Activate the Unaware with Affordable, Hyper-Targeted Ads

Vector team

Most buyers won’t raise their hand first. A huge chunk of your market doesn’t even know they’ve got a problem (yet). They’re not hitting your site, comparing vendors, or chatting with sales—but they could be.

This playbook shows you how to change that with highly targeted ads.

The Vector way

Traditional ABM platforms either ignore cold contacts or waste budget, blanketing them with solution-first messaging on expensive channels.

Vector flips that.

We believe you should reach the right people—even when they’re not in-market—using low-cost impressions and value-first content.

This play helps you connect with buyers who aren’t searching, clicking, or paying attention…yet!

When to use this play

Use when you have a list of ICP contacts who:

Haven’t visited your site
Aren’t searching your brand or category
Aren’t in active sales conversations
Aren’t showing intent in Vector or third-party tools

Goal

Warm up cold contacts with low-cost, awareness-driven campaigns and secure your spot on their shortlist before they even start shopping.

Objectives

Educate early, efficiently, and at scale.
Increase early-stage engagement from cold contacts
Improve ROAS by avoiding high-cost clicks
Seed your pipeline with future buyers

Use case

You want to engage contacts who show no signs of intent: no site visits, no brand searches, no sales engagement. They’re totally cold, but still part of your ideal buying committee.

Play Type: Top-of-funnel | Ad Strategy | Lifecycle Activation Estimated Time to Execute: 1–2 hours setup + 2–4 week campaign

How it works

Step 1: Prepare your list

Pull a list of relevant contacts (or your full TAM) who aren’t showing up in any active stage inside Vector—no intent, no engagement.
Export a CSV of cold contacts (not in any active stages in Vector).

Step 2: Upload to Vector

Import the list and tag it “Unengaged – Problem Aware Ads Play.”

Step 3: Build your segment

Create a contact-based segment in Vector with no additional filters. This group is defined by their inactivity.

Step 4: Create + launch low-cost ads

When running problem-awareness ads, skip the high-CPC platforms like LinkedIn unless you have very specific targeting or content. Instead, focus on channels that offer broad reach for less:

Channel	Why It Works
Google Display Network	Low CPMs and huge reach
Reddit Ads	Great for niche B2B communities at a fraction of the cost
YouTube Pre-Roll	Ideal for storytelling and low-cost views
Programmatic Display	Easy to scale and segment by persona
Paid Social (outside LinkedIn)	Facebook or Instagram can work if you’re targeting individuals, not companies

Focus creative on problem education, not product pitching.
- Examples:
  - “Struggling with [X process]?”
  - “Why [status quo] is holding your team back”

Step 5: Track activity in Vector

Vector detects site visits and behavior shifts, moving contacts into new lifecycle stages automatically.
Key KPIs:
- Impressions-to-click rate
- Site engagement lift
- Cost-per-engaged contact

Step 6: Advance engaged contacts

Feed newly warmed contacts into mid-funnel plays with more tailored messaging.

Wrap up: Awareness doesn’t wait

You don’t need intent signals to start building pipeline—you just need the right contacts and a smarter way to reach them.

This play flips the script on traditional ABM by helping you engage future buyers before they’re even looking. With Vector, you can run efficient, awareness-driven campaigns that educate, warm up cold contacts, and prime your pipeline—without burning budget on wasted impressions.

Example H2