Early Stage B2B Startups Marketing: How To Get Your First Clients

Here’s the scariest bit about starting a business- 90% of startups will fail. Certainly not what you’d like to hear, but that’s a fact.As an entrepreneur, you’ll probably be optimistic about everything at first. And that’s commendable. Unfortunately, the problem with optimism is that too much of it clouds your judgment.Consequently, you won’t be able to foresee the possible challenges that you might encounter along the way. And that’s how people end up committing mistakes that cost them their entire businesses.

Spotlight

Turn Partners

Turn Partners is a UK based startup studio focused on the acquisition, turnaround and creation of digital businesses. Turn Partners were behind the turnaround of the niche-dating agency Toyboy Warehouse, achieving over a 2000% revenue growth in 18 months. The group are also behind Hopper HQ, the Instagram planning scheduling tool. Started in 2015 Hopper HQ is now a standalone business servicing clients in over 75 countries around the world.

OTHER ARTICLES
Advertiser Campaign Management

What Influencers Look for in Brand Deals

Article | August 12, 2022

A few years ago, the word “influencer” meant something pretty different than what it represents today. In 2016, the Instagram-focused social media consumer probably pictured a wealthy ex-Bachelor contestant who took beach photos in a personalized floppy hat and sponsored weight loss tea. But in 2021, the creator economy has evolved to encompass a more relatable, diverse population. Average Joes have completely disrupted the influencer marketplace, and now that brands across all categories have an influencer marketing plan, they are competing to get their products and services in front of the eyes of loyal fanbases.

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Social Media Advertising

Combat Video Ad Fatigue with Audio Advertising

Article | July 14, 2022

As a marketer, your goal is to create ads that stick in the minds of your audience. You devote extra time and resources to creating memorable graphics, engaging CTAs, and interesting copy that works. You also buy just the right ad spots. But, what happens when your potential customer scrolls right past your ad? Your costly video ad never creates a difference and your campaign fails. Combat this video ad fatigue with audio advertising to effectively influence your target demographic. After the audio content boom driven by podcasts, audio advertising is rising and becoming marketers’ new favorite. Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ 12-month-long study of audio ads on Spotify versus video and display ads found that audio ads were up to 25% more effective than other ad formats. Mostly, audio ads are delivered through podcasts. We’ll dive into this shortly. First let’s look at how audio advertising can influence the buying decisions of your target audience: Audio Advertising: Superpowers Explained Audio advertising uses a broad content category such as background scores, jingles, and branded content apart from audio ads. By fusing audio ads into audio experiences such as ad-supported music streaming or podcasts, marketers can position relevant products and services in front of customers. Here are more of its advantages: Audio Ads Offer Immersive Experience A study done by Lightwave and iHeartMedia showed that one of the biggest benefits of audio advertising was its ability to connect with the audience on a deeper level. Remembering catchy jingles is also a part of this connection. Audio ads communicate emotions, capture the attention of the listeners within seconds and engage them enough to paint a picture in their minds. They achieve this without a big budget or production crew. A strong script and an audio booth are all you need to create an immersive audio ad. They Have a Greater Reach Primarily, audio ads are delivered through podcasts because they can be easily categorized and are widely consumed. According to Statista, almost 60% of all U.S. consumers older than 12 listen to podcasts. Interestingly, 70% podcast listeners do not multi-task while listening to a podcast, so you are catering to alert listeners who might end up retaining your ad (Edison Research). Apart from podcasts, audio ads are also run in locations such as radio, music, and news streams. They Are Insightful and Creative Marketers can use 3D and 8D audio to create soundscapes that offer an immersive experience. Additionally, audio ads create a 1-to-1 relationship. With the help of programmatic advertising, they also collect many layers of data that provide buying insights. Integrating audio ads with voice assistants is a creative approach to entice customers while being interactive. Nars Cosmetics UK used Spotify to offer its customers voice commerce. Upon hearing the ad on Spotify, they could order samples and set up delivery using their smart speakers. Smart Speakers Are Changing the Game Smart speakers are contributing to screen-less moments in American homes. This means your video ad campaigns won’t get the kind of response you expect, but your audio ads just might. The Edison Infinite Dial report found that there is an average of 2.3 smart speakers in each home in the U.S. This number shows that a wide range of people use voice search and will listen to audio ads as a result. Summing It Up Audio advertising drives engagement and conversion through immersive storytelling, catchy jingles, and longer ad retention. It can be a great addition to your digital marketing strategy and refine the way you influence your audience’s buying decisions.

