20 Tips for Creating Effective ABM Display Ads (Part 1 of 2)

This post is the first in a two-part series that tries to answer the question, “How do I create effective display ads for account-based marketing (or ABM)?”



In these articles, I will help you avoid common mistakes that others have made. I also identify important steps others have missed.

In this first of two articles, I focus on 10 tips to help you prepare to develop your ad strategy:

1. Understand what your ad platform can and can’t do
2. Assess the experience and capabilities of your creative team
3. Recognize that digital agencies don’t have all the answers
4. Understand your review and approval process for ads
5. Think how you will create and manage landing pages
6. Know what it takes to create new pages on your company website
7. Understand what help you can expect from the team that runs your website
8. Coordinate with whoever runs your marketing automation system
9. Understand how you can track responses to your ads
10. Learn about new visitor-tracking technologies

The second in the series shares 10 more tips for creating effective ABM display ads.

I assume here that you’re a marketer responsible for creating a program of effective display ads. Because ABM display advertising is new to most companies, I also assume that you’re just getting started with your program. 

So how will you go about it? What should you do first?

Assess your resources and capabilities

Before you consider any other element of your ABM advertising program, it will pay for to focus your attention in four areas:

• Your ABM ad technology platform
• Your creative team
• Your internal review and approval processes
• The team that manages your website

1. Understand what your ad platform can and can’t do

Ad platforms vary widely in their functional capabilities.

Be aware that some of the capabilities discussed here are not available on all ABM ad platforms.

If you use an ad platform other than Kwanzoo, check to see if your platform has the functional capabilities you want to use.

Ask your platform provider these questions:

• Can your ad platform target by IP addresses, by geography, and by cookies?
• Before you run an ad, can your ad platform give you an accurate idea of how many people you can target within a group you choose? 
• Can your ad platform run multiple ads to the same target audiences at the same time?
• How much detail can your ad platform provide about people who respond to your ads, even if they don’t fill out a form? 

The answers to these questions will influence your ad strategy.

For example, if your ad platform can’t target a population by using cookies, you won’t be able to tailor or personalize your ads by job function or role.

If your ad platform can’t run multiple ads to the same audience at the same time, you may not be able to test multiple messages or treatments.

If your ad platform can’t read the information contained in cookies, you may not know much about who is responding to your ads.

You will have to rely on contact information respondents provide in forms they fill out – if you can motivate them to do so.

Or you’ll have to identify accounts by their internet protocol (IP) address, to the extent your technology provider can do so.

2. Assess the experience and capabilities of your creative team

Who will provide creative and production services for your ads? Will you use resources from inside or outside of your company? 

Then answer these questions:

• What experience do they have in creating and producing ABM display ads?
• What are their strengths and potential limitations?
• What is their capacity to produce ads, and how long will production take?
• How much direction will they need from you?

The success of your ads will depend on the quality of the individual designers and copywriters who create them.

Your marketing department may have excellent designers and copywriters. But maybe they’re not so good at putting themselves in the shoes of prospects who will be viewing your ads.

Your designers are probably not trained to think like your prospects. They can’t know your markets as well as you and your sales team do. 

If this is the case, you’ll have to help them.

3. Recognize that digital agencies don’t have all the answers

If you plan to use a digital agency for your creative or production, be aware of their potential limitations. Don’t assume they’re experts in ABM display advertising.

Even if an agency has broad experience with B2B display advertising, they probably have limited experience with ABM. That’s because ABM display is so new.

If they haven’t worked with ABM display, they won’t know what they don’t know.

Don’t abdicate responsibility for your ABM ad strategy

That’s why you, as leader of your ABM display program, must take personal responsibility for your ad strategy. Assume the success of your ad program rests mostly on your shoulders.

Provide leadership to your agency, designers, and copywriters. Be prepared to challenge their assumptions and push them to think in new ways. 

4. Understand your review and approval process for ads

You company may require your ads to be approved through a formal review process.

In many companies, all ads must comply with corporate brand standards and legal requirements.

If your ad refers to specific products or services, you may also need approvals from division- or product-level reviewers. 

Increasingly, corporate advertisers may also restrict the sites on which their ads may be shown.

Your ads should also conform to the international guidelines of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (or IAB).

It will save you time and frustration to understand all these requirements and standards before you choose a strategy for your ads.

You will also want to know how long your internal approval processes are likely to take. 

