As B2B marketers, we’re used to treating our buyers as some homogeneous buying committee, which means most of our personalization relies on surveying content based on personas or industries.
While targeting all members of the buying committee simultaneously and treating accounts as a whole is important, committees are still made up of individuals with unique needs — they research at their own pace and expect varying levels of ad personalization.
So, is it possible to create an ad experience that remains relevant to each committee member throughout their individual buyer’s journeys? And can that process be automated? Let’s delve deeper into these questions.
How To Create A Personalized Journey With Ads
Ads can be a powerful tool to take the prospects out of the dark. However, for advertisements to help you build trust and plant the right ideas at the right time, you need to leverage more data than just industries and personas: Instead, focus on the specific stages a prospect might be on.
Our customer relationship management (CRM) platforms already provide the necessary triggers, such as account status, pipeline stage, account ownership changes, detected outreach, booked demo and more. These are reliable indicators that a prospect’s journey stage has changed, so the content of the ads shown to them must also change.
It’s also crucial to consider prospects’ engagement with ads. Clicks and impressions show just how much information the prospects have already consumed and whether it resonated. If a person clicks on the same ad repeatedly and sees another ad non-stop, it’s a signal to move them to the next set of creatives with more advanced content.
With all this data, you can tailor ads to match the speed of your prospects’ journey. Start with setting up the problem through broad value propositions and thought leadership content. Then, based on buyers’ behavior, move them to more personalized ads that address their specific pain points.
How To Create Ad Content For Different Stages Of The Buyer’s Journey
You can align with sales on the key stages of the sales process and divide the journey into the three distinct units: Pipeline generation, deal closure and post-sales expansion.
Pipeline Generation
At this stage, ads are great for warming up your audience, building awareness and initiating conversations with prospects. Using ads as another sales communication channel also helps teams multithread more effectively.
For pipeline generation, focus your ads on basic value propositions, educational content and social proof. The goal is to inform your target audience about your product. This is also a good time to experiment with different types of ads, including regular and fun content that engages people on an emotional level, to see what resonates best.
You can also run a campaign introducing a sales rep who will be reaching out to prospects via email to help establish personal connections even before any outreach takes place.
Additionally, consider a demo show-up campaign. Prospects often forget or miss scheduled demos, so ads can serve as reminders between booking and the actual demo. Run ads featuring the account executive’s face along with useful product information to keep prospects engaged and remind them of the upcoming meeting.
Deal Closure
Ads at this stage help you stay top-of-mind throughout a lengthy sales cycle. After the initial call, use ads to remind prospects about your offer and address potential deal blockers. It can also be an additional channel to re-engage people who have stopped responding to email outreach.
For accelerating deal closure, advertise specific use cases, case studies from similar industries and content addressing specific concerns or objections. For instance, if a prospect expressed concerns about security during their demo, run ads featuring your certifications and privacy-specific endorsements from customers.
To revive a stalled opportunity, feature personalized resources relevant to their past inquiries. You can also try to show them the value prop that made them convert in the first place.
Additionally, educational content is valuable not only for pipeline generation but also for deal closure. At this stage, it helps build credibility and supports your main messages.
Post-Sale Expansion
With 40% of total revenue growth in 2023 attributed to existing customers, it’s more crucial than ever to focus marketing efforts on post-sale activities. Advertising can help uncover additional revenue opportunities after the initial deal is won by educating your existing customers about new and additional offers.
You can use ads as part of an adoption campaign to decrease churn or provide your new customers with necessary tutorials and best-use case studies .
When you have new features or add-on announcements, introduce them to customers with ads as an additional channel. Their clicks and interactions will give you an idea about their intent so that your customer success team can choose the best time to reach out and engage further.
In Conclusion
Imagine seamlessly guiding prospects with relevant ads throughout their entire journey. You can start with broad value propositions, then tailor content as they click on ads, book demos, respond to your emails and more. This personalized approach ensures that prospects receive ads that meet their specific needs, increasing engagement and shortening the sales cycle.
Anna Tsymbalist is the Head of ABM at Influ2, a person-based advertising platform. Tsymbalist’s expertise has fueled 123% annual revenue growth at Influ2 and contributed to a $52.5M Series B fundraising round at Shelf, alongside a year of 4X ARR growth. She is passionate about data-driven ABM campaigns that convert top-tier accounts.
