Not Every Advertising Dollar is Created Equal
Digital advertising is critical to any B2B marketing strategy — but if you’re not using the right technology, you could be wasting the bulk of your advertising budget.
How much money do you spend on display advertising each quarter? Now, how much of that money is spent on the right people at the right accounts?
If you’re like most B2B companies, that number is a lot worse than you’d care to admit. Sometimes it feels likes traditional digital advertising is a black box. Your money goes in and results come out, but there’s no visibility into what’s happening on the backend. For all you know, your advertising budget could be getting sucked into black holes of bad data, poor targeting, bots, upcharges, and more.
Optimize Ads for Quality of Impressions, Not Quantity
The best way to get the most value out of your ad dollars is by focusing on quality over quantity. Instead of prioritizing the number of impressions and clicks you receive, focus on the quality of those impressions. How do you ensure that the highest percentage of the impressions you’re serving are actually seen by the people and companies you want to reach?
Traditional advertising alone simply won’t cut it.
Instead, you need to use account-based advertising to engage your target audience. But not all account-based advertising is created equal. Let’s break down where your ad dollar goes and how to get the most out of it with Terminus’ ABM platform.
1. Don’t pay a markup on media spend.
Take your advertising budget…and then add 15-30%. That’s what most agencies charge for their managed ad services — which seriously cuts down on the amount you have to spend on reaching your audience. And it’s not just agencies; other account-based advertising vendors charge a markup on ad placements, too.
Terminus never charges a premium on media spend. Instead of encouraging you to pour more money into your campaigns to reach more people, we’re dedicated to helping you reach the right people while maximizing your budget.
Vendors that charge a markup are incentivized to drive up the quantity of your ad impressions so they make more money. Terminus, however, is incentivized to improve quality. We want your ads to perform well regardless of the number of impressions you serve through the Terminus platform. Simple as that.
That’s why we’re so invested in making sure your ads are seen by the right people at the right companies with near-zero fraud rates and unmatched viewability. Which brings us to point number two…
2. Don’t pay to target the wrong accounts.
Do you know which companies are seeing your ads? More importantly, do you know which ones are clicking through? The reality is that no matter how precisely you define your audience, it’s impossible to tell unless you’re account-based.
With Terminus, you have complete visibility. Not only can you select the exact accounts you want to target, you can also swap those accounts in and out of campaigns at any time. Get visibility at any stage of a campaign by looking at how many impressions and clicks your ads have received from each account. This information is available right in the Terminus platform, so you have the power to verify that you’re reaching the right audience. No more black box.
Imagine being able to show your sales team exactly how many times people from each of their accounts clicked your ads over the past week. That’s powerful, and it’s something they can take action on today.
3. Don’t pay to target the wrong people.
It should go without saying that ABM isn’t only about reaching the right accounts. An account-based approach is only effective if you can build relationships with the individuals within those accounts who are actually making the buying decision.
To do ABM right, you’ll need to win over everyone at your target accounts who has a say in the purchase. But what if they’re not in your database? Even if they are, most executives won’t open an email from your marketing team, so you need to reach them some other way. That’s where digital advertising comes in. It allows you to reach all the decision-makers, both known and unknown.
With Terminus, you can narrow your audience down to the exact personas, departments, and seniority levels you want to reach. You want to get in front of all the C-level marketers at SAP? No problem. Want to reach the entire finance team at Apple? We’ve got you.
4. Don’t pay for fraudulent ad impressions.
Ad fraud is so rampant that many marketers have accepted it as a given. A shocking 35% of programmatic ad impressions served on desktop were fraudulent in Q1 of last year, Pixalate reported. You read that right; over a third of your advertising dollars are being spent on bots and phony impressions.
To combat this concern, Terminus uses a six-step process that ensures only the best, cleanest, human traffic sees and clicks on your ads. Using both automation and human validation from our advertising operations team, we ensure your ads are seen by real people and meet our high viewability standards.
With a viewability rate 43% higher than the industry average and a fraud rate of less than 2%, Terminus makes sure your ad dollars go further and have a bigger impact.
Need a quick primer on viewability? This typically means 50% of an ad is in view for at least one second. If an ad is placed below the fold and the user never scrolls far enough to see it, you as an advertiser are paying for an impression that no one sees.
5. Don’t pay for low-quality ad placements.
No matter how compelling your ad copy is, it’s not going to get the right kind of attention if it’s plastered alongside controversial content and ads for “one weird trick the car insurance industry doesn’t want you to know!”
Too often, marketers fail to take brand safety into consideration when running ad campaigns. Could you be spending money to place your ads on, shall we say…unsavory websites?
Terminus maintains whitelists and blacklists to make sure your ads are placed on high-quality websites. You can also create your own whitelists and blacklists based on your team’s brand safety standards.
Get More Bang for Your Buck with Terminus Account-Based Advertising
The bottom line is that if you’re not using Terminus, you’ll need to spend 2-5X more to achieve similar results. With account-based advertising and Terminus in particular, you can feel confident that your budget is being used to reach the right people at the right accounts.
Ready to learn more about the Terminus ABM platform and how account-based advertising works? Schedule time to talk with our team.