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Display Advertising

AdTech Vs MarTech: What’s The Difference?

Article | July 8, 2022

The difference between advertising and marketing is clear as day. Advertising is a specific subset of marketing that focuses on promoting products or services. On the other hand, marketing is a business practice that aims to identify, interact, and engage with customers. While it is easy to distinguish marketing from advertising and vice versa, new concepts have risen to confuse marketers and advertisers alike. AdTech and MarTech are two relatively new terms that some people use interchangeably. In reality, AdTech and MarTech are different, even if the differences are slightly noticeable.

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Social Media Advertising

Netflix Opens Doors to Ads After Subscriber Count Takes a Nosedive

Article | May 11, 2022

Netflix Takes an Unexpected Route Popular streaming giant Netflix’s subscriber count plummeted for the first time in a decade. After it announced the loss of 200K subscribers in Q1 of 2022, its stocks dipped more than 35%. In addition, a shareholder recently sued the platform for violating securities law after its subscriber growth reached an all-time low and the stock value crashed, making the picture bleaker. It’s not surprising that the platform had a change of heart about bringing advertising to its platform. The decision puts the platform in the same category as its competitors, HBO Max, Amazon’s Freevee, and Disney+, who want to offer cheaper, ad-enabled content to consumers. It also addresses the company’s issue of slow revenue growth. “Those who have followed Netflix know that I’ve been against the complexity of advertising and a big fan of the simplicity of subscription, But as much as I’m a fan of that, I’m a bigger fan of consumer choice.” co-CEO Reed Hastings What Do Advertisers Think? The advertising community had mixed reactions to the announcement. Long commercials are not an option on streaming platforms like Netflix. The ads run only for a few minutes every hour to retain the viewer experience. Despite this, advertisers are excited to target Netflix’s rich audience of over 200 million. There is no clarity on who will sell the ads and how the campaigns will be managed. Only time will tell how Netflix’s move will affect its subscribers and the advertising market. The company will keep ad-free tiers for subscribers who wish to enjoy high-quality ad-free content. It may change its subscription plans to offer low-cost plans with ads and minimize password sharing. There is no set timeline or regions decided for implementing these plans. The company hopes that this “consumer choice” to choose a cheaper plan will revive its subscriber growth graph. What Comes Next? Though Netflix has done the unexpected, it is giving well-established ad-funded broadcasters and streaming platforms a reason to worry. As of now, the potential for a low-cost VOD service equipped with ads is huge for advertisers. Once the plans are introduced, new audience profiles will emerge. Advertisers will want to understand and target them. As an ad platform, Netflix’s performance will only be understood through testing and learning.

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Spotlight

Turn Partners

Turn Partners is a UK based startup studio focused on the acquisition, turnaround and creation of digital businesses. Turn Partners were behind the turnaround of the niche-dating agency Toyboy Warehouse, achieving over a 2000% revenue growth in 18 months. The group are also behind Hopper HQ, the Instagram planning scheduling tool. Started in 2015 Hopper HQ is now a standalone business servicing clients in over 75 countries around the world.

