The next time Gartner updates their B2B buying journey illustrative, they might consider adding a concierge service for marketers. With 36 arrows pointing every which direction, the graphic makes it clear that, try as you may, you just never know what those B2B buyers will do next.
While it pays for marketers to be meticulous, trying to account for every possible scenario below is a sure way to overtax our teams and lose sight of the events and triggers that truly matter.
A big reason why half of marketers plan to increase their retargeting budgets is because the tactic essentially allows B2B marketers to influence key prospects throughout the most consequential stages of their journeys – even if none of those journeys match one another exactly. Further adding to retargeting’s effectiveness is the fact that retargeted ads can be customized based on a variety of parameters, such as demographics or behavior.
Generally speaking, only about 2% of traffic converts after an initial website visit. Compare that to the retargeted web visitors who are three times more likely to click on your ad, and 70% more likely to convert, it’s clear why retargeting has become a fixture in B2B marketing strategies.
With retargeting on LinkedIn, marketers gain the extra advantage of having continued access to an active network of professionals with 2x the buying power of an average web audience – 80% of which drive business decisions.
If you’ve been looking to take fuller advantage of LinkedIn’s retargeting capabilities, let the following examples inspire your approach.
TOPdesk Implements a Full-Funnel Strategy on LinkedIn
To stay connected with key professionals at every step of their journey, TOPdesk employs a mix of website, video, and Lead Gen Forms in it’s retargeting approach. This variety of tactics makes it easier to create a multi-stage strategy that starts at awareness and continues through to conversion.
“The new remarketing capabilities for Lead Gen Forms and Video enable us to complete the full-funnel strategy we’ve been implementing on LinkedIn,” explains TOPdesk’s Marit van der Louw. “Since using the new remarketing capabilities for Lead Gen Forms and videos our conversion rate has gone up by 20%, while our cost per conversion went down by 24%.”
Jabra Bolsters Their ABM Strategy with Lead Gen Forms
When the marketing team at Jabra tested Lead Gen Form retargeting against their normal tactics, they found the CTR to be 2-3 times higher. According to Senior Marketing Manager Morten Jensen though, the influx of clicks isn’t the only improvement.
“Although still early in the process, we find that leads generated from retargeting have a higher qualification rate from MQL to SQL,” he observes.
By layering Lead Gen Form openers into the existing ABM strategy, the team at Jabra has been able to encourage prospective buyers at targeted global accounts to explore and consider the company’s elite line of enterprise headphones.
Retargeting by Video and Lead Gen Forms Leads to 4.5x Better ROI
A leading technology brand already had strong evergreen campaigns, but they wanted to test new ways to deliver even higher-quality leads to their sales team. Working with the constraints of a buyer research phase that takes up to a year to complete, the challenge was to stay connected to the larger buying committee throughout this pivotal part of the buying journey.
Using a combination of video ads, retargeting, and Matched Audiences, the tech brand ran a series of campaigns designed to tell their story throughout the research process. Compared to existing campaigns, the audience-matched retargeting campaign more than quadrupled the return.
Tech Brand with Diverse Audiences Sees 6x Increase in Pipeline Per Lead Average
A global tech brand wanted to get better at nurturing prospective buyers from the onset of exploration all the way to purchase. With a diverse set of audiences, it was important for this brand to be uber-efficient about consistently delivering relevant content based on someone’s present stage in their buying process.
As part of its lead generation strategy, the tech company ran a retargeting campaign customized based on previous engagement with their ads. To know whether they were delivering timely insights and attracting the right crowd, the company worked with LinkedIn to analyze the average pipeline generated per lead, which turned out to be 6x stronger than other key paid marketing channels.
ABM Plus Progressive Retargeting Leads to Higher Video Engagement
Wanting to grow top-of-mind awareness among high growth companies in six key markets, a global service brand searched for a way to reach key decision makers with fresh, progressively enlightening messages throughout the 6-12 month buying process. The other caveat was that this all had to be done without the need to constantly recreate content.
To meet both of these objectives, the team started with video ads and then ran retargeting campaigns based on engagement of prior campaigns. This approach served different messages to audience members based on how engaged they were with previous videos, resulting in video completion rates that outperformed previous benchmarks.
Travel Brand Drives Qualified Website Traffic
With a global campaign launching, a travel brand turned to LinkedIn to transform the upcoming awareness into engagement. The wrinkle was finding a way to engage people who were mostly unfamiliar with their brand, some discovering it for the first time.
The team started small, using a short video ad to capture attention. From there, they created a retargeting audience which included those who watched 25% or more of their ad. Finally, they served this audience a single image ad encouraging them to learn more. To tell whether these efforts were truly increasing online engagement and to better gauge ROI, the team appended UTM parameters to the URLs included in their Sponsored Content ads.
Digital Finance Platform Reaches Majority of Targeting Audience with Lower CPL
Generating a high volume of leads but struggling with quality, a digital finance platform worked with the LinkedIn account team to carve out an ABM approach designed to increase not just lead quality, but also alignment with sales.
To this end, the company began by creating separate lead gen campaigns, each designed to regionally target top banks sourced by the sales team. The targeting approach, combined with video ads and Lead Gen Form opens, allowed the company to reach more than 60% of the director and above levels they aimed to reach, all while reducing the cost per lead by 72%.
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