Tag: Agnes Media

You might think that marketing is the same whether you’re targeting consumers or other businesses, however, it’s important to approach B2B marketing with a tailored approach. Businesses and organizations have different motivators for end-user consumers and often require a unique strategy around messaging, positioning, and creative.

Target audiences in the B2B space are making major purchases and partnership decisions on behalf of their organization. The money they spend isn’t their own, so they are often more price-sensitive while seeking a product or service that they can trust. Time and efficiency are important to them, and so the path to purchase should be as frictionless as possible.

Here are the top 3 things we recommend when shaping your B2B digital marketing strategy.

Always testing

Testing is vital for identifying niche target audiences. While you may choose to test what you already assume, it can also help to uncover new opportunities and learnings. Channels, messaging and targeting can all be investigated to optimize campaign performance. There should also always be some element of testing going on, whatever you do. It can be tempting to test early and run with it. However, macro factors, whether they be political, cultural, or technological changes, can influence purchase behaviors and so we recommend an ‘always on’ testing approach.

Clear frameworks to test and learn, in order to identify what is being tested, is highly important. As an agency, Agnes Media builds rigorous testing frameworks to ensure insights are robust and reliable.

The B2B digital media landscape can be competitive and expensive to play in. When each purchase is major, leads become more valuable. Testing helps to mitigate costs by providing constant feedback and creating a more targeted approach. Opportunities can be identified so that media spend is more finely tuned.

Ensure your brand is always testing whether it’s a new channel, tactic, style of messaging, or creative format to ensure you are always maximizing efficiencies from your budgets while identifying what resonates with your audiences. This will then improve ROI, provide valuable insights for the wider business that can be applied elsewhere while driving business growth and market share.

Know where to be

Content is key to ensuring your brand is front and center during the discovery phase of your prospects. B2B customers are usually very busy decision-makers, so it is important you’re providing quality content and engaging them by using the right channels. Regardless of the industry, trade publications can play an important role in reaching your core audiences. These sites are often connected to engaged social media profiles and mailing lists, meaning your message has a greater chance of being seen and remembered.

Customized content can be developed that aligns your brand to the needs of your audience. There are a variety of content syndication partners we recommend who put your branded content in front of a highly targeted audience and generate relevant leads in the process

Link in the sales team

For most B2B performance campaigns, the data ends once a lead is generated and the sale continues offline. It’s common for this lead to then be owned by a person in the sales team. To get the most out of your campaign, it’s vital that a process is established for getting sales team feedback, so that manual optimizations can be made. 100 leads that are wrong are less valuable than one high quality lead that is spot on.

It is further worth noting that due to the value of one lead, media budgets need to align with this. If a lead is worth $10k to a brand then that business should invest more than $10k to seek multiple leads and the CPL (cost per lead) will decrease over time.

The best way for connecting lead generation feedback to sales is to utilize a scorecard and to manually update it. For example, downloading a whitepaper might be automatically worth +10, but having a phone call with someone who has registered their details and finding out they are the decision maker in their business should be scored even higher. When the sales team are encouraged to share feedback on leads generated through digital channels it ultimately benefits them as their leads will only get stronger and stronger, as the marketing channels are optimized to drive the greatest outcome.

Marketing to business customers requires a unique approach. It’s tempting to apply a comfortable B2C strategy to your business campaign, however, this is expensive and inefficient. From capturing their attention to generating and nurturing the lead, B2B campaigns need to consider the attitudes and behaviors of both key decision makers and influencers and how these differ from a B2C prospect.

This article was written by Charlotte Ward, director of Agnes Media.
Agnes Media is a measurement-first marketing agency that drives profitable business outcomes through effective and data-based marketing efforts️.

In the age of always-on e-commerce and notoriously short attention spans, it can be tempting to downplay your branding in favor of acquisition-focused digital advertising. Branding, however, is an important aspect of all marketing campaigns, regardless of the objective.

Think of branding as your foundation. Taking the time to build a strong brand, investing time and money into your brand strategy, will ultimately result in more successful performance over time. While sales activations and offer-led initiatives will provide short-term sales uplift, brand building will result in long-term growth and stability.

Your brand represents the reason your business exists – your ‘why’, what you do, and why you’re different. It is about everything that makes you a better choice than your competitors and when done well, can portray all of that in a shade of Cadbury purple or a Nike ‘swoosh’.

While there are many arguments for developing a strong branding strategy, here are the top four reasons why branding is such an important element in reaching your performance objectives:

Brings new customers

Strategic brand awareness campaigns introduce your business to new potential customers. It’s often said that an audience needs to see your brand at least 7 times before they will consider purchasing. This number is reduced if you have a strong, unique brand positioning. If your brand is memorable, you won’t necessarily need as many impressions to be effective.

When you have both a strong brand identity and are consistently marketing, you will improve your reach and consideration. Brand awareness helps to bond new customers to your brand.

Builds trust

Customers are more likely to purchase from brands that they know and trust. A strong brand identity helps to build a connection with your target audience as they will recognize, know, and understand your product and point of differentiation via brand messaging.

