10 Paid Tactics for B2B Content Marketing & Brand Awareness

Here’s a look at 10 paid tactics that could be used to build out a PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) model when pursuing content marketing for B2B clients.
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Usage & Effectiveness

A recent survey created by the Content Marketing Institute surveyed B2B Marketers on paid tactics used and their effectiveness.
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1. Paid Search

It’s no surprise that Paid Search is top of the list for effectiveness. Given the robust targeting techniques and data driven nature of the tactic it’s easy to attribute conversions and calculate ROI. Aside from the robust data that paid search provides, the core fact that search is a pull medium is a huge asset when compared to other tactics.
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2. Promoted Posts & Tweets

Give content a boost through a promoted post on Facebook or promoted tweet on Twitter. Many B2B clients may not see the benefit of social advertising but assuming that these platforms are groomed for their specific audience they can be quite effective.
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3. Linked-In Ads

Another PPC form of advertising that can easily promote specific pieces of content to professionals. Narrow your target audience by job function, geography.
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4. Native Advertising

A form of paid media where the advertisement appears to be an integral part of the media entity’s content. Technically, in-stream ads like Linked-In and Twitter count as native too but this native advertising could utilize services like OutBrain, which allows for granular targeting and content association. For larger campaigns, most media buyers should be able to deploy a large-scale native advertising campaign.
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5. Sponsored E-mail

Feature content in an industry specific e-newsletter.
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6. Sponsored Blog Post

Feature content in an industry specific blog.
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7. Retargeting

Whether it’s a whitepaper download or conference sign up any action on your website can be tracked and tied to a user. If the user leaves you’re site without converting, the user would then be served ads to help aide in the specified conversion.
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8. Direct Buy Advertising

Handpicking specific industry sites to advertise on. Depending on industry and content this might be more brand focused than content focused.
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9. Geo-Location Ads

Geo fence a conference or specific location and promote a whitepaper or piece of content. Paid search could also be geo-fenced so that text ads are only shown in a specific region or location. This tactic might lean a little more B2C.
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10. Contextual Advertising

Associating an ad unit with a broader piece of content in the format of a banner ad. Typically this approach might be more of a brand awareness tactic than content specific but still worth exploring in the B2B arena.
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