The State of Data Driven Marketing in B2B Tech
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In this presentation, we take a look at how today’s most successful B2B tech marketers are leveraging data to identify their addressable market and influence active researchers. Since not all data – and therefore not all data providers – offer the same value, Kevin offers insights on what to look for when investing in pre-purchase data. He then shows you how reliable data can accelerate your ROI from a variety of marketing activities including lead generation, automated nurture, account-based marketing and targeted brand-building initiatives.
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The State of Data Driven Marketing in B2B Tech
- 1. ©TechTarget 1 ABM & Intent Data: Overcoming Challenges to Realize Opportunities – Kevin Beam, President, TechTarget
- 2. ©TechTarget 2 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Intent Data & Predictive Account- Based Marketing Response How TechTarget Can Help Intent Data & Predictive Account- Based Marketing Challenges Response How TechTarget Can HelpChallenges
- 3. ©TechTarget 3 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Treating each account as “a market of one” is a great way to get your head around the concept of ABM, but how do you scale that? • ABM changes KPIs for marketing ⎻ It’s not just about leads and conversions; there are different metrics that matter • The marketing-to-sales handoff is not engineered for ABM ABM Response How TechTarget Can HelpChallenges
- 4. ©TechTarget 4 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE 3. Build insights2. Identify contacts 4. Create messaging 5. Drive interactions 6. Execute plays 1. Define accounts Steps to building an ABM strategy Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 5. ©TechTarget 5 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Efficacy versus effort: Consider whether your selection is truly based upon propensity to spend and fit versus profile and aspiration ⎻ Priority often beats purity: Where can I win vs. where do I want to win? ⎻ Data can help at the outset (internal and external) • The size of your list should be in synch with your activation plans • Go as far as you can to define the actual buying unit Define accounts Build insights Identify contacts Create messaging Drive interactions Execute plays Define accounts How TechTarget Can HelpResponseChallenges
- 6. ©TechTarget 6 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Are you going for entry points or engagement? • Potentially counterproductive ⎻ Simply maximizing leads or number of names lead to false positives for sales and spam issues for marketing • Productive ⎻ Sourcing details on the right personas or identifying engaged buyers Identify contacts Build insights Identify contacts Create messaging Drive interactions Execute plays Define accounts Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 7. ©TechTarget 7 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Sales can help initially but this may reflect bias and doesn’t scale • Mine your own data for content consumption patterns • Predictive providers and purchase intent data can help • Low hanging fruit is commonality (don’t underestimate this) Build insights Build insights Create messaging Drive interactions Execute plays Define accounts Identify contacts Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 8. ©TechTarget 8 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Except for ultra-customized small-list ABM efforts, this is about verticalizing your content and messaging or capitalizing on other common themes ⎻ You don’t have to break the budget ⎻ Case studies are half the battle • Once you’ve identified your messaging segments continue to mine your own lead data for content consumption patterns that surface more themes Create messaging Create messaging Drive interactions Execute plays Define accounts Identify contacts Build insights Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 9. ©TechTarget 9 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Be wary of traditional front-end KPIs • The most successful customers focus on: ⎻ Inroads: Get this to an overall level of engagement at the account that sales can leverage ⎻ Insights: Pay attention to how and with what they engage • Pass this along to inform sales plays Drive interactions Create messaging Drive interactions Execute plays Define accounts Identify contacts Build insights Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 10. ©TechTarget 10 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • The hand-off to sales can be a challenge o Not well supported by traditional MarTech and CRM • Key is ability to pass along account insights… o Enable ABM in Marketo o ABM-specific solutions like Engagio o Opportunity object in Salesforce (zero dollar) • …and/or being able to manage the follow-up cadence and lead disposition differently o SDRs/BDRs can be the weak link Execute plays Create messaging Execute plays Define accounts Identify contacts Build insights Drive interactions Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 11. ©TechTarget 11 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE How BDR/SDRs fit into the equation Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse How do they know which leads are good? • “They take my call or call me back” • “They take a meeting or acknowledge a planned purchase” What is their role in this process? • Identify • Qualify • Engage • Today’s • So what happens to yesterday’s? What leads do they think are the best? Create messaging Execute plays Define accounts Identify contacts Build insights Drive interactions
