Humanizing your B2B targeting strategy

B2B strategies can easily overlook the basics of their audiences' personal lives when trying to reach and engage with their concentrated professional audience

It's critical to remember that business professionals have down time, too - whether they're looking up dinner recipes over their lunch hour or scrolling Twitter in those few minutes between meetings. Here are some humanizing tactics your B2B strategy may be missing:

Consider the best social platform for your business goals

LinkedIn remains a premium channel in the B2B space, but its inventory and audiences come with premium costs. Your marketing dollars will go further with a blend of other social channels, like Twitter and Facebook or Instagram, whose average cost-per metrics are significantly lower. For this reason, clearly defining how media can support your overall business goals should be a mandatory exercise before you begin media planning. LinkedIn will likely be the best choice if you’re needing ASAP lead generation; for a longer term, full-funnel strategy it’s important to remember that business professionals are still online when they’re not working. Catching them on their personal social media feeds is another opportunity to form a connection.

How do you do it?

1. First - define your goal: ask yourself - how much is a new lead worth to me? What would be more valuable to our business, a short-term boost in site engagement or a longer push toward more customers? From there, we can evaluate where dollars would best be spent, as each social channel has its own strengths and weaknesses.

2. Also ask - which social platforms does my audience use the most? If you don’t know, Coegi can help.

3. Create content and messaging your audience would still find interesting in their down time: you’re not speaking to a room of engaged conference attendees in business wear, you’re trying to recapture the attention of a knowledgeable professional who’s turned their brain off for the day.

Craft contextual targeting with a sponsored content feel

Utilizing high-quality audience data is recommended for any B2B strategy, but contextual targeting often gets lost in the conversation. Pairing your messaging with relevant content can broaden your potential reach, capturing those industry professionals who weren't included in your dataset. As the reality of the cookieless future sets in, this approach will be increasingly important for any awareness efforts, as the volume of audience data is expected to decrease even among high-quality, deterministic data providers.

To up the ante, pair your contextual targeting with a dynamic creative strategy to ensure your ads are customized to the type of content your audience is reading. When done well, this can make content look and feel like a sponsored post while maintaining efficient programmatic costs.

How do you do it?

1. Break down any barriers between media and creative to ensure everyone is on the same page when pairing messaging and the chosen contextual categories or site lists

2. Work with a dynamic creative solution like Coegi's ORO to minimize the need to produce hundreds of ads

Savannah Westbrock is an account strategy director at Coegi, an all-in-one premium marketing partner for media professionals seeking a streamlined way to leverage programmatic and social solutions. Coegi enables marketers to become digital heroes among co-workers and clients by empowering them with best-in-class strategies, technologies and expertise through simplified partnerships.