Related News

Programmatic Advertising

DoubleVerify Expands Collaboration with LinkedIn to Reinforce Brand Safety Protections and Contextual Alignment

DoubleVerify | November 16, 2022

DoubleVerify (“DV”) (NYSE: DV), a leading software platform for digital media measurement, data, and analytics, today announced the launch of DV Authentic Brand Suitability and DV Custom Contextual solutions on the LinkedIn Audience Network. These two products empower advertisers to ensure their campaign impressions are delivered on inventory that aligns with their brand safety, suitability and contextual needs. DV Authentic Brand Suitability goes beyond standard categories and keyword blocklist – offering customized protection that helps advertisers avoid unsafe and unsuitable content before placing a bid. DV Custom Contextual provides advertisers a scalable solution to reach the right audiences, at the right time – driving outcomes for brands. DV’s Semantic Science, a proprietary contextual classification system, powers both DV Authentic Brand Suitability and DV Custom Contextual technology. DV’s Semantic Science team is responsible for developing one of the world’s most comprehensive ontology solutions — identifying over 200,000 language-independent concepts, using more than eleven million rules to determine the correct meaning of a word. The result is more accurate content classification and better protection and alignment, which enables stronger campaign performance for brands using solutions, like the LinkedIn Audience Network, for their marketing. “Our work with LinkedIn underscores DV’s continued leadership position in optimizing media quality and performance holistically across the digital media landscape providing our advertisers the confidence to invest across channels and environments,” said Steven Woolway, EVP, Business Development at DoubleVerify. “LinkedIn is a leading platform for B2B digital advertising, and we are thrilled to collaborate to support brand suitability and contextual targeting.” Today, advertisers can reach and engage a professional community of more than 875 million members on LinkedIn, helping them to drive actions that are relevant to their business. With the LinkedIn Audience Network, B2B advertisers can reach millions of targeted professionals who are active on trusted third-party publishers to boost performance across their advertising objectives, achieve better return on ad spend, and scale their message with multiple touchpoints. “Through our work with DoubleVerify, we’re continuing to empower our customers to scale their marketing across our network of publishers to reach and engage a professional audience,” said Abhishek Shrivastava, VP of Product, LinkedIn. “Through our work with DoubleVerify, we’re continuing to empower our customers to scale their marketing across our network of publishers to reach and engage a professional audience,” said Abhishek Shrivastava, VP of Product, LinkedIn. “The evolution of our collaboration reinforces our goal to foster a safe and trusted ecosystem with added controls to help customers drive better value from their campaigns.” DV Authentic Brand Suitability and DV Custom Contextual are now available for all mutual LinkedIn and DV customers. This release builds on the company’s previous work with LinkedIn to help power its custom, network-wide brand safety floor and invalid traffic (“IVT”) protection that helps ensure advertisers are protected from universally unsafe content and IVT on the LinkedIn Audience Network. For more information about DoubleVerify, visit http://www.doubleverify.com. About DoubleVerify DoubleVerify (“DV”) (NYSE: DV) is a leading software platform for digital media measurement and analytics. Our mission is to make the digital advertising ecosystem stronger, safer and more secure, thereby preserving the fair value exchange between buyers and sellers of digital media. Hundreds of Fortune 500 advertisers employ our unbiased data and analytics to drive campaign quality and effectiveness, and to maximize return on their digital advertising investments – globally. Learn more at www.doubleverify.com.

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Ad Networks

Marin Software Named a Strong Performer in B2B Advertising Solutions by Independent Research Firm

Marin Software | August 16, 2022

Marin Software Incorporated (NASDAQ: MRIN), a leading provider of digital marketing software for performance-driven advertisers and agencies, announced today that it has been recognized as a Strong Performer in the Forrester Research, Inc. August 2022 report, The Forrester Wave™ B2B Advertising Solutions, Q3 2022. The report evaluated 14 B2B Advertising Solutions providers based on 28 criteria across their current offerings, strategies, and market presence. Marin Software received the top score in the B2B performance reporting criterion and also received the highest possible score in the execution roadmap and market approach criteria. According to the report, “Marin Software’s execution roadmap and market approach are superior and include the innovative use of audience data to enable a variety of B2B advertising use cases from e-commerce to ABM… Ad-level, performance-level, and ROI-level reporting are also superior.” “We are proud to be named as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™ B2B Advertising Solutions report,” said Chris Lien, CEO, Marin Software. “We are proud to be named as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™ B2B Advertising Solutions report,” said Chris Lien, CEO, Marin Software. “We are committed to delivering B2B advertisers with the best solutions for analyzing, automating, and optimizing their marketing campaigns and we are thrilled to be recognized in the report.” The self-serve MarinOne platform unifies industry leading optimization tools with flexible reporting to help advertisers maximize the impact and reach of their digital marketing investment across paid search, social, and ecommerce channels. Marin has been helping advertisers advance their digital advertising campaigns for over 15 years and has managed over $40 billion in advertising spend for some of the world’s top brands. About Marin Software Marin Software Incorporated’s (NASDAQ: MRIN) mission is to give advertisers the power to drive higher efficiency and transparency in their paid marketing programs that run on the world’s largest publishers. Marin Software offers a unified SaaS advertising management platform for search, social, and eCommerce advertising. The Company helps digital marketers convert precise audiences, improve financial performance, and make better decisions. Headquartered in San Francisco with offices worldwide, Marin Software’s technology powers marketing campaigns around the globe. For more information about Marin Software, please visit www.marinsoftware.com.

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Ad Tech and Martech

The Digital Voice Ad Tech PR Agency Grows Team By Eight

The Digital Voice | August 08, 2022

Having recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary, B2B ad tech specialist PR agency The Digital Voice has now appointed eight new starters, including a leading marketing operations specialist from the fashion industry; bringing its team to 26 across the UK and Europe. Camealia Xavier-Chihota joins as marketing lead, having spent many years in marketing operations at leading brands such as River Island, working her way up as a fashion buyer before diversifying her skill set in various roles within e-commerce, sales, events, marketing, and management. Meanwhile, Akinyi Odhiambo joins the events team as senior events executive; expert writer, storyteller, and blog specialist, Jelena Zoric will join the 8-strong writing team as brand storyteller; Rosie Hutchinson has been appointed as events and content executive; Noor Sheikh as social media executive; Ren Bowman as tech social media copywriter; Faith Ilori as junior marketing executive; and Rowan Lee-Foyster, junior graphic designer; bringing illustration expertise and even more passion for graphic design to the team. More details on The Digital Voice’s growing team can be found here. A number of staff members have also been promoted in recent weeks, with Maryum Sheikh now press and SEO lead and Nicole Kotseva having been promoted to social media lead. Team members include leading journalists and content writers, social media specialists, press officers, event managers, podcast producers and graphic designers; with the agency’s offering spanning PR, marketing automation, SEO, social media management, event management, design, podcast and website production, and with consultants on the ground across the UK and Europe. Julia Linehan, founder and MD of The Digital Voice, says: “These new starters bring experience, creativity, passion, and our signature can-do attitude to our team as we continue to act as a mouthpiece for companies with a lot to say but who need a helping hand to get heard. Julia Linehan, founder and MD of The Digital Voice, says: “These new starters bring experience, creativity, passion, and our signature can-do attitude to our team as we continue to act as a mouthpiece for companies with a lot to say but who need a helping hand to get heard. “We are proud of the relationships we build, as an outputs-driven agency which overdelivers for clients. We're only just getting started and have huge plans to bring in more tech, more content, more partners, more experts, and above all, more heart and soul into all that we do for our loyal partners.” Indeed, the agency prides itself on becoming an extension of client teams on a long-term basis, with businesses such as impact.com now approaching its ninth year of partnership with the boutique agency. The Digital Voice also operates a virtual working model, which enables its team to support clients in a range of geographies and to embrace a huge pool of talent. For instance, the award winning boutique PR agency recently added podcast production and website management to its growing offering. In addition, it recently launched a new website and Instagram channel. The ad tech specialist agency’s client roster includes 15 innovative businesses, including long term clients Adnami, Adverty, Brand Metrics, Cavai, Exit Bee, GumGum, impact.com, Lumen Research, multilocal, Optable, Passendo, Playground XYZ, Tailify, Verasity, and WhiteBullet, with a number of others on its waiting list.

