Traditional display advertising tactics aren’t favorable for manufacturers.
As your audience becomes smaller and your offering becomes niche, it’s harder to reach the people you want with precision without spending (and inevitably wasting) a lot of money. Plenty of people are eager to buy pizza; far fewer are in the market for an industrial pizza oven.
When a manufacturer launches a broad advertising campaign, these problems emerge:
- The ad doesn’t generate engagement
- The ideal target audience doesn’t see it
- The people who do engage aren’t buyers, costing the company money for no revenue potential
Manufacturers need a solution purpose-built for B2B display advertising.
6sense’s Revenue AI platform gives manufacturers tight control over who their ads are shown to, how much a campaign costs, and the messaging delivered to their audiences.
To illustrate the ways 6sense makes display advertising an effective tactic for manufacturers, let’s look at an example company. We’ll run through their options without 6sense and then cover how using 6sense opens a new world of opportunities.
ACME’s Advertising Challenge
ACME Co. is a medium-sized manufacturer with a well-defined, but relatively small, target audience. They know their TAM is roughly 10,000 accounts. ACME’s revenue team spends most of their effort reaching those companies.
Because ACME Co. knows that only about 10% of their accounts are in-market at any given time, they have different ways they want to engage with these companies:
- For all accounts in their TAM, they want to run brand awareness campaigns that keep ACME Co. top-of-mind when those companies eventually have a need.
And
- For in-market accounts, they want to go even further. They want to serve relevant ads that speak to customers’ direct needs, presenting offers that align with the products the company is most interested in. ACME Co. also knows the typical job roles and seniority of their buyers and wants to make sure decision makers are the ones seeing their ads.
Let’s look at how they can achieve these separate — but equally important — goals through traditional advertising techniques and with 6sense.
B2B Advertising Without 6sense: Less Control, No Targeting, Increased Spending
With only traditional advertising methods at their disposal, ACME Co. sets out to create their campaigns and achieve their goals. They do their due diligence on some of the most popular advertising channels.
Search and Display Advertising
Like most companies, they turn to search and display advertising. These are two of the most popular channels for advertising, especially through Google Ads.
ACME Co. immediately notices a problem: they aren’t able to target specific accounts with their ads.
They can target keyword searches, and can launch a display campaign based on a user’s cookies, but they can’t be certain their ads will show up for the right accounts — nor can they segment based on whether an account is in-market.
Because of their relatively small target audience, the search terms ACME Co. wants to target also have low monthly search volume or are extremely competitive with a high cost-per-click.
If the search volume is too narrow, ACME Co. won’t reach enough of their audience. If keyword competition is high, the high cost-per-click will harm ROI — especially if the ads are being served to the wrong people.
LinkedIn has a user base of nearly 1 billion people. As a business-focused social media platform, it’s clearly a consideration for any business looking to advertise.
LinkedIn offers ACME Co. the ability to target their advertising at specific companies and job titles. However, it’s not a platform that everyone uses every day. There’s a chance they create their campaign and launch it, only for it to go unseen by their most important targets because they don’t use LinkedIn regularly. It is a great start, but they still need more coverage.
Industry Publications
ACME Co. is well aware of the big media outlets and trade publications in its industry. These represent a good opportunity for advertising because the audience should align with their targets.
Unfortunately, should doesn’t equal does. Other vendors ACME competes with are a big part of their audience. They can’t guarantee who’ll see your ads and their criteria can be too broad for granular targeting — nor can they separate their campaigns into brand awareness and more targeted campaigns.
Additionally, advertising rates for specific journals and publications can be incredibly costly, resulting in low engagement and a big bill.
The Takeaway
Ultimately, ACME Co. stops the majority of their advertising because there is so much waste that it doesn’t make sense from a financial standpoint. Without the ability to target audiences based on specific criteria, they run the risk of wasting money and effort for little to no return. Left with only small search and LinkedIn investments, they only reach and influence a small portion of their audience.
Advertising Through 6sense: Dynamic Segments, Controlled Costs, More Engagement
The picture looks very different once ACME Co. brings on 6sense to help uncover every revenue moment. 6sense enables ACME to
- Know which of their buyers are in-market
- See and understand the online research activities buyers are performing
- Dynamically segment accounts based on firmographics, behavior, and other factors
- Use those dynamic audience segments to rapidly enroll prospects in campaigns that will be the most relevant
6sense also makes it easy to launch advertising campaigns powered by this data.
Dynamic Segmentation
Because ACME Co. wants to be able to target two different audiences at the same time — awareness vs. in-market — they set-up two segments within 6sense.
6sense’s powerful intent engine uncovers when accounts are showing signals of being in-market, making it incredibly easy for ACME Co. to create a segment for companies that are nearing a purchase decision.
ACME Co. can use templates or build their own filter criteria to create multiple segments for the exact audiences they’re trying to target. These lists update as buyers perform actions.
With their segments in place, ACME Co. knows exactly who they’ll be targeting with their campaigns.
Tight Control of Budgeting and Scheduling
6sense gives ACME Co. complete control of how much they want to spend on each of their advertising campaigns, when they run, how often one person can view an ad, and where the advertisements are placed.
Based on the ad targeting criteria they set, ACME Co. will also see estimates for campaign spend and impressions — info that demand gen teams can use to maximize reach and ROI.
Sharper Personas
6sense’s advertising tool also allows ACME Co. to target their campaigns to specific personas. Instead of wasting money advertising to the wrong department of a company, they can make sure their ads only reach the right buyers.
ACME Co. knows the departments and seniority levels of their typical buyers, so they can sharpen their “in-market” campaign to only focus on those specific people.
Measuring Impact
ACME Co. has high hopes for their advertising campaigns and wants to be sure they’re driving revenue.
6sense gives ACME Co. those insights in an easy-to-read format that reveals how each campaign is influencing pipeline progression:
ACME’s marketing team is no longer left guessing how much they contributed to revenue, and how to adjust their efforts. Armed with data, they can continue to sharpen their ad campaigns and drive more results.
Conclusion
With 6sense, ACME Co. can launch segmented advertising campaigns that reach decision makers without generating a lot of costly clicks and impressions from non-buying team members. This opens up strategic approaches that were previously unavailable to them, boosting their marketing effectiveness.
