...has managed and led marketing teams at growth-stage companies for the bulk of her career.
In fact, we’ve worked with her at two different companies over the years!
Meet Laura on LinkedInWell, something like that :). While Laura never specifically said cat videos she did struggle to understand how Facebook was the right place to reach IT decision makers who purchase database products like MariaDB.
It all came down to intent. She wasn’t convinced that the intent was there on Facebook.
It wasn’t that the ITDM audience wasn't looking for database solutions in general. It’s just that she wasn’t convinced that they were looking for that information on Facebook.
Another Facebook Ads Case StudyWe let Laura know that we understand her concerns.
Frankly, we had the same mental hurdles to cross ourselves.
I mean, seriously: Facebook Ads for B2B marketing?
What we proposed to Laura was a Facebook Ads pilot program. Very similar to what we had done for ExtraHop Networks.
Carve out a set amount of media budget to invest in the pilot.
Agree to a timeframe.
Agree to the success metrics that will clearly show the outcome of the program - whether it was positive or negative.
Our Discovery Process“We got more leads from Facebook Ads at a better cost per lead immediately following this campaign as soon as it launched. Better performance than Google Search, Google Display, LinkedIn Ads as well as other PPC channels.”
~ Adam Bullock, MKG Marketing
This Facebook Ads pilot would focus on creating website custom audiences.
First off: we wanted to use lead scoring provided by MariaDB’s.
Lattice Engine scoring system. Lattice Scores went from A and B (engaged, ready to be sold to leads) down to C, D and (blank) grades that went into marketing automation nurture programs.
Plugging the A’s and B’s into Facebook Ads was our first step. Using that custom audience, we then built lookalike campaigns to find more leads to serve ads to on Facebook who looked like an A or B.
Additionally, we uploaded C, D and (blanks) as a negative lead match.
Now that we were building lookalikes on the right audiences, our optimization efforts began to focus on A/B testing creative.
We ran ‘king of the hill’ style A/B tests, with the winner moving onto the next month and a new creative concept or text messaging being slotted in to test against it.
In less than 1 month we saw the following wins form our pilot program: