Paid Media Might Not Close The Gap At EOY

We’re now at that time of the year (middle of October) where leadership teams will be fervently evaluating how the business is pacing against yearly goals.

For some teams who are ahead of schedule, Q4 will be a nice time to chill out and enjoy the holiday season.

For those that are behind on their goals, unfortunately this is where the pressure comes in to make some quick changes to catch up before January 1st.

I’ve been a part of a handful of reactive situations like this where leadership wants to dump a big chunk of budget into paid media. The thinking is often that the marketing team simply needs to make a few adjustments, then turn up budgets and more leads will start coming through. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case when running ads for B2B companies.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation, there are two big questions you can consider:

1. How long does it take to close the average deal?

2. How long does it take to actually generate a lead?

Sales cycles are often much slower in the B2B world, so an average days to close of 60+ isn’t uncommon. If your business falls in the ballpark, then it might be worth sharing that data with your leadership/client team. At the time this post is published, there will be 81 days left in the year. That means it’s unlikely that a quick incremental investment in paid media is going to result in any actualized revenue before 2025.

Considering the average number of days it takes to close a deal once a lead is generated is one thing, but it can also take weeks or months to even generate a lead from the first time a target account has seen an impression. This means that the entire buyer journey from first impression to closed revenue could easily be over 100 days (and even that might be an underestimation depending on unique business models).

This means that any new paid media efforts that were started on the first day of Q4 probably won’t result in new business until at least Q1 of next year.

Instead of using ads to try to drive net new business to close a big revenue gap in Q4, I recommend focusing on nurturing opportunities that are already in progress instead.

Paid media can be a great tool to reach other members of buying committees, keep your brand top of mind, and highlight different use cases or perspectives for the brand’s product/service. It may be much more realistic to get existing hand raisers to move faster, than trying to generate and close net new business in an expedited time frame.

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn.