71% of B2B ads are a waste of money, zero attention, zero sales: Why marketers should forget voiceovers and heavy text – and get the logo in much earlier
Creative eats targeting for breakfast, along with optimisation and every other factor marketers can control. Yet the vast majority of B2B ads are effectively a waste of space because they follow a tired formula – voiceovers, heavy on text, logo at the end – per a study of 600 ads by the B2B Institute. It found 71 per cent were highly unlikely to deliver any growth. To stop brands wasting money on “boring Power Point” ads, Partnerships Lead Derek Yueh unpacks some simple creative guidelines to help marketers stand a far better chance of delivering growth.
What you need to know:
- Creative is the single biggest factor that marketers can control in delivering growth from ads, beating targeting, optimisation – everything bar brand size, according to LinkedIn Institute’s Derek Yueh.
- Yet advertisers are getting creative wrong in their ads, resulting in poor effectiveness. 71 per cent of 600 ads studied had almost no chance of delivering growth.
- That’s because they tended to use the same formula: lots of text, a voiceover and a logo at the end.
- Brands need to get back to basics: Tell good stories, aim for memories over clicks, and weave the brand into those stories far more often – and much earlier.
Almost three quarters of B2B ads are effectively money down the drain. According to a study of 600 ads by the LinkedIn-backed B2B Institute, 71 per cent are likely to generate no sales. That’s because they are boring, formulaic, under-branded and have brand calls in the wrong places.
Derek Yueh, Partnership Lead at the B2B Institute, said B2B marketers should forget voiceovers and heavy text and start concentrating on story arcs, characters and everyday settings – while packing in brand cues early and often.
Speaking at the B2B Next conference in Sydney, Yueh cited research from Dentsu-owned Data2Decisions that suggests the most important element in driving returns from advertising is brand size and market share – over which marketers have no direct control. But the second most important aspect is creative execution, which is squarely within marketers’ power.
Yueh also cited Nielsen research which found creative, at 47 per cent, is the single biggest contributory factor to driving sales from advertising, alongside an Ehrenberg-Bass Institute paper which finds that great creative can drive 10-20 times more sales than mediocre creative.
“Basically … even if you optimise all the other elements of your ad campaign: If you find the best targeting, if you try to maximise reach, it ultimately doesn’t matter if your creative isn’t resonating with your audience,” was Yueh’s interpretation. “So in other words, if you can’t get your creative right, nothing else really matters.”
Read the full article in Mi3.
