so actually we're starting by trying to get users to spend longer on your site, then we're working to get more upper-funnel actions like lead generation form fills, then more demos, then more meetings an finally, more direct sales. CRO is therefore iterative and turbo charges the whole digital funnel.

2. Reduced Costs: Another reason to care about CRO is that it can lead to reduced marketing costs and customer acquisition costs. By increasing conversion rates, businesses can get more leads and customers without having to spend more money on marketing. Or the same money invested drives more leads and upper funnel volume, which translates through to a healthier pipe.

3. Improved User Experience and all important prospect first impressions: A third reason to care about CRO is that it can improve the user experience on your website. By testing different changes and seeing which ones have the biggest impact on conversion rates, you can make sure that your website is optimised for users' needs. There is nothing worse then a long sales cycle which breaks down when a prospect can't find what they need on your web properties

4. Increased Customer Lifetime Value: Finally, caring about CRO can also lead to increased customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV is the total amount of money that a customer will spend with your business over the course of their lifetime. By increasing conversion rates and getting more customers, you can also increase CLV.

So we can see the immense value of CRO, but how do we go about doing it?

B2B Conversion Rate Optimisation Techniques - How To Demonstrably Improve Your Websites Performance

There are a number of different techniques that can be used in order to optimise your conversion rate. These include A/B testing, landing page optimisation, and personalisation.

A/B Testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method of comparing two versions of a web page in order to see which one performs better. Version A is the control; version B is the variation. Visitors are randomly shown either version A or version B, and whichever version results in more conversions is declared the winner. A/B testing should follow a process of testing big changes through to smaller ones. You'll be amazed at how much of a difference a button colour can make.

Landing Page Optimisation
Landing pages are stand-alone web pages that are designed for a specific purpose, such as promoting a product or service or capturing leads. An effective landing page will be clear and concise, with a strong call-to-action (CTA). Landing page optimisation is the process of improving your landing pages in order to increase conversions.

Personalisation
Personalisation involves tailoring your website content and offers to the individual user or if you're running Account Based Marketing - named accounts. This could be anything from showing relevant products based on previous purchases to using the user's name in communications. Personalisation has been shown to increase conversion rates by up to 18%.

Session Recordings

Sometimes even the most detailed analytics - like ahem FunneFuel's! - don't reveal exactly what is wrong in the bare stats. Sometimes you need to watch screen recordings and see exactly what your user saw. Did a form not load? Did the page take longer to load than expected? Does the site look terrible if someone views it on Chrome on an iPad? Session recordings can teach the CRO umpteen valuable lessons around the companies product and offering, and what is and is not working.

Page Load testing

Sometimes the poorer front end performance has nothing to do with the website content, layout, messaging and offer - and instead the challenge is more technological. Slow page loading kills conversions, especially in an age where the majority of people will load your site on mobile devices, perhaps whilst commuting and perhaps with weak signal. Nothing kills performance like a page that takes >2 seconds to load.

Traffic sources

Additionally, the CRO expert needs to understand that web traffic isn't all created equal. There are a lot of very low value clicks available in the digital ecosystem - from cheap app based placements on colouring in apps to fraudulent traffic. CRO needs to take this into account, and its also why we need to be working off of a solid sample page (where the performance is proven) and then work to improve it by scientifically splitting the traffic

Putting It All Together; The Four Steps To Optimisation A B2B Page Or Website

Examine - Develop insights based on business goals and market research.
Implement - Design, develop, iterate.
Test - Collect data so you understand if improvement occurred.
Verify - Make your your results are statistically significant.

CRO done right needs to follow the above process. The examination phase should include spending a lot of time with your voice of customer aggregators - the people in the business who spend the most time with customers; hearing their pain points, satisfaction, roadmap ideas and general sentiment.

From using tools like session recordings and heat maps, we can form some hypothesis around what can improve the website. We then move onto implementing, where we create new landing page designs, develop them and iterate them.

