Startups need to be smart with spending. The B2B space is competitive and it’s key to use your funding in areas that will really benefit your solution. Therefore, it can be difficult to know whether spending on an ad agency is a good choice. Naturally, the development of your solution takes priority.
However, you still need to put your product on the market in order to continue growth. Without sales, funding streams dry up and your business cannot move forward. Ads are a key lead generation tool.
Advertising doesn’t need to be expensive, when done right. Well planned and optimized ad campaigns provide increased conversions, and positive ROI as a result.
Hire a modern, digital forward agency to handle your advertising. This will ensure that your advertising efforts resonate in today’s multimedia landscape.
Why do you Need Ads?
Imagine that you’ve already allocated budget for an exciting content and inbound marketing campaign. You might be wondering about the point of ad campaigns.
As important as inbound marketing is, it can take time to see results. Your content can be well optimized, but SEO doesn’t work immediately. You are targeting a niche group. Those buyers will search for their keywords over time, not instantly. You might even need to make changes to keywords and optimization as you learn about your performance.
Ads can supplement this gap. Ad analytics are available almost instantly. Whilst you wait for the results of your inbound campaigns, your ads can guide your messaging in the right direction.
Ads are published straight away, and can reach your buyers as soon as they go live. Use this as an opportunity to test your buyers’ persona, and wider content message.
Ads also provide consistent and timely targeting. Ideally, your target buyers will see more than one of your ads as they browse the internet. You can change ads to suit current events, and reap the benefits straight away.
However, bad ad strategies can significantly waste budget. The best campaigns push content, not demos and meetings. An ad agency can help to plan and guide your ads, for the most efficient and cost-effective ads result.
Avoid Wasting Resources
Poor performing ads waste money. This is one of the major reasons that startups steer clear of ad spend. Tech startups cannot afford to waste the budget.
Therefore, it is key to note that you need good quality content for effective ads. They are unlikely to provide good lead generation without the offer of content.
You will require a content team, or a marketing team, in order to generate ad content. An effective team requires a plethora of roles. These might include copywriters, graphic designers, web designers, video creators, keyword specialists and more.
Consider whether you have these teams in-house. If not, can you afford to hire an entire marketing or content creation team? Hiring and training employees is time-consuming and costly. Retaining them can be even more so. However, maintaining an entire content team is a requirement if you want to manage your ads in-house.
The resources consumed by hiring and implementing a marketing team might be better spent on a qualified ad agency. Often, agencies offer a combination of marketing, content and ad creation.
By enlisting an agency, you can avoid the high cost of conversions from poorly designed ads. You can also focus on spending your budget on your development, rather than hiring efforts.
Ad Agencies have Market Experience
Think about how well you know the ads market, ad platforms and content marketing. The majority of businesses run either Facebook Ads, Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads. They might even run a combination of all available platforms.
As the founder of a startup, you might not have had any experience with the former. Ad agencies have extensive experience in both the advertising market, and your market.
Consider hiring an ad agency that resides in your space. They are more likely to have had experience marketing to your buyers, and be familiar with your competitors. They might even have worked for competitors. This means that they know exactly how to position your company, in comparison.
Ad agencies focus exclusively on advertising. This means that they have the expertise to learn about your specific buyers, and your market. They can build full personas, and get to grips with the pain points that they suffer. It also means that they know the right distribution channels in order to reach your buyers with your message.
Creating effective positioning and messaging is the key to high performance in ad campaigns. A qualified ad agency is far more likely to achieve results.
Time Expense
When you don’t have experience in advertising, ad campaigns can be time-consuming. It’s not as simple as setting up a Facebook Ads account.
Startups are less likely to have excess time available to spend on generating effective ads. As you hit a growth period, the priority is the development of your solution.
Consider whether you or your staff have the time to take on a new skillset. You will need to learn how to build campaigns, how to use Facebook Ads and Google Ads, and more.
Not only that, but startup advertising requires a different approach. Startups need to implement a “test and learn” approach to advertising and marketing as they grow. This means that buyers personas, market research, and messaging all need to be tested before a full-scale campaign.
Analytics are used to measure the success of smaller-scale campaigns, and make amendments to content and messaging. Without testing, huge amounts of budget can be spent on ineffective ads with irrelevant messages.
It’s important to decide whether the combination of time expenditure and monetary cost is achievable. An ad agency can focus solely on achieving high-conversion campaigns. This provides customers, while your startup continues to innovate.
At Nituno, we create content, marketing campaigns and ad campaigns to drive sales. We have experience as marketers and advertisers in the B2B tech space. Get in touch for help with your lead generation today.