If your approval process is long, the content of your ads will be less timely. You’ll have to plan further ahead.

If your ads face a long or complex approval process, prepare your ads in batches. Begin the process in plenty of time before your targeted publication date.

By batching your ad production, you can avoid the stress of walking small numbers of ads through rushed processes.

5. Think how you will create and manage landing pages

Effective use of landing pages is probably crucial to the success of your ABM display advertising.

That’s because landing pages provide a flexible, inexpensive way to tailor your online content to the interests of highly targeted groups.

Consider how you’ll use landing pages with your ads

Many ABM display ads contain an offer to download a document, to register for a webinar, or to view online content. Such ads contain a link that sends traffic to a landing page.

Landing pages deliver highly focused, specialized content.

In ABM display programs, a landing page is effective to the extent that its copy and design closely correspond to whatever you offer in your ad.

As your ABM display program gets more sophisticated, you may offer a different landing page for each ad.

Driving traffic to a highly-targeted landing page is likely to be much more effective than driving it to less relevant information on your site, such as a homepage or a product page. 

Suppose you want to target senior executives in the Supply Chain function at the Atlanta headquarters of The Home Depot.

Maybe you’ve created a white paper or a report that addresses a business goal or a challenge that’s important to these executives.

You’ll probably want to create a landing page that “sells” the value of the document more effectively than your ad alone can do.

You may also want to provide a thank-you or a follow-up page that offers content addressing other likely needs and interests.

Before you commit to such strategies, be sure you understand what it takes to create and produce landing pages.

Specialization and fine targeting of your messages are feasible only if you can produce landing pages efficiently, fast, and at low cost.

Many marketing automation systems and some independent SaaS services offer such capabilities. 

Think about gated versus ungated content

If your company uses landing pages for lead generation, they probably contain a form or a “gate” to collect contact information from visitors.

But landing pages for ABM are more effective if they don’t contain forms or gates.

Visitors are more likely to view and share your content if they don’t have to provide their contact information.

Don’t worry, you have other ways to measure the effectiveness of your ABM ads.

You’ll read more about measurement and gated versus ungated content in tips 9 and 10, below.

Check your review and approval process for landing pages

Ideally, you won’t have to go through the normal corporate approval process to create new landing pages.

Such approvals may not be necessary. That’s because landing pages may not be functionally related to the rest of a corporate website.

You may be able to create and manage your landing pages through a separate technology platform such as a marketing automation system or a specialized SaaS service.

Landing pages need not be accessible through the navigation tabs on your site. They don’t have to be visible in your sitemap or available to search engines. You can limit access only people who have a link to the page.   

The capability to create and manage your own landing pages will give you great flexibility in planning and executing your ABM ad strategy.

You’ll be able to control more of your production without relying on a separate team.

6. Know what it takes to produce new pages on your company website

Let’s say you’re targeting an industry segment rather than individual accounts. You might want to create new industry-specific pages on your corporate website.

Your ads would then drive traffic to these new industry pages on your corporate site rather than to landing pages.

If you’re considering such a strategy, be sure you understand what you must do to create new web pages on your company site:

• Whom will you work with?
• How much effort is involved? 
• What is the review and approval process?
• How long does it take?

In some big companies, the inflexibility of a corporate website may limit your options for ABM display advertising.

7. Understand what help you can expect from the team that runs your website

To execute other elements of your ABM ad strategy, you may have to rely on additional cooperation from the team that runs your website.

You may need their help to install ABM tracking codes on your web pages. You’ll read more about such codes in tip 10, below.

Or you may need help implementing technologies that offer a buffet of topical or interactive content, such as Überflip or LookBookHQ.

In companies with specialized marketing teams, it’s probably best to assume your web team doesn’t understand account-focused engagement strategies. They probably won’t immediately see the implications for creating or managing content on your corporate site.

In big companies, or in companies with custom-developed sites, a web team may be unwilling or unable to respond quickly to some of your requests for help.

It’s good to know these things before you set your ad strategy.

8. Coordinate with whoever runs your marketing automation system

Effective ABM display advertising probably requires some integration and coordination with marketing automation systems.

If your company uses marketing automation, check whether you can use your system to create landing pages that are separate from your corporate website. Many automation systems offer this capability.

Also check whether your marketing automation system can place cookies in the web browser of people who visit pages of your site. Understand how this works. 