- 12. ©TechTarget 12 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Set sales expectations and agree upon SLAs Deploy new lead disposition models 30 appointments in the next 2 weeks 72 hours to penetrate as many accounts as possible Pay on pipeline versus activity metrics Tools like SalesLoft or Outreach What we see in terms of best practices Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse Create messaging Execute plays Define accounts Identify contacts Build insights Drive interactions
- 13. ©TechTarget 13 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE * Source: SEMrush Marketer KPIs Brand lift Demand gen quality & velocity MQL/SQL conversion Strategic plays Inbound marketing (SEO/SEM) ABM & persona marketing Lead nurturing & scoring Marketing analytics/ data modeling Business goals New customer acquisition/market share Customer retention/experience Sales and marketing productivity Search #1 in B2B tech Search* 900K+ first page results on Google Captured intent Content Web’s largest collection of purchase-focused B2B IT content 275K+ original expert- written articles Audience 150M unique annual IT and LoB visitors 100K weekly active accounts with buyer-supplied data Data applications Priority Engine™ Qualified Sales Opportunities™ Deal Data™ Buyer Research Activity #1 source of intent activity across 5,000 IT segments All accounts and prospects re-ranked weekly Marketing programs Branding Demand gen Integrated Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 14. ©TechTarget 14 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE 1. Define accounts Priority Engine can help identify in-market accounts that fit your profile and help you develop, maintain and refresh your list Revisiting this: How TechTarget helps execute an ABM strategy Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 15. ©TechTarget 15 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Account-based marketing Build insights Identify contacts Create messaging Drive interactions Execute plays Define accounts How TechTarget Can Help: • Identify the most active accounts that buy what you sell • Prioritize your target accounts and identify the active purchase researchers • Identify other active accounts that look like your targets • Target those accounts with content marketing Easy Marketing Hard Marketing In-Market Accounts ABM AccountsIn-Market Accounts ABM Accounts Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 16. ©TechTarget 16 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE 3. Build insights Our data and reporting tools can provide an account level view of purchase research plus engagement with your marketing 2. Identify contacts Priority Engine provides not only which accounts are in- market but actual individuals doing purchase research plus key buying personas 4. Create messaging Our client consulting team can provide you with backend data to build segment-level profiles that inform messaging 1. Define accounts Priority Engine can help identify in-market accounts that fit your profile and help you develop, maintain and refresh your list Revisiting this: How TechTarget helps execute an ABM strategy Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 17. ©TechTarget 17 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE What buyers are telling us about their next enterprise systems management tools purchase Drive interactions Execute plays Define accounts Identify contacts Top Drivers Top Features Top vendors being considered for purchase 1% 7% 10% 10% 13% 17% 17% 17% 19% 20% 20% 26% 28% 58% Kaseya Symantec ManageEngine Oracle CiscoWorks CA Technologies Dell EMC (incl. Kace and Quest… IBM HPE ServiceNow SolarWinds BMC Software VMware Microsoft 44% Achieve better control over IT lifecycles 38% Improve IT cost-efficiency 33% Automate routine tasks 60% IT inventory and asset management 57% System performance monitoring 41% Configuration management (CMDB) Create messaging Build insights Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 18. ©TechTarget 18 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE 3. Build insights Our data and reporting tools can provide an account level view of purchase research plus engagement with your marketing 2. Identify contacts Priority Engine provides not only which accounts are in- market but actual individuals doing purchase research plus key buying personas 4. Create messaging Our client consulting team can provide you with backend data on account, segment and market personas that inform messaging 5. Drive interactions We can promote to active researchers on your target account list; we can drive pipeline from active accounts outside your list 6. Execute plays Priority Engine embeds account-level insights. Qualified Sales Opportunities provide detailed sales plays. Perfect for land & expand 1. Define accounts Priority Engine can help identify in-market accounts that fit your profile and help you develop, maintain and refresh your list Revisiting this: How TechTarget helps execute an ABM strategy Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 19. ©TechTarget 19 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Challenges Integrating the data with current systems, process and activities Obtaining Actionable insights and inputs from your efforts that can drive marketing outcomes Identifying real purchase potential (eliminating false negatives and positives) Response How TechTarget Can HelpChallenges
