Paid Social Media Ads Deliver Terrific Results for B2Bs

How is your business-to-business (B2B) client acquiring new customers post-COVID? Potential customers just aren’t comfortable with in-person meetings and door-to-door sales anymore. According to a report by stirista, many B2B organizations are turning to paid social media ads.

The Current State of B2B Customer Acquisition is Bleak (but Ripe with Opportunity)

72% of B2B marketers report little to no success with their current customer acquisition efforts, says stirista. That might be because only 49% claim to have at least moderately mature customer acquisition programs. That means roughly half of B2B marketers have no defined processes or expansion plans.

These numbers are concerning considering that marketing/sales alignment is the top contributor to the success of 47% of B2B marketers. But it spells opportunity for you to swoop in and help improve your client’s efforts. Stirista recommends doing so by using paid social media ads.

“The most successful customer acquisition strategies are significantly more likely to be using social and digital advertising, and significantly less likely to be using email,” says stirista. Yes, you read that correctly. Social ads (including paid social media ads) are the key to successful customer acquisition among:

Financial services marketers
Information technology marketers
Agencies

Don’t worry, business services also consider social media a key strategy (it’s just in fourth place after digital, email and events).

And social media is the top successful customer acquisition channel by a long shot on average:

Social Media: 22% of marketers consider this a top successful channel
Digital: 16%
Email: 13%
Live Events: 11%
Mobile (in-app): 8%

Social media customer acquisition efforts are a huge deal now and will continue to grow in the future. Stirista expects there to be a significant increase in social’s significance in the next two to five years.

65% of B2B marketers will make adjustments to their budget allocation within the next two years. But only 16% plan on implementing social into their customer acquisition strategy within that time. Big mistake.

Is your client one of the B2B marketers who doesn’t see the importance of paid social media ads? It’s time to show them how many of their target consumers take action based on social ads. But how?

Look up their target audience’s profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel. There, you’ll see:

What percentage of the audience took action within the last year because of social media ads
Which social media platforms they’re the most active on

You'll also see exactly which action the audience took. With that information, your client will see just how effective paid social media ads are among their target audience.

Make Their Efforts Multichannel

Of course, the best campaigns out there never put all their eggs in one ad medium’s basket. They need diversity in order to get the attention of a wider array of potential customers.

The most popular ad channels B2B marketers are adding to their customer acquisition strategies within the next two years are:

Mobile (in-app): 24% of B2B marketers plan on implementing this channel
Affiliate Marketing: 24%
Virtual Events: 23%
Partner Programs: 22%
Digital Ads: 19%

Notice that not many of these formats align with the top customer acquisition channels listed earlier. That means either marketers are already using them or might be more comfortable with a different approach.

Either way, these differences give you two lists of potential customer acquisition ads to pitch to your client. How will you know which ones to choose? Head back to their target audience’s AudienceSCAN profile to see which ones work best among those consumers.

It’s high time your client took advantage of everything paid social media ads could be doing for their sales.

Photo by: Vitaly Gariev on Pexels.

Paid Social Media Ads Deliver Terrific Results for B2Bs