If your automation system can deposit cookies, you’ll have more options for measuring the effectiveness of your ads. You may also be able to use ad retargeting. 

Finally, you may also want your marketing automation system to send nurturing messages to people who have shared their email addresses. 

If the team that runs your marketing automation system is separate from the team that runs your ABM display program, be sure you’ve thought about how you will work together. 

9. Understand how you can track responses to your ads

Measurement should be a key element of your ABM ad strategy.

Many people who see your ad will not fill out a form.

Recent survey research, reported by MarketingCharts, suggests that as few as 17% of visitors will fill out a lead-gen form on a B2B website (assuming the form contains 11 fields).

As you put fewer fields on a lead-gen form, more people will fill it out. 

Regardless of the length of your form, only about a third of visitors to a landing page say they will provide their phone number to receive downloadable content. 

Further, many people who notice your ad won’t click on it at all. Some may go straight to your website, where they could show up as anonymous visitors.

If they’re using a mobile device or a computer in a hotel room or home office, you may not be able to identify them by their IP address.

Kwanzoo’s research suggests that your web pages may receive five times more anonymous visitors than identifiable ones.

In the past, companies have mostly ignored this very large pool of anonymous visitors.

That’s a problem for you as manager of an ABM display program.

As long as people in your target accounts engage with your content, your ad has been at least partially successful. It shouldn’t matter how they choose to engage. 

So how can you claim the credit your ad deserves for prompting engagement other than filling out forms?

With Kwanzoo’s ad platform, you can often see who has responded to your ad even if they don’t fill out a form.

If you can’t track a visitor’s IP address to a targeted account, you may still be able to learn a lot about who has visited specific web pages on your site.

Now, with Kwanzoo, you can do so by reading the content of cookies stored in their web browser.

10. Learn about new visitor-tracking technologies

When you can view the content of a visitor’s cookies, you can gather identifying information about visitors who were previously mysterious. 

Such information can be very important to the effectiveness of your ABM display program.

This new capability relies on the use of a tracking code you embed on designated pages of your site. The tracking code enables your ad platform to read the content of encoded cookies.

The encoded cookies may help you collect the name of the visitor’s employer, geographic location, business function, and job title or seniority level. It may also tell which other websites he has visited.

I say the cookies “may” help you collect this kind of information for three reasons:

• An ad platform’s ability to collect such data depends on its availability of the cookie data stored in web browsers of individual visitors. If a visitor’s cookie data is limited, the information you can gather will also be limited.
• At the time of this writing, Kwanzoo offers the only ABM ad platform that can read B2B cookie data such as job level and job function to reveal professional information about a user.
• To read and collect this cookie data, your company must install tracking codes on your corporate website. For reasons we’ll discuss in a moment, not all companies can do this.

Clearly, detailed information about visitors to your website can be enormously valuable to marketers and salespeople.

Among other benefits, insights gained from ad tracking can help your sales team to focus attention on “hot spots” of interest within a targeted account.

Such insights also help identify new contacts and new areas of interest that may have been invisible or your account reps. They can make your reps much more productive.

Check if you can use visitor-tracking codes on your website

But before you get too excited, be aware that some companies cannot or will not install the tracking codes that enable these capabilities.

The resistance may come from IT organizations that don’t have time to install the codes or don’t see the value. 

You may also be blocked by corporate privacy policies. 

In this article, I’ve shared 10 tips to prepare you before you set your strategy for effective ABM display advertising.

You can boil these tips down to one big idea. Think ahead: 

• Do your research in advance
• Anticipate what you can and can’t do
• Plan how you’ll get things done and who will do them
• Understand how long they will take

In part 2 of this series, I’ll address 10 more tips for creating effective ABM display ads:

• Clarify your purpose and goals
• Define your target audiences
• Revisit your ABM targeting pyramid
• Consider which ad formats you’ll use
• Think what you want people to do after they see your ad

and more.

About Dave Vranicar

Dave is founder of Redwell B2B, a company that provides consulting, coaching, and content-creation services at the intersection of Sales and Marketing. Redwell’s goal is to help business-to-business companies accelerate revenue growth by helping Sales and Marketing work together as members of the same agile revenue team. Most of Redwell’s clients are tech firms that engage in complex sales involving multiple decision influencers. Content created by Redwell supports both inbound and outbound prospecting, including social selling and account-based marketing and sales development.