- 20. ©TechTarget 20 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Obtaining actionable insights: Hierarchy of data types: Account assessment Data type Based upon Helps with understanding… Profile Compiled What you know (or what everyone knows) What’s possible Potential Predictive (internal) What you can learn from internal data Fit for your solutions Propensity Predictive (external) What you can learn from external data State/readiness Probability Intent (internal) What behavior you capture in your systems Interest Priority Intent (external) What behavior can be captured on the Web Intensity How TechTarget Can HelpChallenges Response
- 21. ©TechTarget 21 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Obtaining actionable insights: Hierarchy of data types: • Account level insights are key • The fastest path to a return comes from combining data sources Account assessment Data type Based upon Helps with understanding… Profile Compiled What you know (or what everyone knows) What’s possible Potential Predictive (internal) What you can learn from internal data Fit for your solutions Propensity Predictive (external) What you can learn from external data State/readiness Probability Intent (internal) What behavior you capture in your systems Interest Priority Intent (external) What behavior can be captured on the Web Intensity How TechTarget Can HelpChallenges Response
- 22. ©TechTarget 22 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Obtaining actionable insights: Data sources: Partial data may not be actionable WHO? WHAT? WHEN? Most of the time, you only know one or twoof these things at best How TechTarget Can HelpChallenges Response
- 23. ©TechTarget 23 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE WHO? WHEN? WHAT? WHEN?WHO? WHAT? [Programmatic/DMP] Obtaining actionable insights: Most providers tell only part of the story Intent Insights (Data Inputs) Predictive Platforms (Data “Organization”) Marketing/Sales Overlays (Applied Data) • Accounts only • Hypothesis methodology • Shallow info • Based on your historical signals • Account-based view; lacking new named prospects & activity • Org structures & contacts but no sense project interest/involvement • Limited permissions • TOFU (programmatic) Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 24. ©TechTarget 24 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Identifying real purchase potential: Understanding false positives and false negatives What you think? Reality Correct No False Negative False Positive Correct Yes False True False True Goal: Avoid both the False Positives and False Negatives False Negatives mean that you are missing out on a portion of the active demand for your solutions False Positives waste resources and effort and can hurt Marketing’s credibility with sales How TechTarget Can HelpChallenges Response
- 25. ©TechTarget 25 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Success in B2B starts with accurate insight into purchase intent It all comes down to rank and relevancy Content Focus Identifying real purchase potential: Not all intent data is created equal Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 26. ©TechTarget 26 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Predictive and intent-based initiatives are by their nature account-based • Opportunities identified through predictive methodologies or external intent signals require different follow-up • Sales priority is ENGAGE • Reconsider traditional nurture Integrating with your systems and efforts How TechTarget Can HelpChallenges Response
- 27. ©TechTarget 27 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Implement simpler and more compressed nurture streams Drip is too slow; use “modules” designed to engage Use your best content across multiple streams Enable binge content consumption/self-nurture New scoring models What we see in terms of best practices Challenges How TechTarget Can HelpResponse
- 28. ©TechTarget 28 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE Obtaining actionable intent data TechTarget has who, what & when covered! When: Deep content footprint and Search dominance: 140 B2B Tech Web sites, 900K first-page organic Google rankings, mean your prospects find us first Who: Buyer research details tracked on the account and individual buyer level, yielding visibility into purchase intent in specific market segments and solutions What: Priority Engine™ is the central warehouse for all this account and prospect activity intelligence Qualified Sales Opportunities™ are individual account reports providing sales plays for an in- process purchase decision 75K content items produced annually 200M inbound visits from organic Search 1M daily buyer interactions across 10K topics 100K accts per month; 18M registered members Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 29. ©TechTarget 29 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Approximately 18M monthly visits ⎻ 96% from non-paid sources ⎻ 935K top 10 search results ⎻ Over 5.6M keyword rankings in the top 100 ⎻ Estimated PPC value of over $480M annually • Long track record of organic success ⎻ Core IT sites and have grown in excess of 17% CAGR since 2013 Identifying real purchase potential TechTarget: More top search results than any B2B tech publisher Monthly cost if you were to buy the organically driven traffic2 Sources: 1 SearchMetrics 2 SEMRush UBM Tech 1105 Tech Media TheRegister Spiceworks Gartner CBSi Enterprise Quinstreet Enterprise IDG Enterprise TechTarget $14M $7.2M $4.8M $2.6M $1.9M $1.9M $579K $567K $40.2M Driving the most valuable organic traffic in B2B tech worldwide Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 30. ©TechTarget 30 ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING INTENT DATA & PREDICTIVE • Easy integration with existing systems and processes • Implementation, integration and onboarding that takes minutes or hours not weeks and months • Persistent access to account- level insights in your workflows • Can be foundation for your strategy or enhance your existing efforts Integrating the data with current systems & process Priority Engine provides turnkey integration and implementation Challenges Response How TechTarget Can Help
