28/09/2021, 09:51 Crafting your ad strategy around the customer's journey | Storyteq

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PERSPECTIVES
January 05, 2021

Tim Whitehead on crafting your ad strategy around

the customers’ journey
7 min read
A strong ad strategy supported with videos and engaging content that speak directly to your customers is now more
important than ever. To dive into the topic more, we caught up with Spendesk’s Head of Performance Marketing, Tim
Whitehead.

Andreea Serb
Content Strategist at Storyteq

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28/09/2021, 09:51 Crafting your ad strategy around the customer's journey | Storyteq

A strong ad strategy supported with videos and engaging content that speak directly to your
customers is now more important than ever for your company’s success, but the old ways of creating
and distributing ads are broken.

Today, we’re more connected to people than ever. So delivering value upfront and nurturing
relationships with your audience are must-dos if you want to stand out. 
Not only does a personalized approach help businesses meet rising customer expectations, but it’s
also a distinct competitive advantage.
To dive into the topic more, we caught up with Spendesk’s Head of Performance Marketing, Tim
Whitehead, to talk about the power of content, why you need to embrace algorithms, and the state of
digital advertising right now.

Storyteq: Hey Tim, first I’d like to learn a little bit more
about you and your role at Spendesk?
Tim: I am the Head of Performance Marketing at Spendesk, the company spending solution for today’s
businesses taking on old-fashioned corporate cards and expense management. My team is made up of
four rockstar inbound marketers responsible for demand generation across Europe and the UK.

We run paid and organic campaigns across the funnel, and work closely with our Ops and Sales teams
to hit our marketing acquisition targets meaning leads, pipeline, and revenue.

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Storyteq: What are the strategies and best-practices you

bank on to scale your ad strategy?
Tim: Right now Spendesk is scaling fast. A key focus for 2021 is expanding our core paid channels to
drive predictable revenue growth at an efficient cost of acquisition. SEM is most effective at capturing
high-intent leads who are ready to buy.

Paid social is working well for us to build and engage audiences at the top of the funnel, and we’re also
seeing strong results with partnerships and review sites. 
On the organic side, content is still queen. We’ll continue to invest in creating relevant, high-value
content in English, French, and German across different channels. The best example of this is CFO
Connect, a global community for finance leaders by Spendesk, offering thought leadership, virtual
events and a Slack group as well as our new podcast CFO Yeah!

Storyteq: What’s your take on digital advertising right

now? How do you find that sweet spot to create ads that
connect with your audience?
Tim: I’m seeing three clear trends in B2B ads. First is to deliver value up front. The days of gated ebook
downloads straight to a cold sales call are fading fast. Engaging your audience with ungated, relevant
content that solves a problem, educates or informs will be better for your brand in the long run than a
€50 email address.

Of course, it’s more difficult to measure the impact of these kinds of programs compared to traditional
lead gen. But how many low value leads actually convert to revenue? Ask yourself how your customers
actually want to engage with your product or service.
Second is to put your customers at the heart of your ad strategy. Show prospects exactly how real
people benefit from your product. Even better, tell them using your customers’ own words.

In my experience, video is the most effective format to do this. One video can be repurposed into
almost unlimited formats and messages which is great for efficiency. Ad platforms also tend to reward
video content, making it one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your audience.

“Put your customers at the heart of your ad strategy. Show prospects exactly
how real people benefit from your product.”

Third is to embrace the algorithms. If you can feed Google and Facebook with enough first-party data
on your highest value conversions and audiences, they are incredibly effective at finding similar
audiences who are most likely to convert.

The flip side is to benefit from this fully you need to be moving towards more automated bidding
strategies. This might be a bit of a shift for performance marketers used to keeping full control over
their campaigns, in particular on the paid search side.

Storyteq: How does technology come into the picture? Do

you have any tips for using tech that helps make your ad
strategy easier?
Tim: Technology is the backbone of any successful ads strategy. We use a range of platforms and
services to connect data from various platforms and channels and to build a full picture of where a
prospect is in the funnel. 
We can then serve more relevant and engaging ads to prospects depending on their level of
engagement, and track the performance of leads generated from specific ads at each stage of the

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28/09/2021, 09:51 Crafting your ad strategy around the customer's journey | Storyteq
funnel in all of our key marketing and sales systems.

Storyteq: What are the benefits of automating ad creation

in your opinion? Could you share some results you’ve seen
that made an impact across your company?
Tim: We’re not automating ad creation at the moment. I can see lots of benefits in terms of testing
efficiently at scale. It’s something we will probably look to test in the future.

Storyteq: What are some of your best practices that guide

your ad strategy? What steps do you take to make sure
ads are present in all markets and they engage your
audience directly?
Tim: At Spendesk, we serve businesses across Europe, the UK and the US, which means we’re running
ads in multiple markets and languages. We also serve businesses of all shapes and sizes in a wide
range of industries, meaning we have to tailor messages based on use cases and industry verticals.
To ensure we’re present in all of our core markets and engaging our different audience directly, we
follow three key principles.

First, creative development is centralised to ensure assets can be reused and repurposed for different
markets without reinventing the wheel.

Second, campaign themes and messages are tailored based on market specific value propositions and
use cases which we identify through data analysis, customer conversations, sales feedback and more.

Third, we follow a strict “test and learn” approach when launching campaigns in new markets to
challenge assumptions and identify the most effective course of action.

Storyteq: How do you measure success and understand

the real impact of ads at Spendesk?
Tim: Attribution can be particularly challenging in a B2B context, with multiple touch points over the
buyer journey, long sales cycles and complex tool stacks. That’s why our data and revenue operations
teams have invested a lot of time and resources building robust full-funnel reporting for our paid
programmes.
We use Looker to bring together multiple data sources and track the direct impact of our ad spend
across the funnel in terms of leads, pipeline, customers won and revenue.

We track performance by channel and campaign, and can go all the way down to the ad group or
keyword level. In a SaaS business, it doesn’t just stop at the sale either, so we also track metrics like
expansion and churn per channel.
Thank you to Tim for the interview. You can follow Tim on LinkedIn.

Andreea Serb

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28/09/2021, 09:51 Crafting your ad strategy around the customer's journey | Storyteq
Andreea is a content strategist at Storyteq and is passionate
about writing, storytelling, and cross-functional collaboration.
When she’s not busy typing away, you will always see her
reading a good book.

Leaders from Google, Heineken, Amazon,

and more discuss the future of creative
production and advertising
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