We then test these ideas using a robust A/B testing toolkit. This lets us examine the performance of the new page and the ideas it contains against the original page, letting us verify that the new ideas work against statistically relevant data sets

Conclusion:
Conversion rate optimisation is an essential part of any successful B2B organisation's digital marketing strategy. By utilising techniques such as A/B testing, landing page optimisation, and personalisation, you can increase the percentage of visitors to your website who take the desired action—whether that's making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a white paper. So what are you waiting for? Start optimising your conversion rate today!

FunnelFuel is here to help!

As we have learned, in order to execute a conversion rate optimisation strategy, we need to collect robust data (analytics) and have access to CRO tools like heat maps, A/B testing and session recordings.

We recognised this when we build the FunnelFuel Analytics product. We wrapped full enterprise web analytics (with a strong B2B flavour) with CRO tools like the ones mentioned above, to give B2B marketers a one-stop-shop for improving the marketing ROI.

Click below to book your free demo and discovery call, and we'll personally show you how our tools can help

The Top 5 Reasons Why You Need a B2B DSP & Why Generalist Platforms Don't Work For B2B Marketers

[et_pb_section fb_built="1" _builder_version="4.16" global_colors_info="{}"][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.16" background_size="initial" background_position="top_left" background_repeat="repeat" global_colors_info="{}"][et_pb_column type="4_4" _builder_version="4.16" custom_padding="|||" global_colors_info="{}" custom_padding__hover="|||"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.16" background_size="initial" background_position="top_left" background_repeat="repeat" global_colors_info="{}"]If you're like most people, you're probably wondering what a DSP is and why you need one. A DSP, or demand-side platform, is a software platform that helps you buy ad space on the open market. In other words, it allows you to bid on ad inventory in real-time. Unlike buying ads in social media environments, like LinkedIn and Twitter, a B2B DSP focusses on buying premium placements on the worlds leading B2B news sites. Capturing the research intent of users and aligning your messaging to their stated needs is a cornerstone tactic that we use at FunnelFuel, but today we're looking at the pitfalls of generalisation and upsides of specificity.

Sounds great so far, right? But you might be thinking, "I already have a DSP. I use Google Ads." And while that's true, Google Ads or more precisely their DV360 media buying platform, as well as the other leading DSPs like TradeDesk and MediaMath are actually examples of a B2C DSP. That means it's designed for businesses that sell directly to consumers. But what if you're in the business-to-business (B2B) space?

As a Co-Founder of FunnelFuel, and somebody who has ben making technology for this space for the last five years, prospects and clients often ask me about the differences between FunnelFuel's advertising solutions and that of our competitors, a question which essentially boils down to the differences between a B2B DSP and a B2C DSP. The short answer is that FunnelFuel has heavily invested in building a specialised B2B demand-side platform (DSP). And it’s integrated end-to-end with the FunnelFuel analytics and ABM monitoring platform, providing a 360 degree view which supports an organisation’s overarching marketing strategy. Whereas mainstream DSPs typically used by other ABM providers are point solutions built primarily for less focused B2C outcomes.

What does a B2B DSP Like FunnelFuel do which a mainstream B2C DSP can not?

1. Generate insights based on ABM data points and enable you to reach decision-makers who are actively researching your products or services online.

A recent study found that 79% of B2B buyers conduct extensive online research before making a purchase decision. So, if you're not using a B2B DSP, there's a good chance you're not reaching your target audience—the decision-makers who are actively researching your products or services online.

When it comes to programmatic advertising, its data and the insights this data reveals, which turns an ad impression from being worthless to incredibly valuable. B2C DSPs don't have the 360 degree data views that FunnelFuel has, meaning they can't identify the super-valuable and ever so hard to locate ITDM, C-suite and other such segments that FunnelFuel can.

This means that any client who wants to execute ABM optimally needs technological separation from what the generalist DSPs can do - which is brand marketing.

2. You need to reach your target audience with targeted ads and measure the long sales cycles that come thereafter

A B2B DSP allows you to target your ads to specific companies and job titles within those companies. For example, let's say you sell marketing software. With a B2B DSP, you can target ads to marketing directors at tech startups in Silicon Valley. This is great however ultimately most participants in this space know that the sales cycle, especially for enterprise solutions, can be painfully long.

Standard DSPs measure performance with web cookies, which have an average shelf life of <30 days. They simply lack the data insights and performance metrics that really matter to B2B marketers.