- 31. ©TechTarget 31 1. Adapt your systems and workflows for account-based, insights, scoring and execution 2. Combine data sources and leverage intent data to maximize effectiveness and efficiency 3. Change how you follow up with leads generated through account- based, predictive or intent-based methodologies 3 critical takeaways Intent Data & Predictive Account- Based Marketing
- 32. ©TechTarget 32 • Engage us whenever you need fuel for your efforts • Engage us early so we can help you set strategy and support key initiatives • We can show you who needs your solutions, what they care about, when to contact them and how best to communicate TechTarget Strategic partner and execution partner
Editor's Notes
- What marketers tell us their focus is ABM and data solutions like predictive and intent represent the new frontiers for marketing While many of our customers pursue these initiatives independently, they are very synergistic – perhaps event somewhat codependent, so if you have interests in one you can benefit from the lessons taught by the other They can greatly improve your effectiveness but also introduce significant challenges in their own right as well as compared to traditional approaches Many of our customers are active on these fronts so we’ll talk about what we’ve seen in terms of some of their best practices Our capabilities and unique position in the market put us in a position to help—so we’ll talk about how we’re doing that as well
- Issue of balance Treating each account as “a market of one” is a great way to get your head around the concept of ABM, but how do you scale that? could talk a little about effectiveness (doing better by way of focus) and efficiency (picking your spots) ABM completely changes KPIs for marketing It’s not about he number of contacts It’s about the right contacts, account penetration and engagement You can’t just change strategies and targets, you must change tactics and measurement You need to deliver not just inroads (leads) but insights (so sales can execute their plays) The marketing-to-sales handoff is not engineered for ABM Scoring models, systems & processes, SLAs, and follow up strategies need to change
- Efficacy versus effort: Consider whether your selection is truly based upon propensity and probable spend and fit versus profile and aspiration Be careful what your missing based upon your limited perspective Predictive and Intent models can help Prioritization sometimes beats purity (where *can* I win?) The size of you list must fit your activation plans It’s all about personalization but you need to find common themes and traits to scale Go as far as you can to define the actual buying unit At least regionalize… Ideally define discrete divisions and teams Sales can help Otherwise it is hard for you to action and you will have sales handoff problems
- Consider your objectives The issue people run into here is mixing this step up with step 5 (engagement or lead-gen phase) Are you going for entry points or engagement Are you sourcing for marketing or for sales? Potentially counterproductive Simply maximizing lead-count or the number of names Potential false positives for sales Potential spam issues for marketing Productive: Identifying and sourcing contact details on the right personas Identifying engaged buyers
- This can be sales work or marketing but the sales work cannot be done at scale Some predictive providers (and list providers can help) Take it for what it is, profile information versus intent The best insights can come from purchase intent behavior What you can discern from content consumption Augmented by outside sources This is critical to the long game (because it gives you hooks to engage based on interests and behavior versus just situation) and maximizing your opportunity (because it identifies priority accounts) Low hanging fruit is commonality (don’t underestimate that) Themes or traits you can leverage for campaigns or sales plays Allows you to play games you know (key purchase drivers, verticals, competition)
- Except for ultra-customized small-list ABM efforts, this is about verticalizing your content and messaging or capitalizing on other common themes It doesn’t have to mean crazy content budgets You can accomplish a lot with messaging and just customizing the front-end of your assets Case studies kill: Use your case studies like a microsite Link to other content Consider interactive formats Use parts of your case studies as a wrapper or callouts in other assets. Here, sales can help a lot (tap into their customers most common complaints) This beats elaborate research and data analysis Once you’ve identified your messaging segments, mine your own lead data for content consumption patterns that surface more themes
- We see a lot of issues here People set aside best-laid plans and focus on now many leads or names they can generate You get compelling front-end KPIs but your prospect gets spammed Your actual ABM conversion may be low The most successful customers focus on generating inroads and insights Inroads: Get this to an overall level of engagement that sales can leverage Measures: Stakeholder engagement, multi-touch engagement, team-wide engagement Insights: Pay attention to how and with what they engage. Pass this along to inform sales plays
