ABM Best Practices: How Air Cover Gets You Covered
In a world where predictive marketing is getting more technical by the second, you need to get savvy with implementing B2B demand generation. You understand the need to Start at the Top of the Funnel (TOFL) and to identify buyer intent, but you’re not quite sure how something called “air cover” fits into the account-based marketing spectrum.
Air cover can provide a consistent stream of leads when done right. Here’s how air cover gets you (and your business) covered:
1. “Air cover” evolved from OTA programming
The term “air cover” is an industry slang term that was traditionally used to describe TV and radio network coverage of events. Since account-based marketing comes from the technology world, “over the air” programming is more commonly known in programmatic advertising circles as “inbound marketing.”
Just as commercials act as the “in-between” for traditional television and radio, air cover acts as the in-between for programmatic advertising. The main difference is that account-based marketing allows you to focus on the prospects that are most likely to buy. When you reach out to your ideal customer and engage them through personalized content (e.g., an informative podcast, article, or white paper), you replace the old paradigm of “commercials” with modern content marketing that inspires conversations. From there, you can roll out the red carpet and glean top-notch insights.
Take a look at the screenshots of our platform to get an idea of our air cover strategies and capability.
This report shows all vital high level stats for programmatic campaigns that are run through the platform. The biggest benefit that customers get from running programmatic campaigns through metadata.io is the company detail that you see. We can retrieve data on specific targeted companies that are being served impressions, clicking on the ads, and ultimately converting by filling out the form on our customer’s website.
An integrated marketing strategy uses air cover to build awareness about your product before or even at the same time that a sales rep is reaching out. Air cover acts as the “in-between” space between the awareness of the product and the conversation with the sales rep.
The good news is that the content does not need to provide a business case for the product. Let me repeat: Your content does not need to provide a business case for the product. Instead, the content needs to appeal to the customers who are already aware of the need for the product but may just need to learn more about how your product fits into the bigger picture.
For example, we here at Metadata thrive on educating our audience about why machine learning is the future of marketing. We need to first inform the market that:
- Our machine learning platform exists
- Your account-based marketing challenges have a solution
- Investing in machine learning to improve account targeting is the next logical step.
We don’t like to toot our own horn (our customers typically do that), but toot, toot!
2. Air cover creates an impression
Data is essential when navigating the world of leads, engagements, and impressions. But you can’t start a meaningful conversation with every contact every time you reach out. Air cover allows you to use B2B marketing artificial intelligence to create awareness of your company’s product or service.
Take a look at the screenshot below.
The experiments view you see above provides a breakdown of performance on all of the experiments that are running on a specific campaign through the platform. A campaign can consist of multiple experiments that are broken out by channel (Social / Display), Audience, Offer Type (Click-Through to Landing Page / Click-Through to a native Facebook or LinkedIn form), and the ad itself (text / creative variants).
Increasing the number of impressions you get through air cover helps to build your brand. When you create compelling content and distribute it through targeted advertising, you create an impression within your target personas. Even if your targeted customer doesn’t take action with your ad, it pops up in their feed which creates an impression. While your targeted customers may not buy right away, your company will be at the top of their mind when the time is right.
3. Air cover builds momentum
Air cover runs non-stop behind the scenes and it can provide a consistent stream of leads while your business development team creates targeted, tactical campaigns.
According to a report by Conversica, sending an email from an address associated with an individual rather than the company name can increase the click-through rate by 31%. When you personalize your communications with your prospects, you humanize your product so that your potential customers will want to learn more. Here’s an example:
When you combine data with personalization, you glean better insights into consumer behavior, which helps your customers achieve their goals. And what’s better than a win-win?
Want to learn more about how our patented account-based targeting platform can work for you?