B2B therefore calls for a much more integrated analytics solution. It needs analytics that can build more persistent IDs with longer shelf lives which do not rely on cookie data. They require analytics that can really segment named accounts by their true funnel stage, which in turn requires really detailed funnelling, goal building, action tracker and full cross-platform media attribution. Without this, any DSP or the person operating it, are blindly buying impressions and this is highly unlikely to move the needle for any B2B client.

3. Reporting toolkits need modifying - you need to track data like named account lift alongside the more regular conversions and ROI measurements

A B2B DSP gives you the ability to track conversions and measure ROI so that you can see which campaigns are performing well and which ones need improvement. This is vital for any business that wants to grow and scale its marketing efforts efficiently. However this is also data which you get in the top class generalist media buying platforms like TheTradeDesk and MediaMath.

However because B2B amounts to a very small part of their overall revenue, they have not undertaken the work needed to modify their reporting to capture data like named account interaction, clicks, views and then everything that goes on thereafter.

And where they can't report on it they also can't target by it, meaning that they are unable to deliver the super-precise media buying that B2B needs.

B2C typically calls for huge scale, linked historically to cookie pools. B2C marketers typically have huge addressable markets based on factors like geography and basic demographics - such as U.K based men over the age of 30. As their target audiences also falls into people who receive gifts, because like us all they have birthdays and other holidays to celebrate, meaning that some wider targeting is absolutely fine. In so many ways, B2B is the polar opposite. We're seeking über precision, looking to identify key decision makers in specific named accounts. As these individuals are SO hard to find, we need to measure the impact of our ads to the nth degree.

B2B media buying and reporting solutions like FunnelFuel can afford to report in great detail [vs generalist platforms] because we are not measuring in anything like the volumes that they are. We trade depth and precision vs raw volume. It wouldn't be cost effective or viable to do both.

4. You need access to exclusive data and inventory sources.

In many ways, it is now likely that the era of 'open programmatic' is drawing to a close. Whilst digital pipework and connectivity works for all, the specifics of open RTB have created few winners. Like most new technology, programmatic has and continues to roll through a number of iterations before it really works.

B2B media was one area that the 'open era' left behind. Early days RTB was linked to concepts like 'remnant' and higher fill at lower prices, which played a roll in stuffing large news sites with lots of ads, but did precious little to fit the needs of B2B publishers who command super-high value audiences in limited quantities.

B2B publishers did not and do not want to fill their pages with $0.50 CPM programmatic backfill ads for irrelevant B2C offers. They have always valued alignment for their content, audience and ad products, and the value of these audiences command a much higher rate.

At FunnelFuel we know the programatic pipes can be a huge benefit for B2B buyers and sellers. Its why we have built solutions for both sides of the market; a DSP and analytics platform for buyers, and sell side pipework built around the same analytics for the sell side. The ability to build sell side 1st party audiences around the incredible detail that our segmentation enables, is a 'programmatic' game changer for B2B publishers. Leveraging this data to extend into wider high value areas is an obvious step, benefitting both sides of the marketplace.

Therefore our B2B DSP gives you access to exclusive data and inventory sources that are not available on other platforms, such as Google Ads. This means that you can reach your target audience with highly targeted ads on the channels and in the highly premium and richly aligned publishers that they're using for their research —the ones where they're actually making purchasing decisions.

5. In a world of privacy awareness you need a joined-up single platform of record which brings sellers and buyers into the marketplace - not a generalist solution that bolts on declining third party data and providers

The third party data era is over. Well not quite, but its journey of travel is clear to see. Middleware data is getting attacked from all sides; government level legislation, technology advancements, cookies dying, users opting out. 1st party data from the sell side has never been more valuable.

As our competitors try and keep their solutions relevant, relying on third party providers, we're busying expanding our B2B ecosystem of premium publishers, and bringing technology that genuinely empowers them to build their data and mobilise it for activation.

What's so special about the FunnelFuel solutions?

B2B is our exclusive focus. We pride ourselves on truly being end to end; both in terms of working with publishers through to advertisers, but also in terms of offering solutions that wrap around media buying - powering targeting, ad measurement and on-site behaviour with our enterprise B2B analytics. We pride ourselves on building technology exclusively for this space which is made explicitly for it, and we have countless examples of how that drives growth for B2B publishers and advertisers alike.