- We see people fall down on the hand off to sales You need to enable account level scoring It needs to be clear that the lead is attached to an account-level opportunity SDR/BDR teams can be a weak link You must be able to pass along insights ABM Module in Marketo ABM specific solutions like Engagio Or you need to be able to manage the follow-up cadence and lead disposition differently Lead object in Salesforce (zero dollar) Tools like Sales Loft
- Set sales expectations and agree upon SLAs at the outset Sales understand they will see fewer high quality leads We’re seeing new models for disposition 30 appointments in the next 2 weeks 72 hours to penetrate as many accounts as you can on this list Pay on pipeline versus productivity metrics
- Actionable insights: There are a lot of data sources that will give you part of the picture—but as long as gaps exist, it may not be productive to act on that data Real purchase potential and intent: Because you want to be able to act upon this data, it’s important that when you seek suppliers that can fill the gap for you
- Account level insights are key (those are what are most likely to be real) The fastest path to a return comes from combining data sources Combining predictive insights with intent can help with productivity - Shows you that accounts that look like good targets show signs of purchase activity – potentially confirming your assumptions Combining internal and external data can help with prioritization - Brings to bear form the broader web, insights or signals that you can’t see, identifying opportunities you might have missed
- Account level insights are key (those are what are most likely to be real) The fastest path to a return comes from combining data sources Combining predictive insights with intent can help with productivity - Shows you that accounts that look like good targets show signs of purchase activity – potentially confirming your assumptions Combining internal and external data can help with prioritization - Brings to bear form the broader web, insights or signals that you can’t see, identifying opportunities you might have missed
- This issue of gaps plays out not just with data type but data suppliers as well. It is still challenging to identify and engage the most likely buyers, both inside and outside of your own ecosystem It makes sense to build productive profiles for lookalike targeting and scan for possible signals of intent But application and implementation can be complex and reliant upon guesswork
- Suppliers tend to have strengths is on area—not all of them. So again, this is why we might look for multiple sources but you need to be careful there too – can you really synch up one suppliers what with someone else’s when and who – these people might not be doing the research – those signals that make it look the account with the right profile for “what” is in market – but if those signals are weak it could be a false positive (and probably one you act on b/c you rang two of the three bells). That is why it is so important, when you turn to outside suppliers, that they are really helping by adding the *missing information* to the mix.
- This scatter graph reflects the concentration of search results on the web for content related to a potential enterprise technology purchase. As we said before it’s critical, in our efforts, to minimize false positives and false negatives and in fact that is largely the point of purchase intent data It all comes down to rank and relevancy; you want to be tracking consumption of content that ranks highly in search results, because that reflects the majority of the purchase research behavior (or active demand) for your solution or the problem that it solves (thereby eliminating false negatives), you want to make sure that content is really relevant to what you sell in order to eliminate false positives from the equation What this graph shows is that there is a big difference between intent data drawn from highly-ranked content that is directly relevant being consumed on a site designed to support technology purchases as opposed to content that *might* be about what you sell being consumed in a broader business or consumer context not related to a purchase. A lot of the solutions out there are tracking these weaker signals in a broader context. They’ll tell you that their strength is scanning the broader web for more signals.
- Predictive and intent-based initiatives are by their nature account-based That means, gain, you need to be able to pass along or factor in account-level insights, scoring or prioritization in your marketing and sales follow-up Consider the tactics and solutions we discussed for ABM Accounts, leads or opportunities identified through predictive methodologies or through external intent signals require campaign-based follow-up (whether that follow up is by marketing or sales) They may not know or have engaged with your brand From the possible objectives identify/qualify/engage, the priority is ENGAGE To do this successfully requires context and content Your messaging needs to address what we know about why they are interested You should employ content that gets you the best response
- Adapt your scoring model Score off of late stage consumption, length or intensity of engagement Factor ABM principles and purchase intent signals into scoring
- Content drives targeted organic traffic
- Adapt your systems and workflows to account for account based account-level insights, scoring and execution Otherwise the advantages you create up front are lost on the backend Combine data sources and leverage intent data to maximize effectiveness and efficiency There is a real danger of overdoing things otherwise Change how you follow up with leads generated through account-based, predictive, or intent-based methodologies Otherwise the unique nature of these opportunities can work against you