How Rethinking Paid Media Can Drive More Efficient, Sustainable B2B Growth

In this competitive environment, the fundamentals of effective B2B marketing are more crucial than ever, yet many brands are losing sight of them. As platforms become more inundated with noise, organizations are increasingly over-investing in paid media while under-investing in the strategic groundwork that makes paid campaigns perform. This imbalance leads to wasted spend, mixed messages, and weaker results, just as B2B audiences are becoming more selective. So, how can marketing leaders leverage paid media to drive more efficient, sustainable B2B growth?

That’s why we’re talking to Andrea Ness (Head of Media, ddm marketing + communications), who shares her expertise on how rethinking paid media can drive more efficient, sustainable B2B growth. During our conversation, Andrea emphasized the importance of integrating paid media with owned and earned media to creative a holistic customer journey. She stressed that B2B paid media should amplify strong messaging rather than being the sole focus of a marketing campaign. With sales cycles often lasting 6-18 months, Andrea highlighted the need for consistent messaging across all channels and the importance of building long-term trust. She also underscored the significance of long-lasting assets such as website and thought leadership for sustainable ROI. Andrea advocated for a strategic approach to measurement, leveraging full-funnel metrics that go beyond immediate conversions to capture the true impact of a brand’s digital presence.

https://youtu.be/HdpEGsfjxuI

Topics discussed in episode:

[00:00] Why a weak narrative just means broadcasting confusion at scale

[02:44] Why teams skip to conversions and why it backfires in 6–18 month buying cycles

[05:45] The problem found when sales, PR, web, and leadership aren’t saying the same thing

[09:19] How B2B buyer behavior has changed, and why sales calls are the last resort

[13:24] How to reframe brand investment in language leadership buys into

[17:09] The three paid media pitfalls every B2B marketer must avoid

[21:59] Why foundational messaging lifts every channel, and how to evolve it

[24:59] Demystifying owned, earned, and paid media

[32:11] Long-lasting assets vs. short-term ads: SEO, thought leadership, and repurposed content that compound

[34:48] Brand lift studies, return visitors, time on site, and the metrics that prove full-funnel progress

[37:56] Why you must build the house before you turn on the amplifier

Companies and links mentioned:

Transcript

Andrea Ness, Christian Klepp

Andrea Ness 00:00

People usually don’t convert on the first ad exposure that they see. So you really, really do want to make sure that there are so many other ways that they can get to that information. Advertising helps. But you know, like, like, if you look at you know what your journey is. And really, it’s a great exercise if you don’t have a customer journey, like, laid out on paper and really, and looking at that, not just for paid media channels, but also, you know, like, here’s what we’re doing, foundational like that owned media, you know. And then here’s what you know earned media is doing that they’re really pushing out. And here’s their focus.

Christian Klepp 00:31

The fundamentals of effective B2B Marketing have not changed, but in 2026 many brands are losing sight of them as platforms become more crowded and ad costs continue to rise, organizations are increasingly over investing in paid media while under investing in the strategic groundwork that makes paid campaigns perform. This imbalance leads to wasted spend mixed messages and weaker results, just as audiences are becoming more selective. So how can B2B Marketers leverage paid media to drive more efficient, sustainable growth? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today, I’ll be talking to Andrea Ness, who will be answering this question. She’s the head of media at DDM Marketing and Communications, where she helps drive digital marketing initiatives for B2B organizations, tune in to find out more about what this B2B Marketers Mission is. Andrea Ness, welcome to the show.

Andrea Ness 01:29

Very good to be here.

Christian Klepp 01:30

Really good to have you on. I mean, you know, we’ve, we’ve had such a great free interview conversation where we, we laughed so much about all these random topics, and that was already, like, very telling of, like, what’s to come. But I’m, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. It’s, it’s a very pertinent one. I think it’s something that B2B marketing teams really need to be paying attention to as they move forward. At the time of this recording, at the beginning of 2026 All right, so let’s, let’s jump right in and start the interview. So, Andrea, like for you’re on a mission, I would say, to help B2B companies deliver high impact marketing campaigns that drive measurable results. For this conversation, I’d like to zero in on the topic of how rethinking the role of paid media can drive more efficient, sustainable growth. So I’d like to kick off the conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them, right? So question number one, why do you think paid media should function as an extension of brand trust, rather than the centerpiece of a marketing strategy? And the follow up question is, where do you see many B2B Marketing Teams struggle.

Andrea Ness 02:44

All right, I will start with round one, but with the first one, usually, when someone hears media campaign, they go straight to, like the media teams and like going to tactics where, like, where we really want to back up and just say, you know, paid media works as it to amplify the message that you’re trying to put out there, not to create the message. So if you don’t have that, those strong messaging and those components in place, or what we like to say at your house in order, you know, like we’re not going to be the best at creating the message, but only taking really resonating messaging and putting it out to the world. So it we call paid media more like a distribution engine. And it’s not the message itself, you know, and it’s also, you know, to really, really underline brand narrative is, if their your brand narrative isn’t strong, your paid media just amplifies people to get confused. One of the things that we like to talk about with clients is that audiences see 1000s of messages every day, you know. So like, even if we might be in the right channels, you know, with everyone else, if it doesn’t resonate, if it doesn’t align, you know, if it doesn’t connect and strong, then they’re just trying to pass it by with hundreds and 1000s of others. So really, really, what is that message component? What are you trying to tell them? When are you trying to tell them that? And then we just use paid media, the tactics for paid media, just to make sure that we’re amplifying that message to the right people. So that’s with your first question, what your second one was,

Christian Klepp 04:14

Where do you see a lot of based on based on that, like, where do you see a lot of B2B marketing teams struggle?

Andrea Ness 04:20

So one of the things we keep on we keep on hearing over and over again, because again, you know, I know clients like, really like, their focus on revenue. They’re focused on the end goal. But you know, when we hear a lot of times, when we hear like we need, you know, consistently, more leads, more conversions, more revenue. We got to go straight to the end when what we’re thinking about like, and what we have to bring clients back to is like, what is that customer journey? And, you know, like for us to be able to move them through the funnel, we can’t just go straight to the end and asking them to do something when they don’t even have that trust, or they’re not even, you know, in the consideration journey yet. You know, so with with B2B, especially like consumers, sometimes it’s a quicker side cycle. But with B2B, you know that your cycles are could be like six to 18 months, even longer. So if you’re not talking to them throug...

Ep. 213: How Rethinking Paid Media Can Drive More Efficient, Sustainable B2B Growth