As a business-to-business (B2B) company, it's essential that you use a B2B DSP to buy ad space on the open market and increasingly in scarcely available B2B private market places (PMP's). A B2B DSP will allow you to reach decision-makers who are actively researching your products or services online in premium content sites dedicated to their niche with targeted ads—something that's not possible with a B2C DSP like Google Ads. Additionally, a B2B DSP will give you the ability to track named accounts as well as 'the usual stuff' like conversions and measure ROI so that you can see which campaigns are performing well and which ones need improvement—something else that's not possible with generalist platforms. Finally, a B2B DSP gives you access to exclusive data and inventory sources that are not available elsewhere—giving you the ability to reach your target audience on the channels where they're actually making purchasing decisions. In short, if you're not using a B2B DSP, you're missing out on some serious advantages over your competition—advantages that could mean the difference between success and failure in today's competitive marketplace.

Ready to learn more about FunnelFuel's solutions?
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Ready to learn more about FunnelFuel's solutions? Book your FREE 30 minute discovery call below

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How to Optimize Your B2B Conversion Rates with A/B Testing, Screen Recordings and Heat maps

Are you happy with your B2B conversion rates? If not, don't worry - you're not alone. The truth is, even the most well-run businesses can always stand to improve their conversion rates. After all, there's always room for improvement when it comes to generating leads and closing sales.

Yet often conversion rate optimisation is an after-thought, with very few companies that we have worked with focussing on it at all. This is undoubtedly a massive missed trick in a world where your target audience are ever harder to find and engage. When you get them to your website, you need to ensure your website is working that lead hard and maximising your chances of converting them.

What Are B2B Conversion Rates?

B2B conversion rates are the percentage of visitors to your website who take a desired action—such as filling out a form or subscribing to a newsletter.

Conversion rates are important because they give you an insight into how effective your website is at achieving its goals. If your conversion rates are low, it could be an indication that there’s something wrong with your website—such as poor design, unclear messaging, or a bad user experience. On the other hand, if your conversion rates are high, it could mean that your website is effectively doing its job and that you’re on the right track. Either way, conversion rates are worth paying attention to.

Conversion rates have an awful lot of factors involved, from the offer through to the season, sentiment around your sector and the elements that we can change on the websites front end. However for the purpose of this blog, we're focussing on the elements that the marketing function can change - the website front end features.

3 powerful tools to improve your conversion rate

Today we're focussing on 3 tools which can be synergistically used in order to radically improve your websites performance;

Screen recordings: a tool which records the screens of people navigating your site or application with the intention of visually revealing pain points that they experienced in their session
Heat maps: a tool which captures a wider set of data on where people click, scroll, hover and touch on your page/s, to show elements which are grabbing the users attention, and where you can move your higher value CTA buttons to in order to gain higher engagement
A/B testing: A tool which splits the traffic going to a landing page equally between variations of that landing page, so you can test different design features and measure which convert best

One of the best ways to optimise your B2B conversion rates is by using A/B testing, screen recordings and heat maps in conjunction with each other because each provides different data which combine to provide a fuller picture. By recording your users' screens as they interact with your website or app, you can get invaluable insights into their behavior. And by tracking their movements with heat maps, you can see exactly where they're getting stuck or falling off. Finally, by split testing different pages, you can see which messaging resonates most and how that impacts the other two tools output.

In this blog post, we'll show you how to use A/B testing, screen recordings and heat maps to optimise your B2B conversion rates. We'll also share some real-life examples of how this approach has helped businesses close more deals and boost their bottom line. So let's get started!

How Screen Recordings Can Help Optimize Your B2B Conversion Rates

Screen recordings offer a wealth of insights into your users' behavior. By seeing how they interact with your site or app, you can identify areas for improvement. For example, let's say you have a high bounce rate on your pricing page. By watching a screen recording of someone visiting that page, you might notice that the pricing information is hard to find or understand. Armed with this knowledge, you can make changes to the page (like adding clarity around pricing) and improve your conversion rates.