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Programmatic Advertising

DoubleVerify Expands Collaboration with LinkedIn to Reinforce Brand Safety Protections and Contextual Alignment

DoubleVerify | November 16, 2022

DoubleVerify (“DV”) (NYSE: DV), a leading software platform for digital media measurement, data, and analytics, today announced the launch of DV Authentic Brand Suitability and DV Custom Contextual solutions on the LinkedIn Audience Network. These two products empower advertisers to ensure their campaign impressions are delivered on inventory that aligns with their brand safety, suitability and contextual needs. DV Authentic Brand Suitability goes beyond standard categories and keyword blocklist – offering customized protection that helps advertisers avoid unsafe and unsuitable content before placing a bid. DV Custom Contextual provides advertisers a scalable solution to reach the right audiences, at the right time – driving outcomes for brands. DV’s Semantic Science, a proprietary contextual classification system, powers both DV Authentic Brand Suitability and DV Custom Contextual technology. DV’s Semantic Science team is responsible for developing one of the world’s most comprehensive ontology solutions — identifying over 200,000 language-independent concepts, using more than eleven million rules to determine the correct meaning of a word. The result is more accurate content classification and better protection and alignment, which enables stronger campaign performance for brands using solutions, like the LinkedIn Audience Network, for their marketing. “Our work with LinkedIn underscores DV’s continued leadership position in optimizing media quality and performance holistically across the digital media landscape providing our advertisers the confidence to invest across channels and environments,” said Steven Woolway, EVP, Business Development at DoubleVerify. “LinkedIn is a leading platform for B2B digital advertising, and we are thrilled to collaborate to support brand suitability and contextual targeting.” Today, advertisers can reach and engage a professional community of more than 875 million members on LinkedIn, helping them to drive actions that are relevant to their business. With the LinkedIn Audience Network, B2B advertisers can reach millions of targeted professionals who are active on trusted third-party publishers to boost performance across their advertising objectives, achieve better return on ad spend, and scale their message with multiple touchpoints. “Through our work with DoubleVerify, we’re continuing to empower our customers to scale their marketing across our network of publishers to reach and engage a professional audience,” said Abhishek Shrivastava, VP of Product, LinkedIn. “Through our work with DoubleVerify, we’re continuing to empower our customers to scale their marketing across our network of publishers to reach and engage a professional audience,” said Abhishek Shrivastava, VP of Product, LinkedIn. “The evolution of our collaboration reinforces our goal to foster a safe and trusted ecosystem with added controls to help customers drive better value from their campaigns.” DV Authentic Brand Suitability and DV Custom Contextual are now available for all mutual LinkedIn and DV customers. This release builds on the company’s previous work with LinkedIn to help power its custom, network-wide brand safety floor and invalid traffic (“IVT”) protection that helps ensure advertisers are protected from universally unsafe content and IVT on the LinkedIn Audience Network. For more information about DoubleVerify, visit http://www.doubleverify.com. About DoubleVerify DoubleVerify (“DV”) (NYSE: DV) is a leading software platform for digital media measurement and analytics. Our mission is to make the digital advertising ecosystem stronger, safer and more secure, thereby preserving the fair value exchange between buyers and sellers of digital media. Hundreds of Fortune 500 advertisers employ our unbiased data and analytics to drive campaign quality and effectiveness, and to maximize return on their digital advertising investments – globally. Learn more at www.doubleverify.com.

Read More

Ad Networks

Marin Software Named a Strong Performer in B2B Advertising Solutions by Independent Research Firm

