The vast majority of so-called “B2B Retargeting ads” are still built on the way traditional remarketing operates. An individual visits your website, clicks through on an email, or otherwise interacts with your digital marketing presence. Retargeting software drops a cookie onto that individual’s IP address and targets your ads to that person across the web. Here’s the thing: that approach doesn’t make sense for B2B marketers. In this article, we explain why traditional remarketing campaigns aren’t a good fit for B2B companies, introduce a better way to retarget based on whole accounts, and detail how to do it using Leadfeeder and our partner, Metadata.io. Note: Want to see which accounts have visited your website and are ripe for retargeting? Sign up and give Leadfeeder a try—free for 14 days. Why Traditional Retargeting Doesn’t Meet the Needs of B2B Marketing Teams Traditional retargeting works by getting your ads in front of individuals who’ve demonstrated potential buying intent by visiting your website or engaging with your company in some way online. That doesn’t work for B2B marketers for one simple reason: B2B is about target companies, not individuals. There are a few reasons for that: B2B buying decisions aren’t made by one person. They involve multiple decision makers and have several levels of involvement. Research for B2B products and services is often done by someone other than the decision maker or end user. If a virtual assistant is researching a solution for the CTO, it isn’t very impactful to retarget ads to the VA—you want to get in front of the CTO. Similarly, individual retargeting just doesn’t fit into Account based marketing and sales strategies. Your process is all about identifying and targeting whole accounts, so it doesn’t make sense to target ads to only one person within that account. B2B marketers need retargeted ads that work on an account-wide level, targeting all the specific key decision makers you need to influence in order to make B2B sales happen. Enter account based retargeting. How Account Based B2B Retargeting is Different With account based retargeting, you can target ads to an entire account—as many people who work there as necessary—and filter your retargeting ads based on specific decision makers, job titles, and buyer personas. Using account based website visitor identification (via Leadfeeder), you can generate a list of the companies who have visited your website or otherwise engaged with your brand online. Then you can retarget everyone, or a small group of people, who work at that company. That means you can identify key decision makers and put your entire ad budget to work retargeting ads to the right people, instead of spreading that spend across multiple individuals at several different accounts, who may or may not be decision makers. And since you’re targeting entire accounts, this approach to B2B retargeting ads fits more cohesively into account based selling and account based marketing strategies. How to Use Leadfeeder and Metadata.io to Set Up B2B Retargeting Ads Account based retargeting is the best way for B2B marketers to nurture accounts through advertising, so let’s talk about how to make it happen by using Leadfeeder with Metadata.io. Metadata is a platform for automated account based advertising for B2B companies—and you can use the website visitor identification and behavioral data from Leadfeeder to retarget entire accounts on their platform. Data from Leadfeeder helps make the targeting jump from one individual who visited your website and got a cookie to the company they work for. Note: Not a Leadfeeder user yet? Sign up and try Leadfeeder free for 14 days to see which accounts visit your website, plus the pages and content they look at. Step 1: Create a Custom Feed in Leadfeeder From your Leadfeeder dashboard, click ‘Create a new feed’. Then fill in targeting information for the accounts you want to retarget with ads. That can include attributes like: specific URLs, landing pages visited, minimum number of visits, whether the account is in your CRM, the number of employees, and more. Step 2: Download a CSV File of Your Custom Feed Open up the new Custom Feed and open the menu by clicking the three dots highlighted above—then select ‘Download feed as CSV’. This will serve as your custom audience and target account list for the retargeting campaign in Metadata.io. Step 3: Upload the CSV Directly into LinkedIn Ads to Retarget on LinkedIn From your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, go to ‘Create audience’ and click ‘List upload’. Select the CSV file you exported from Leadfeeder, then give the new audience a name and click Upload. Now you have a ready-made audience of Leadfeeder website visitors to retarget with your LinkedIn ad campaigns. Step 4: Load CSV into Metadata.io to Retarget Accounts with Facebook, Instagram, and Display Ads From your Metadata.io account, navigate to ‘Custom Audiences’ and select the ‘Upload CSV’ tab. Choose your Leadfeeder CSV file and click ‘Create Custom Audience’. That’s it! A Better Way to Retarget Ads for B2B There was a time when B2B marketers had to make do with the traditional approach to retargeting ads—but that time is over. Today, you have access to everything you need to take advantage of a better way to retarget ads, via account based B2B retargeting. That means you can better allocate budget and target ads to complement your B2B, ABM, and account based selling tactics—yielding more targeted and effective ads—with a more efficient ad spend.