The end of a quarter or year can feel like balancing on a tightrope for B2B marketers. On one hand, there’s an excitement to tap into the seasonal potential and an urgency to meet goals, while the practical need to keep marketing and demand generation budgets in check exists on the other. However, with media costs on the rise and share of voice shrinking – especially during highly competitive times – B2B marketers are being asked to make the most out of every dollar.

But for B2B brands who serve niche audiences, targeting and reaching the right prospects in an impactful yet cost-effective manner can be a challenge.

B2B marketers looking to reach their best prospects and accounts – especially those in unique markets – need custom data-driven targeting strategies to improve their targeting and maximize the ROI of their 2024 marketing and advertising budgets.

Harnessing the Power of Custom Audiences in B2B Marketing

In the increasingly competitive and expensive B2B marketing landscape, B2B marketers must adopt a strategic approach rather than a broad method or conservative approach. The use of custom audiences, enriched insights and predictive data can be instrumental in understanding niche audiences of both business accounts and decision-makers.

The application of custom audiences – underpinned by robust and reliable data – can significantly enhance marketing effectiveness across a wide range of B2B industries. Sectors with expansive and unique target markets alike can benefit from custom audience segmentation and predictive modeling to refine their targeting strategies.

For instance, a B2B technology firm may not need to broadly market its latest software solution that serves a specific purpose. Instead, it might consider targeting only relevant prospects by developing a custom audience that integrates factors like industry-specific needs, technology adoption rates and decision-making hierarchies within organizations. Imagine the potential uplift in engagement and conversion rates if they could precisely target organizations that are actively seeking new tech solutions, have a history of early adoption and whose decision-makers are known for valuing innovative features.

Even in sectors like B2B healthcare, where the focus is not on direct consumer engagement, custom audiences can play a pivotal role. Healthcare brands such as pharmaceutical companies can utilize custom audience data to understand specific characteristics of healthcare providers such as their preferred channels of communication and the unique challenges they face with patient engagement. This targeted approach ensures that their marketing efforts are not only seen but resonate deeply with the healthcare providers’ specific needs and preferences.

Cutting Through The Noise: An Agency’s Custom Audience Success

For B2B marketers, the strategic use of custom audiences and data-driven insights is not just a tactic, but a necessity to cut through the noise. Custom audience targeting holds particular significance for industries characterized by highly specialized, unique, or otherwise hard-to-reach audiences. Consider the case of Lessing-Flynn, the longest-standing independently owned advertising agency in the U.S., which faced the task of pinpointing key decision-makers in the B2B animal nutrition sector. In such a niche market, a common strategy might involve casting a wide net to capture any potential prospects or relying solely on traditional trade media. However, Lessing-Flynn adopted a more nuanced, data-driven and custom approach.

Their strategy involved identifying potential professional roles within the target market by utilizing both NAICS and SIC codes for precision. They further refined their targeting by concentrating on specializations within specific animal species to create a custom audience made up specifically of their ideal prospects and likely customers.

The results of going custom were clear. Media content targeted to these defined custom audiences outperformed other audience targets significantly – achieving 2.3 times better performance.

By enabling marketers to reach specific groups with high precision, custom audience targeting not only enhances campaign performance but also provides a robust foundation for planning future campaigns and efficiently allocating marketing resources, regardless of the specificity of the target audience.

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Capitalizing on Custom Insights

Robust revenue at the end of a quarter or fiscal year is often crucial for B2B organizations across industries looking to meet annual financial goals. This makes ‘sitting out’ periods of peak advertising costs impractical. Instead, B2B marketers should consider developing and utilizing custom audiences to employ various tactics that enhance the customer experience, improve targeting precision and ultimately improve results. By creating custom audiences through the integration of first-party data with high-quality external data from reputable sources, B2B marketers have the opportunity to:

1. Optimize Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Strategies: By identifying and creating custom audiences that represent specific slices of key industries or potential high-value accounts, B2B marketers can develop highly targeted marketing campaigns. These campaigns can include personalized emails, customized landing pages and targeted content, all designed to resonate with the specific needs, culture and business objectives of each account.
2. Personalize Messaging with B2B2C Insights: The potential customers B2B marketers hope to acquire and serve are unique individuals who are more than their job title and company industry. Crafting custom audiences that consider the personal characteristics of individual prospects – such as their content preference, marketing channel activity and personal decision drivers – gives B2B marketers the ability to personalize all aspects of their campaign including the content type, channel activation and messaging or offer.
3. Reach Decision-Makers in a Hybrid World: The shift to remote work has significantly changed the landscape for B2B marketers, particularly in reaching prospects who are working from home. Custom audiences can be a powerful tool that enables marketers to identify and understand hybrid prospects, allowing them to adapt and refine their strategies regardless of where their prospects are working.

The Importance of Custom B2B Audience Targeting

As we enter a new year full of intensifying competition and escalating advertising costs, B2B marketers must leverage comprehensive and tailored audience data. Whether addressing a wide market or a specific niche segment, B2B marketers should reassess their data strategies and consider the advantage that custom audience targeting can offer. The actionable insight offered by custom audiences empowers B2B marketers to optimize their targeting, personalize their messaging and maximize their marketing effectiveness and ROI year-round.

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