How do you test ad channels for B2B?

As companies grow, they want to test new ad channels. This guide is for you want to figure out the best way to test ad channels for your B2B business.

What you need to know about testing new B2B ad channels

Product-Channel Fit is hard!

The first thing to note is that finding product-channel fit is hard!

Many B2B companies spending millions a month on Facebook can’t make LinkedIn work, and companies spending $500k a month on LinkedIn can’t make AdWords work.

This doesn’t mean they have a bad product. It means their product or onboarding flow doesn’t fit what works on that particular channel.

No ad channel is guaranteed to generate ROI at scale, and testing a new ad channel is just that, a test. 

Selecting New Ad Channels for B2B

First, select your ad channels. Check out our guide to ad channels here, first.

Taken a look? Great!

In B2B, there’s three digital channels that we find work at scale:

Facebook - Facebook works when you have a broad target audience of at least 200,000 decision makers. The best use case is B2SMB companies, where Facebook is especially scalable. The 2nd best use case is bottoms-up B2B, where anyone can try your product. Lastly is traditional B2B targeting large companies - it can work but its harder. The bigger the company you’re going after, the more important content ads become, as opposed to direct to lead or demo ads. 

See our full guide to testing Facebook for B2B ads here.

Google - Google works best for B2B companies in a market where customers have intent already and are searching for a product like yours. Google is the most competitive ad channel. It’s often hard for challenger companies to get a good ROI in a well established business niche. The more value you can capture per click, the more likely you are to do well on search. In addition, the better your business holds up against direct comparison to your competitors, the better you’ll do.

See our full guide to testing Google for B2B ads here.

LinkedIn - LinkedIn is best for targeting employees of larger B2B companies with specific attributes. Content ads work best most of the time, as opposed to direct to demo ads. It is generally not good for B2SMB - small business owners don’t use the platform much, comparably.

See our full guide to testing LinkedIn Ads here.

Other Channels - This can be Youtube, TikTok, Quora, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, etc. We’ve tested these extensively and they generally don’t work for direct response B2B advertising. We don’t recommend testing them unless you’ve exhausted the main three ad options.

How should you test new ad channels?

There’s a lot of work that goes into testing a new channel. You should confirm that you:

1. Have a landing page suitable to the new channel

2. Have a distinct target market for the new channel

3. Have all your tracking in place, both on platform and in your backend. 

$10,000 is the minimum spend you should put into a new ad channel in month 1. Your goal in month 1 should be to try to get within an order of magnitude of your cost per conversion goal to see if further testing makes sense. You are not going to achieve cost per conversion parity with any mature channel for at least 3 months.

Measuring Success

1. What is your primary KPI for this engagement? I.E., closed won deals, revenue, qualified leads, free trial sign-ups.

2. What are all the steps of your funnel leading up your primary KPI? Where, if anywhere, potential customers go offline to a sales team in the funnel process..

3. What would be a good price to pay per funnel step? I.E. $100 per lead, $800 per Closed Won.

4. What landing pages do you intend to use for paid campaigns?

5. How can your team access downfunnel data?

Goals

1. What is your KPI goal in the short term? I.E. get up to 100 leads per month, or get as many Closed Won as possible under a CAC goal.

1. What is your planned budget for testing? What is your planned future budgets? What determines budget changes?

Strategy Questions:

1. What is your target market? What do decision makers look like? 

2. What does a qualified lead or sign-up look like?

3. What are the 3 primary value propositions that make your company different from your competitors?

That’s a good start - we hope this guide was helpful!

If you’re spending $50k+ monthly on B2B ads and would like an audit of your ad accounts, get in touch with us through the form on our homepage.