A trusted brand also leads to brand loyalty and repeat purchases. Customers will rebook or rebuy your product with little to no forethought. These sales are far easier and more cost-effective to achieve than first-time sales. If they like your product and your brand, customers are also more likely to recommend you to their family and friends, exponentially improving your ROI.

Establishes target audience

Starting with a clear brand identity will help to position your offering and to target the customers you want to attract. Brand strategy will help to develop a deep understanding of your ideal customer’s demographics, attitudes, and behaviors, helping to tailor your products and messaging. It is expensive to market to everyone, and so having a strong understanding of who your brand is ‘for’ will help to specify your campaign targeting, therefore reducing advertising waste and making your dollar work harder.

Builds resilience

Research has shown that brands with high brand equity are more likely to be insulated in times of economic uncertainty, with a faster recovery when the market returns. A strong, clear positioning, along with loyal customers and consistent messaging helps a business to weather bad times while preparing them to accelerate during the good times.

Working on your brand identity and awareness cements your spot in your customer’s mind and will help to protect your business and ensure it can bounce back more quickly in times of turbulence.

Brand awareness is a core indicator of marketing success. It is your base and marketing ‘foundation’, upon which actionable sales promotions should sit. Every piece of communication should look, feel and sound like your brand, reinforcing who you are and why you are the best choice.

An effective brand strategy will increase your overall return on investment. While it can be more difficult to measure brand awareness compared to lead generation or revenue targets, campaigns that allow for both are more likely to have improved performance outcomes and ultimately reach their objectives.

Brand awareness is a slower path than the sugar-hit of a sales-focused goal, however, it is vital for long-term stability. A strong brand foundation will improve the results of your promotional and lead-focused activity, across all channels.

This article was written by Charlotte Ward, director of Agnes Media.
Agnes Media is a measurement-first marketing agency that regularly recommends their clients incorporate a combination of both brand and performance activity to maximize efficiencies using a holistic approach.

Sydney, Australia – Zolo, the profit-for-purpose tech-cycling company in Australia, has appointed measurement-first media agency Agnes Media, to be its media partner.

Zolo is a tech-cycling services provider that supports businesses to properly manage their technology waste. It collects corporate e-waste including laptops, tablets, mobile phones, PCs, cables, and servers. After refurbishment, it donates a portion of the technology to support the education of children around the world.

The partnership will see Agnes Media managing Zolo’s performance media and digital marketing across business-to-business channels, to drive greater brand awareness and engagement with mid to enterprise-level organizations.

Zolo’s Founder Franz Sisat said, “We appointed Agnes Media because of the agency’s experience in working with startups and their ability to scale in order to drive media efficiencies and business growth. We look forward to working closely with Charlotte and the team to tell the Zolo story to new audiences.”  

Meanwhile, Charlotte Ward, the founder and CEO of Agnes Media, shared that Zolo is an innovative startup that addresses the increasing issue of e-waste facing corporate Australia.

“We’re delighted to have been appointed by them to scale their business and drive awareness amongst key decision-makers using performance media channels. I can’t wait to see what 2021 brings for the Zolo brand,” said Ward.

In April this year, Agnes Media made its official launch in Australia, with global payment and shopping service Klarna as a foundation client. The agency specializes in working with clients that have aggressive growth and measurement goals, helping them optimize their digital marketing campaigns and improve return on investment and advertising spend. 

In addition to performance media strategy, planning, and buying, Agnes Media also provides campaign management, analytics, and SEO, as well as creative design services.

Sydney, Australia – Agnes Media, the measurement-first media agency, has recently launched in Australia, with global payment and shopping service Klarna as a foundation client. The new agency is founded by Charlotte Ward, former marketing consultant at marketing analytics company Insighten.

Agnes Media specializes in working with clients that have aggressive growth and measurement goals, helping them optimize their digital marketing campaigns and improve return on investment and advertising spend. The new media agency offers performance media strategy, planning, buying, and campaign management, as well as analytics, SEO, and creative design services.

Fintech giant Klarna has been working closely with Agnes Media on performance media management since 2020, with a specific focus on co-branded retail activity and shopper insights. Besides Klarna, the new media agency is also working with various brands both locally and globally.

Its founder Ward has previously worked in media across Australia, Europe, Middle East, and Asia. She previously held roles at advertising platform Amobee, airline company Qantas, and media agency DWA Sydney, as well as marketing company OMD, among others. Ward decided to launch Agnes Media after a period of freelancing and building her own client base.

Commenting on the newly launched media agency, Ward said that having consulted across a number of businesses, it was clear to her that there was a real opportunity to zero in on performance media and maximize digital media campaigns’ effectiveness. 

Ward further shared that her goal is to help clients realize their digital marketing objectives, and she said the agency is a fully transparent one where clients own their data. Where Agnes Media comes in is providing them real-time reporting dashboards that pull in platform data from a range of sources for reports that align campaign performance and actionable insights that can be shared across the business.

“We’re delighted to have been working with Klarna to provide performance media and analytics. They’re such a dynamic brand; and being able to create truly flexible, scalable, easily-optimizable campaigns has been a massive benefit to their business. The best part, we’ve been able to provide our clients with meaningful, actionable insights that they’re now using to iterate and define future campaigns,” added Ward.