When envisioning a new B2B campaign, how are marketers to know they are reaching the right people with the right messages?
Marketers in the Mad Men era had to guess, using a combination of amateur psychology and their own understanding of the customer base.
Today, we have much more data at our disposal. There is no need to guess what your prospects want, need, or have already researched. Thanks to intent data and artificial intelligence, it is now possible to have a much stronger understanding of individual prospects — and to craft messages just for them.
Data Provides a Jumping-Off Point to Power Inspiration
With just a few data points, you can tell a lot about your site visitors. Here are a handful of ways data can provide important insight into buyer attributes, behavior, and intentions.
- The IP address can give you important clues about where they work.
- You can see the page elements they hover over and click on.
- You can capture information about the pages where they spend the most time, and the patterns of content they consume.
- You can capture their chatbot interactions to understand the questions they ask.
- If you are using a third-party intent data network, you can even see the keywords they have searched and the research they have done on relevant third-party B2B websites.
Combined, this data gives your revenue team unrivaled visibility into the buyer journey. It also allows your marketing team to build campaigns tailored to highly specific audience segments.
The work of a creative professional is powered by insight. The more your creative team knows about the audience and how to convey their message, the more powerful and compelling that message will become.
Putting Data-Driven Insights Into Creative Action
Where the magic really happens is when we take the reams of data we have and put it to good use.
Note that:
- 68% of B2B buyers need their vendors to understand the brand’s specific needs and goals before making a buying decision
- 80% of B2B customers expect to have a buying experience with a B2C level of personalization
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) gathers data from your various tech silos and combines it to create a comprehensive view of a user’s activity and interactions. You can use this data to create dynamic segments based on a prospect’s buying stage, keywords researched, and buying persona — then assign the prospect specific campaigns that match their needs.
Dynamic audience segments can inform all touch points: ad campaigns, chatbots, content hubs, and website personalization tools. This enables you to deliver a consistent, tailored message to your audience.
This helps all parts of your revenue team:
- Marketing teams can deepen prospect engagement earlier by delivering targeted messaging much higher in the funnel.
- Those engaged prospects are much more likely to qualify as sales opportunities.
- Sales teams can tap into prospect data to have more informed conversations and close more deals.
Construct a Meaningful Narrative Based on Data
As buyers move through their buying stages, they are constructing a narrative that answers these questions:
- How do I solve my problem?
- What solutions should we consider?
- Which vendors can help?
- Who can be trusted to deliver great work and service?
- Are other members of my buying team going to be on board for this solution?
90% of B2B buyers start their decision-making with an online search, and nearly 70% of the buying journey is complete before they ever reach out to a sales representative.
If you’re not providing useful information early in this process, you’re missing the opportunity to influence buyers and win deals.
Your campaigns and funnel experience should be shaped by the buying journey your B2B clients naturally follow — and the narrative experience you want to create. But that can only happen if you understand the buying journey.
You must:
- Understand where each lead is in their journey.
- Become a natural next step in that journey.
Proceed With Confidence
6sense can help you build a data-driven revenue engine that combines anonymous buying journey insights, AI and machine learning, and an embedded CDP that provides the data your marketing and sales teams need to craft stronger communications and win more deals.
Contact us today to dive into the ways data and B2B marketing creativity can work to empower your B2B brand.
