Elements of Excellence: A Checklist for Effective Ads in B2B Tech

What makes for great creative? This is an age-old question, and different marketing experts will offer different answers – many of which may be true.?

But our team at The B2B Institute wanted to take a more systematic approach to this question, specifically in the B2B technology category. So rather than searching for a silver bullet, we coded and analyzed 600 B2B tech ads to identify the common themes that impacted creative effectiveness – both positively and negatively.?

The result? Our deep dive report, Anatomy of a Great Ad: B2B Tech Edition. Here, I’ll share a checklist of some of the must-have creative elements for brand-building success.

Anatomy of a great B2B tech ad: A checklist

Our analysis of 600 B2B tech ads from the System1 database revealed a troubling insight: 71% of them achieved a one-star creative score, meaning that — according to System1’s star-score system – they are unlikely to contribute to long-term market share growth.

However, we see this current shortcoming as a huge opportunity for B2B marketers to gain a competitive edge through creativity in the future. While “there is no simple ‘cookbook’ for making sales-effective advertising,” as Hartnett, Kennedy, et al. note in their 2015 article for the Journal of Advertising, we can parse the data to find some favorable ingredients associated with positive emotions and brand recognition — two key drivers of creative effectiveness.

Consider checking these boxes as you build your next creative ad campaign for B2B tech solutions:

?? Tell a story with your ad to make it memorable

Our analysis found that only a little more than half (55%) of B2B tech ads include a story arc. A story arc, in this case, functions much like a plot: it contains a beginning and an ending, with a positive outcome thrown in to sell the benefits of the product or service.?

This is a missed opportunity, because story arcs ranked as one of the top creative elements that featured in ads that garnered a positive emotional response.?

Positive emotions, especially strong positive emotions, matter because they are more likely to grab and hold attention. If you can capture a potential customer’s attention, they are more likely to remember your ad, and they are more likely to remember your company when shopping for a vendor down the line.

?? Use everyday settings, rather than business settings, to connect with viewers

As seen in the image above, video ads with everyday settings had the strongest association with positive emotion. These ads that elicited more positive emotions often featured locales and activities that are comforting and familiar to viewers – for instance, cooking at home, playing sports in a park, or getting lunch with friends.

While ads in business and specialist settings, such as a corporate office, a doctor’s office, or a retail store, are neither positively nor negatively associated with viewers’ sentiments, ads set in these locations suffer from low brand recognition because of their generic nature that fails to capture attention.

?? Make your brand known at the start: include watermarks and opening cards to increase brand recognition

Presenting your brand at the end of an ad seems to be routine for B2B tech advertisers – as it should be. And in fact, end cards were present in every B2B tech ad we studied. While we couldn’t analyze the effects of this element on brand recognition due to its ubiquity, it’s worth noting that if you only brand at the end of your ad and your ad doesn’t entice viewers to stick around, they will never know who the ad was for.

While everyone is presenting their brand at the end of the ad, far fewer are branding at the beginning or throughout. But those who are branding early and often are seeing outsized effectiveness results: ads that displayed the brand’s name at the start of the ad via an opening card, or throughout the ad by displaying the brand’s name or logo in the corner like a watermark, achieved 30-40% higher brand recognition than ads without them. ?Yet 80% of B2B tech ads don’t have opening cards or watermarks.

The downside is that opening cards and watermarks were often present in ads that scored poorly for positive emotion, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find more creative ways to let viewers know who you are from the get-go.

?? Feature tangible brand assets

There are more ways for a viewer to recognize your brand than by splashing the brand name or logo across the screen at the start or end of an ad. If you look at some of the best ads for consumer packaged goods, you’ll see that throughout the ad they weave the brand’s colors, characters, logos, shape, and other distinctive assets seamlessly into the story — and yes, they generally also display the packaged good.

For the tech category where most product offerings are intangible, such as software, and lack the feel good emotions of our favorite packaged goods like candy bars and Coca-Cola, designing strong distinctive brand assets is critical. These tangible brand assets can be integrated into an ad in imaginative ways to boost brand recognition and positive reception simultaneously.

The less tangible the product, the more tangible the branding should be.?

For real-world examples of how this can take shape, look no further than leading B2C advertisers in the insurance space. Consumer insurance is similar to many B2B categories in the sense that the solutions offered are intangible. But unlike B2B, the consumer insurance category is bursting with brand assets and characters that grab attention and build memories. Take the GEICO Gecko and LiMu Emu by Liberty Mutual, for example.??

The LiMu Emu is cast front-and-center in the example ad below. It’s not arbitrarily present – rather, it is central to the story being told. The ad opens with a jingle dedicated to the LiMu Emu and Doug, Liberty Mutual’s two distinctive brand characters, and it features LiMu Emu and Doug driving a car as a physical embodiment of the car insurance product.?

All of this is done alongside additional brand cues, which are subtler but still significantly effective at driving brand recognition: the Lady Liberty brand logo at the start of the ad, on the air freshener, and in the watermark throughout, and the ever-present navy blue and yellow color scheme.??

Again: there is no singular roadmap for creative excellence in advertising. But hopefully this analysis provides a few checkboxes you can confidently mark as you develop your next campaign.?

Learn more about the anatomy of a great ad in B2B tech by diving into the B2B Institute’s full report.