Driving Qualified Leads with Paid Social

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Paid social campaigns can be an effective way to reach your ideal target audience for B2B lead generation. However, it’s important to approach these campaigns systematically.

The B2B buying cycle is complex and involves a significant amount of research on the part of potential buyers. Unlike retail or e-commerce efforts, B2B products are often intangible services rather than physical goods.

Typically the B2B sales and lead generation process is longer and involves multiple stakeholders and departments. Building trust, providing relevant information, and reaching decision-makers at various stages of their journey are all critical components of this process.

Why Is Paid Social Important to Lead Generation?

B2B decision makers are estimated to consume 7-10 pieces of content during the buying cycle. As a result, looking at the long game of paid social, as opposed to immediate gratification is imperative. Prospects must be warmed and nurtured as they research products, goods, and services.

While the end goal may be the number of leads or even qualified leads, we must address all stages of the decision-making funnel. As a result, the tactical execution of paid social campaigns must focus on this two-fold approach:

1. Multi-messaging strategy on multiple platforms
2. Providing users with a native and frictionless experience for lead capture

Let’s explore this a bit more, shall we? 

1. Multi-Messaging Strategy: Think Outside the Feed

Using multiple social platforms differently can be paramount to your strategy – especially when reaching a highly qualified audience. 

Meta B2B Lead Generation

Meta, for example, has a large audience scale, can easily integrate various CRM systems, and enables the marketer to collect lead-gen information within the app. 

While building and running these campaigns is simple (run them on a lead objective and make sure you’re using lead ads in the lower half of the funnel), it’s not always sunshine and roses with Meta. Often, the lead quality is lackluster compared to a targeted business platform such as LinkedIn. We can improve the quality of our leads from Meta in three ways:

1. Require inputting an email address (specifically, a business email) instead of automatically using whatever email address they registered for Meta with.
2. Run heavy awareness campaigns (on a video view objective), followed by mid-funnel (traffic) campaigns, and then, ultimately, a conversion/lead gen campaign once the lead is warm and retargeted. 
3. Port over 3P (third-party) B2B audiences from Liveramp, Bombora, Dunn & Bradstreet, or a similar entity to look at relevant industries or surging companies.
   • Bonus tip: use your website analytics + search traffic to see where people are coming from to access your site and target those domains/companies as well.

LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation

LinkedIn lead generation is more straightforward and purposeful than Meta. Despite higher CPMs, we can target higher-intent audiences as we capture leads. LinkedIn also allows us to segment by location, industry, company, etc., and CRM data can be utilized to re-market to individuals or companies.

Bonus tip: segment using the Senior+ layer to target decision-makers or those who influence the decision-maker. 

We can then employ a multi-messaging strategy on LinkedIn, using a variety of ad formats: In-feed ads, text ads, and Conversation Ads. The approach here is simple:

1. Use in-feed ads to engage and educate.
2. Lean into text ads to lower CPMs and increase CTR (these ads have been able to lift sponsored content CTR by 14% on average). 
3. Run conversation ads to seal the deal and provide gated content (downloads/webinar access and registrations/whitepapers), which will help garner qualified leads. These highly effective ads are basically a cross between a chatbot script and InMail and can be paramount in targeting the right decision-maker. 

Both networks provide ample opportunity to reach consumers at different stages of their buyer journey, enable the marketer to disseminate different pieces of content (shorter form on Meta, longer form on LinkedIn), and increase the quality of leads for scoring and follow through by the internal sales team.

2. Keeping the Experience Frictionless

One of the most critical factors for success is generating leads as smoothly and effortlessly as possible. Think about it – you don’t want to turn off potential customers by making it too difficult for them to provide their information.

Keeping the lead-capturing experience within the app is essential to simplify things for everyone involved, so if possible, avoid adding extra steps by taking them to a landing page. We want to minimize annoying interruptions and keep things native to the platform. Taking users offsite might work for prospecting, but we need to act fast when it comes to getting those leads. Every second counts, and we can’t afford to lose anyone along the way.

We risk losing that opportunity altogether by introducing new variables like load times, different browsers, or being taken off-page. 

Simply put, if the objective is to gather their information, then we must take every opportunity possible to make this easy for them to submit and easy for our sales teams to follow up. 

Conclusion

B2B lead gen isn’t about immediate gratification. Effective B2B lead generation requires a patient and diligent approach that nurtures potential leads and gradually guides them toward larger business objectives. Utilizing a multi-messaging strategy and a seamless experience through paid social campaigns can help drive qualified leads with high intent.

If you’re interested in staying up-to-date with the latest performance marketing news and want to partner with experts in strategic paid social to strengthen your lead generation strategy, subscribe to our newsletter and reach out to Adlucent today. We would be thrilled to work with you!

Chris Apaliski

Chris Apaliski is the Senior Director / Head of Paid Social at Adlucent. His career spans over a decade. He has held roles in paid and organic social, product marketing, product management, and strategy for mid-market and enterprise clients (including Fortune 10 brands). He is also a former adjunct professor at The University of North Texas. In his spare time, Chris is an active musician and enjoys spending time with his family in Dallas, Texas.