The Importance of Q4 for B2B Advertisers Striving for Longevity

4 Min Read

The Halloween merchandise is already being crowded out by the Christmas decorations and many B2C advertisers are finalizing their holiday plans. As a B2B advertiser, though, you’re probably ready to close this article and hang up your strategy cap for the year. But wait! While Q4 is typically B2C’s time to shine, it’s an important time of year for B2B brands that have their sights set on growth, too.

B2B Marketers Can Cut Through the Holiday Clutter for Big Impact in Q4

We’re big believers in the magic of the holidays. No, not just that holiday sparkle, but the power of the season for B2B advertisers who choose to harness it. In fact, we’ve written about it before. Some key reasons that Q4 shouldn’t be forgotten in the B2B marketer’s playbook: 

• If you’re a B2B marketer not using CTV already, you should be! TV has never been a major tool for B2B advertisers, and understandably so. It was expensive, for one, and ineffective for connecting with a hyper-specific audience, with no targeting, measurement, or performance-focused capabilities. Connected TV, however, has changed the TV game. B2B advertisers can now benefit from the sight, sound, and motion of the TV screen thanks to the new digital backend that finally allows advertisers to hit their specific business goals. 
• With this sophisticated audience targeting, Q4 becomes the perfect opportunity for B2B advertisers to target an audience that their B2C counterparts aren’t trying to capture right now. Your brand can continue to make inroads with your audience while avoiding the rat race of Q4 entirely.
• It’s truly a time to shine. Your competitors won’t be as active during Q4, and you can cut through the clutter of the B2C madness, and your audience will be ready to hear what you have to offer.

If you want to learn more about the above reasons to take advantage of Q4, read on here. Our advertisers and first-party research continue to prove that evergreen spending, including in Q4, is an essential growth strategy for B2B brands. 

Use the Entire Year To Create a Lasting Brand

The benefits to running on CTV are numerous, and when run correctly, create a powerful long-term strategy for a brand determined not to just be the flavor of the week. (If B2B was an ice cream flavor, that is. Cookies & CRM or Rocky ROAS, anyone?) Savvy B2B marketers understand that while hitting short-term KPIs is important, creating a lasting brand (and one that makes it into a marketer’s initial consideration set) is essential. 

Koji Takagi, Senior Director of Marketing at Pluralsight, a MNTN customer, explained it as such: “Marketers need to be playing a different game than our counterparts. BDRs (and SDRs) think in terms of months. AEs think in terms of quarters and years. B2B marketers need to be thinking in terms of decades. We are trying to build a lasting brand. And we know that if we don’t make certain investments today, then our pipeline is going to struggle next year and the year after. That’s why we knew that investing in MNTN was going to be important.”

Takagi turned to CTV, and specifically MNTN, for the long game. He knew that short-term thinking wasn’t going to deliver the returns that his team was looking for, especially as they looked to improve their pipeline. Takagi and team started spending in a time that many others weren’t — during a wobbly economy. “I feel like most B2B marketers that have been in down economies when budgets are inevitably slashed end up seeing softness in the quarters that follow. Demos naturally stop coming in. We decided to start investing in MNTN because we needed to make sure that our brand became top of mind for people who would become bottom-funnel leads in the future.” 

While the economy may currently be stable, this same thinking applies to Q4 spending. B2B brands that decide to stop spending during Q4 — since this isn’t a historically “strong” quarter for these types of businesses — will see decreased returns as they enter into the new year. Spending in Q4 allows you to start the new year off strong and not wait for a dwindling pipeline to recover. 

Evergreen Isn’t Just for Christmas Trees — An Always-On Strategy Benefits B2B Brands

This strategy isn’t just anecdotal. We were curious about what makes our top clients so successful, so we analyzed the top 25% to see what they were doing right. One key element to their success? They ran evergreen campaigns instead of running intermittent campaigns throughout the year. Running consistent, always-on campaigns accomplished a few things. It gave the backend systems time to optimize so that they were running as efficiently as possible, targeting the most engaged audience, and reaping the biggest return on investment. 
From a branding perspective, it also delivers a consistent message, creating a cohesive and continuous narrative that keeps brands in the initial consideration set. This is vitally important for B2B advertisers since 90% of B2B decision-makers purchase from companies they knew at the start of the buying process. Q4 is no exception; even if this isn’t the time that B2B buyers are most likely pulling the trigger, it’s vital to create a long-lasting brand that goes beyond the quarters and instead measures in years.