Enterprise analytics platforms like the one we offer have incredible depth in their information, There are stats for almost everything conceivable, especially around form and conversion elements. However sometimes you need to actually see what somebody was doing to understand what went wrong. A named account could, for example, have hovered over the 'book a demo' button 3 times without clicking. This was a sign of intent but with hesitation, and means that particular lead may be primed for a direct email outreach or even a sales call. Which brings me on to;

Another way screen recordings can help is by showing you where people are getting stuck in your sales process. Let's say you have a complex product with a lot of features. This is especially likely in B2B, where sales cycles are long because of the vast decision making teams (the 'decision making universe') combines with product complexity, making sales cycles typically very long.

It's not uncommon for people or indeed just one stakeholder in that decision making universe to get overwhelmed when trying to learn about all the different aspects of the product. But if you watch a screen recording of someone using your product, you can see exactly where they're getting confused or lost. You can then make changes (like simplifying the language or adding more visuals) to help them better understand the product - and increase your chances of making a sale.

We have had CMO's and marketing professionals tell us that they have learned more about their messaging challenging, workflows, barriers to conversion and other such data in a multi-hour stint of watching screen recordings then they have in months or even years of face to face meetings, customer interviews and other more traditional tools in the toolbox.

The only real downside is that it is time consuming. It's hard to scale and marry bigger and more robust datasets. That is until you add in heat-maps, the perfect tag team partner for screen recordings.

Heatmaps: The Secret Weapon for Optimising B2B Conversion Rates

In addition to screen recordings, heat maps are another valuable tool for optimising B2B conversion rates. Heat maps track user interactions (like clicks, taps, and mouse movements) and show you where people are spending the most time on your site or app. This information can be incredibly useful for identifying areas of friction or confusion. Their great advantage over recordings is that they bring an element of 'big data' and therefore, much like a new footpath being carved across a field, they show the path that gets trodden the most versus a recording giving a more personal viewpoint into one individuals thinking.

For example, let's say you have a CTA (call-to-action) button that's not getting much attention from users. By looking at a heat map of your site, you might notice that the button is buried at the bottom of the page beneath a ton of other content. In this case, simply moving the button up higher on the page could result in more clicks - and more conversions.

Another huge advantage of heat maps is their ability to rapidly show you how the page renders on different sized screens, and therefore how the key conversion elements move around, more into or further out of view. Multi-device conversion rate optimisation is front of mind in the B2B space, where stakeholders are accessing content across a raft of work and personal devices.

How A/B Testing Can Improve Your B2B Conversion Rates

A/B testing—or split testing—is a method of experimentation where two or more versions of a web page are shown to users at random, and statistical analysis is used to determine which version performs better.

It’s a powerful tool that can be used to improve the performance of your website, and in turn, your business. A/B testing can be used to improve your B2B conversion rates in a number of ways. Here are some examples:

Identifying and fixing usability issues: If users can’t figure out how to use your site, they’re not going to convert. A/B testing can be used to identify usability issues—such as confusing navigation or unclear CTAs—and fix them.
Improving the design of your site: The design of your site has a big impact on conversion rates. A well-designed site will lead visitors through your sales funnel and encourage them to take action. A poorly designed site will do the opposite. A/B testing can be used to test different design elements—such as layouts, color schemes, and fonts—to see which ones work best for your business
Testing different offers: The offer you make on your website has a big impact on conversion rates. If you’re not making an offer that appeals to users, they’re not going to convert. A/B testing can be used to test different offers—such as free trials, coupons, or discounts—to see which ones convert best.

Conclusion:
There are many factors that go into optimising B2B conversion rates - but three of the most important are A/B testing, screen recordings and heat maps. By recording users' screens as they interact with your site or app, you can gain valuable insights into their behavior. And by tracking their movements with heatmaps, you can see exactly where they're getting stuck or falling off. A/B testing is a powerful tool that can be used to improve the performance of your website and increase B2B conversions rates. If you’re not already using A/B testing alongside screen recordings and heatmaps, we encourage you to start today. And if you need help getting started, we’re here for you. Contact us today for more information about our services, which includes an enterprise analytics platform which includes all three of these tools