As the world stumbles through a turbulent period of geopolitical instability, high inflation rates, AI, and energy transition disruption, the tumult and uncertainty have also rippled through the global economy.
We’ve seen some of the world’s largest and most successful companies go through massive internal reorganizations, and it seems that just about every organization is trying to achieve better results with smaller budgets and fewer resources. Nonetheless, B2B marketing and sales teams will always be asked to generate pipeline and revenue. So how can we do more with less?
And how can we do things differently? Because times like these present the perfect opportunity to question the methods we have been applying and evaluate whether they are in need of a complete overhaul.
ABM: Good marketing for tough times
Industry thought leaders have been saying for years that account-based marketing (ABM) is simply good marketing, but when the belt tightens, the benefits of ABM become even more appealing. Implementing an ABM strategy can significantly reduce budget waste because campaigns are only targeted to accounts that are known to be in-market and a good fit for your product or service. ABM also allows you to deliver the personalized experiences that B2B buyers expect. But to obtain these benefits, intent data is the key to success.
Leveraging intent data to maximize budget efficacy
Intent data can help you determine where your prospects are in the buying process by matching intent signals from across a vast network of B2B websites and, publishers to your target accounts. This means you can understand when a company is in-market for your product long before anyone fills out a form on your website. Intent data providers come in different forms. Vendors like Bombora provide pure intent data, while platforms like 6sense aggregate intent data coming from multiple native providers and also allow you to create segments and orchestrate campaigns within the same solution.
In 2022, Integrate Inc. estimated that only 15% of B2B buyers are in market at any given moment. However, this figure is based on Total Addressable Market (TAM) and does not take Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) fit into consideration. When ICP fit is factored into the equation, the B2B Institute asserts that the percentage of in-market accounts is actually closer to 5%. Add in economic instability, and that number may shrink even further.
This figure highlights the value of intent data, which can provide essential insights on where not to spend your marketing dollars and euros. The insights provided by intent data are also key because they enable you to segment audiences by buying stage. And once you’re sure you’re delivering the right content to the right audience at the right time, you’re able to orchestrate much more efficient, effective campaigns.
For example, in a traditional demand generation program, you might end up delivering a top-of-funnel e-book that provides general information about your product to someone who is already in the evaluation stage and has been comparing the solutions of multiple providers. Your message arrived too late, and your asset will provide little value to the buyers at that point in their journey. But in a campaign that is segmented by buying stage, you could ensure that buyers from that same account instead receives relevant content that could still influence their decision, like a competitive analysis about why your product is the best solution in the market. Not only do you optimize your ad spend, but you also increase Sales’ chances of closing the deal and reduce the likelihood that they’ll waste time following up on dead-end leads.
Understanding where your targets are in their buying journey also gives you the opportunity to carefully consider which channels to use to deliver the message at every stage. If you have mapped out the buyer’s journey for your product or service, you probably already know which media your buyers use to gather information at each stage. But factoring intent into the equation can also help you compare the costs against perceived benefits. Weighing factors like how many man hours it would take to create a certain campaign or how much it would cost to promote it on a certain channel against the likelihood that someone will actually engage with your brand and advance through the funnel allows you to use your limited budget more effectively. For example, you might realize that it may not make sense to produce a high-overhead video campaign or promote an asset on an expensive channel like LinkedIn when the people you are likely to reach there are showing little intent for your product. Leveraging intent data helps you save resource-intensive campaigns for where they will have the most impact.
Intent data: Not just for prospecting
A common misconception about intent data is that its primary use case is generating new business, but intent data can be equally if not even more powerful when applied to your existing customer base.
In times of economic uncertainty, the renewals of existing business contracts tend to get prioritized over net new deals. From the perspective of the 80/20 principle, this makes sense – the most predictable source of revenue is the people who have already bought your product. Customer retention becomes more important than ever, but less-than-happy customers may not always communicate their dissatisfaction with their account managers before they decide to jump ship.
Luckily, intent data can also be leveraged to identify accounts at churn risk, so that they can be re-engaged or have their issues addressed before it’s too late.
