Digital Savvy

Friday, February 25, 2011

Best Practice for B2B Online Advertising


There are some best practices regarding online response advertising. Here is an ad and process we did not design, but responded to, and found a best practice that deserves attention and praise.

Response advertising is offer based - in this case the more traditional offer of a whitepaper - and is targeted as reflected in the media buy, usually vertical, rarely general. It is a process supporting the offer consisting of the ad, landing page, thank you, and the email for download.

The ad is clear as to offer, the title being a benefit. The way to obtain the offer jumps out as well as the social media options. The branding makes gigya obvious, but not the focus of the ad. It does a lot of work in a small space and is very well designed.

So, you click.

And then there is the landing page which if poorly designed will result in you losing up to half of those interested enough to click in the first place-maybe more. The main job of the landing page is to merchandise the offer stressing what it is (photo required), what the benefits of the whitepaper are, and "what businesses need to know." The information requested is reasonable and, most importantly, name and company were pre-populated. This was an ad on the Paidcontent site where I have to register. The registration system is tied to response, allowing pre-populating forms. What a concept! Other information on the page was helpful but does not conflict with the focus - the offer and why it is important to you.



It's not over, however. There is the thank you.


In addition to the notice that you will be receiving an email with a link, the next steps (on the right in blue) include the invitation to call, schedule a demo, contact us by email, request a whitepaper, get a developer key. And there is more, the email with a link.

Personalized, first name, starts with a thank you, repeats the offer, and from a sales person with their phone number.

Lead generation is a process and when it starts with a response ad, gigya demonstrates how to use best practices established years ago and supported by high response and conversion rates.

I expect to get a call from Natasha next.

1 comment:

Libby Dodd said...

Ruthie, this was a great post. It gives me some terrific guidance for marketing my own little niche business. Thank you for reminding me that classic direct response principles still apply in today's social media world.

I'm not yet ready to buy banner ad space to start the process. I'm wondering if I can begin instead with targeted email and a link to a landing page. Any comments?

Libby