Picture this - you work for a company in the B2B space and find that even though you're sending out thousands of emails per week and attending numerous trade shows, you're struggling to convert leads to clients. It seems that even when you do get a response from prospects, they've chosen to work with a competitor before you get the chance to show how strong your sales pitch is.

There's likely a reason for this, and it has nothing to do with your product or your ability to sell. Consider these stats from Global Management Consulting Firm BCG - 75 percent of B2B purchases involve minimal contact with salespeople, and for those that do, 33 percent of the purchase journey occurs online without any contact with a salesperson at all.

Given these numbers, it's crucial for brands to make a connection with B2B consumers early in their search for a product. While marketing automation has proven to be successful in its own way, the average prospect receives over 100 emails per day according to Vidyard. This causes outreach to get lost in the shuffle, especially when a potential client has more time-sensitive emails and projects to get through first.

As a result, brands have started seeing the allure of using digital ads as a supplement to automation. The numbers bear this trend out, as projected B2B digital ad spend has increased to $6.08 billion for 2019, a 2.1x increase over 2015's number according to eMarketer. The use of video is especially effective due to its high engagement rates and a +85% increase in purchase intent for viewers exposed to the video ad.

With the pinpoint targetability of digital, your brand can find consumers early in their search process and see a major increase in conversions. There are numerous tools that make this possible, and the leveraging of large amounts of data is the key.

For example, through job title retargeting from LinkedIn and Facebook, your company can take a "people-based approach” to identify who its target audience's key decision-makers are and then reach them on sites that they are likely to visit. When used effectively, job title retargeting allows brands to reach consumers in that first 33 percent of the purchase journey, leaving a lasting impression that occurs before competitors have had any contact with their audience.

Digital can also be used for geofencing done down to a miniscule geographic area, such as a specific commercial contract center. If your business has an extremely niche clientele they want to reach, GlassView offers this ability, allowing for efficiency and a guarantee that your brand will reach its desired audience.

The importance of efficiency, especially for B2B companies, is not lost on us. CMO surveys have shown that just 6 to 9 percent of B2B company revenues go toward marketing; this is well below the 11 percent budget that is the average across all industries.

When used in conjunction with marketing automation, a concise, effective retargeting strategy allows your brand to efficiently establish a relationship with its audience in a very early phase of the consumer journey and maintain top-of-mind position throughout the process. Studies have shown that retargeting drives a 70 percent increase in conversions, so the benefits listed above cannot be understated.

Using digital ads also brings long-term benefits that go beyond conversions for individual campaigns. Data collected from targeting during these campaigns can be used to build out first-party data systems that give your brand its own personal profile of who its audience is and how to reach them. This can then be leveraged with third-party data from companies like GlassView to meet KPIs and drive top-level performance.We've distributed a lot of B2B digital video campaigns for industry-leading and small clients alike, and strong performance is our calling card. To find out more about some of our B2B work or ability to deliver your campaign, check out our works page or contact us.