Marin Software | August 16, 2022

Marin Software Incorporated (NASDAQ: MRIN), a leading provider of digital marketing software for performance-driven advertisers and agencies, announced today that it has been recognized as a Strong Performer in the Forrester Research, Inc. August 2022 report, The Forrester Wave™ B2B Advertising Solutions, Q3 2022. The report evaluated 14 B2B Advertising Solutions providers based on 28 criteria across their current offerings, strategies, and market presence. Marin Software received the top score in the B2B performance reporting criterion and also received the highest possible score in the execution roadmap and market approach criteria. According to the report, “Marin Software’s execution roadmap and market approach are superior and include the innovative use of audience data to enable a variety of B2B advertising use cases from e-commerce to ABM… Ad-level, performance-level, and ROI-level reporting are also superior.” “We are proud to be named as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™ B2B Advertising Solutions report,” said Chris Lien, CEO, Marin Software. “We are proud to be named as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™ B2B Advertising Solutions report,” said Chris Lien, CEO, Marin Software. “We are committed to delivering B2B advertisers with the best solutions for analyzing, automating, and optimizing their marketing campaigns and we are thrilled to be recognized in the report.” The self-serve MarinOne platform unifies industry leading optimization tools with flexible reporting to help advertisers maximize the impact and reach of their digital marketing investment across paid search, social, and ecommerce channels. Marin has been helping advertisers advance their digital advertising campaigns for over 15 years and has managed over $40 billion in advertising spend for some of the world’s top brands. About Marin Software Marin Software Incorporated’s (NASDAQ: MRIN) mission is to give advertisers the power to drive higher efficiency and transparency in their paid marketing programs that run on the world’s largest publishers. Marin Software offers a unified SaaS advertising management platform for search, social, and eCommerce advertising. The Company helps digital marketers convert precise audiences, improve financial performance, and make better decisions. Headquartered in San Francisco with offices worldwide, Marin Software’s technology powers marketing campaigns around the globe. For more information about Marin Software, please visit www.marinsoftware.com.

Read More

Ad Tech and Martech

The Digital Voice Ad Tech PR Agency Grows Team By Eight

The Digital Voice | August 08, 2022

Having recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary, B2B ad tech specialist PR agency The Digital Voice has now appointed eight new starters, including a leading marketing operations specialist from the fashion industry; bringing its team to 26 across the UK and Europe. Camealia Xavier-Chihota joins as marketing lead, having spent many years in marketing operations at leading brands such as River Island, working her way up as a fashion buyer before diversifying her skill set in various roles within e-commerce, sales, events, marketing, and management. Meanwhile, Akinyi Odhiambo joins the events team as senior events executive; expert writer, storyteller, and blog specialist, Jelena Zoric will join the 8-strong writing team as brand storyteller; Rosie Hutchinson has been appointed as events and content executive; Noor Sheikh as social media executive; Ren Bowman as tech social media copywriter; Faith Ilori as junior marketing executive; and Rowan Lee-Foyster, junior graphic designer; bringing illustration expertise and even more passion for graphic design to the team. More details on The Digital Voice’s growing team can be found here. A number of staff members have also been promoted in recent weeks, with Maryum Sheikh now press and SEO lead and Nicole Kotseva having been promoted to social media lead. Team members include leading journalists and content writers, social media specialists, press officers, event managers, podcast producers and graphic designers; with the agency’s offering spanning PR, marketing automation, SEO, social media management, event management, design, podcast and website production, and with consultants on the ground across the UK and Europe. Julia Linehan, founder and MD of The Digital Voice, says: “These new starters bring experience, creativity, passion, and our signature can-do attitude to our team as we continue to act as a mouthpiece for companies with a lot to say but who need a helping hand to get heard. Julia Linehan, founder and MD of The Digital Voice, says: “These new starters bring experience, creativity, passion, and our signature can-do attitude to our team as we continue to act as a mouthpiece for companies with a lot to say but who need a helping hand to get heard. “We are proud of the relationships we build, as an outputs-driven agency which overdelivers for clients. We're only just getting started and have huge plans to bring in more tech, more content, more partners, more experts, and above all, more heart and soul into all that we do for our loyal partners.” Indeed, the agency prides itself on becoming an extension of client teams on a long-term basis, with businesses such as impact.com now approaching its ninth year of partnership with the boutique agency. The Digital Voice also operates a virtual working model, which enables its team to support clients in a range of geographies and to embrace a huge pool of talent. For instance, the award winning boutique PR agency recently added podcast production and website management to its growing offering. In addition, it recently launched a new website and Instagram channel. The ad tech specialist agency’s client roster includes 15 innovative businesses, including long term clients Adnami, Adverty, Brand Metrics, Cavai, Exit Bee, GumGum, impact.com, Lumen Research, multilocal, Optable, Passendo, Playground XYZ, Tailify, Verasity, and WhiteBullet, with a number of others on its waiting list.

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Events