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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

It also sounds like this person's startup is B2B, which has an entirely different set of advertising strategies than something consumer focused.

Anything that involves clicks (display, search, social) are typically not the most effective advertising tactics when your buying decision makers number so few, but that doesn't rule out other advertising activities.

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B2B early stage companies selling a high ticket service/product need to be focused on sales activity.

Ads are a distraction. It's the seemingly easy way out but there's no way out of selling early stage.

You use ads in B2B to build leads, then you follow up with marketing/sales. Certainly you wont get a conversion with display ads, but on certain providers they can help feed into the start of your funnel.

Maybe. I’ve seen some pretty sophisticated campaigns targeting my employer, from local NPR underwriting to print and event sponsorship, all targeting a half dozen individuals.

End of the day, the salesman and his relationships closed it. The marketing consultant made a lot of cash though.

That sort of account-based marketing is a different kettle of fish. It's only worthwhile if you're targeting big prospects who will spend enough money to offset the costs.

That said, ABM is increasingly popular for businesses where it makes sense. Why waste time and money filling the marketing funnel when you can identify preferred customers and invest in building a relationship with them.

I'm sure it can help in conjunction with sales. Of course it can augment other activity.

Agree in general but you can also construct a quick Account-Based Marketing approach using the input data that you use to construct a prospect list. Outsource the actual campaign and you can have that run in parallel to your sales work.

Agreed. The more SMB your product is the closer the chance ads will work, but further up the size and ACV scale and you are simply wasting your time until you become a brand name in your domain.

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