You can take a list of accounts with upcoming contract renewals (or, if you sell a volume-based product, accounts who have purchased very little or nothing over the past several months) and cross-check them against intent data. If an account has been searching for keywords that align with the solution you offer or have been looking at your competitors’ websites, that could be an indication that the customer is considering switching providers. Once at-risk accounts are identified, Sales can reach out and you can add them to a customer retention campaign straight away.
Intent data can also be applied to cross- and up-selling. If your company sells more than one product or service, you can identify which of your existing customers is in-market for a solution they haven’t bought from you yet, and then use laser-focused marketing campaigns and sales tactics to ensure that customer buys that additional solution from you and not one of your competitors.
What about Marketing Automation?
Traditional marketing automation also relies on behavioral data that complements the demographic customer data. When combined, they allow you to profile your contacts and trigger actions based on data changes. Some may refer to that implicit data (behavior) as intent, but in reality that’s a bit of a stretch. What you’re measuring with marketing automation is limited to traffic on your own web properties. Drawing conclusions from this sort of data to understand buying propensity of your visitor can be misleading. When you are able to measure the behavior of your buyers and the various members of the buying committee on all sorts of web properties around the globe, the insights become much more powerful. That is to say; long before buyers come to you –if they ever do- they may likely implicitly demonstrate intent elsewhere.
Intent data, however, can only be provided at the Account level due to obvious privacy restrictions. Connecting intent data capture platforms like 6sense with marketing automation platforms like Marketo allows you to make the transition from account-level engagement to personalised engagement to every member of the buying committee individually. Using intent data help drive and populate predefined segments and associated engagement flows that allows you to further build a rapport with your buyers and opens up a whole new world of opportunities.
Sales and Marketing: Frenemies or True Partners?
If you’ve ever had to push Sales to follow up on an MQL or heard them complain that marketing-generated leads aren’t worth their time, you’re not alone. When Sales receive leads from traditional demand generation programs, however, they are often left to do a lot of heavy lifting, and it’s not uncommon to discover after investing much time and energy that the lead you passed along never had any real intention of buying from your company. Why? Because in non-transactional sales environments, it’s typically not the person that initially converted via your forms or chat sessions that eventually will be the one making the purchasing decision. As mentioned previously, most B2B purchases involve a buying committee of several members.
But when you factor in intent data, you can take a holistic view at the Account level and flag accounts to Sales only when you’re sure they are genuinely interested and ready to buy your product, allowing them to strike while the iron is hot. As the recession heats up, Sales teams will also be under pressure to do more with less, so they’ll be thrilled if they no longer have to waste time following up on unqualified leads or pursuing companies that are not a fit for your solution, and you can spend less time chasing them to follow up on the leads you worked so hard to generate. It’s a win-win!
Prospects for the upcoming year are looking grim, but intent data is a powerful tool that can help you prepare for the worst and will remain beneficial even in times with a brighter outlook. With the addition of a bit of technology, you can optimize the efficiency of your budget, deliver highly relevant, more effective campaigns, reduce customer churn, get more out of your existing customer base, and improve sales and marketing alignment.
How do I integrate intent data into my MarTech stack?
You may be asking yourself how to go about integrating account-level intent data platforms with your existing marketing automation and CRM systems that are built on a person- based data model. This is where things get very interesting, because in this case the term Integration does not refer to a technical challenge alone. Your platforms need to be able to push data back and forth, of course, and setting up naming conventions, tag taxonomy, and data models is not usually a simple task. But beyond that, it’s also critical to have a clear understanding of your buyers’ journeys and establish clearly defined sales and marketing workflows in order to make the most of the insights you will gain by leveraging intent data.
But luckily, you don’t have to go it alone – even if you’re new to intent data, there are experts out there who have done these platform integrations many times that can guide you every step of the way. In addition to an optimized integration from a technical standpoint, relying on an experienced integration partner could ultimately save you time and money and get your intent data solution up and running faster so that you can start reaping the benefits sooner.
Ready to learn more about how intent data can help you recession-proof your marketing strategy?
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