In a recent report, The Future of B2B Marketing, Forrester indicated that B2B marketers are going to need to step up their game to meet marketing’s new challenges. Significant changes in buyer behavior, evolving business models, and technological advances in conjunction with a global pandemic are forcing an evolution in B2B marketing from—changing corporate purpose, changing workforce, expanding technology, and changing buyers.
Hence it was not a surprise that when Forrester asked global B2B marketing decision-makers in their 2021 Global Marketing Survey how they would focus to help support their organization’s business strategy, almost half (49%) selected the response, “introduction of a new go-to-market strategy or a significant change in the way the organization reaches target buyers/customers and achieves competitive advantage.”
There is a considerable demand (especially after the pandemic and poor future economic outlook) for businesses to implement a laser focused go-to-market strategy in order to maximize ROI and drive efficiencies —but that’s easier said than done. In formulating your laser-focused GTM strategy, it’s important to keep these key steps in mind:
Determine the Right Profiles
- Target the right audience.
- Use real-time analytics to optimize your data and campaigns, including database health and ICP analytics to ensure that your next move is based on insights derived from a complete and accurate profile of your target audience.
- Identify your ideal customer profile so you target the right accounts.
Target the Right Segments
- Leverage artificial Intelligence (AI) and intent data.
- Use look-alike modeling to generate lists of new accounts that closely resemble your best existing customers.
- Leverage intent data and scoring to find previously unknown accounts that are in-market for your product right now.
- Prioritize your target accounts using predictive account scoring to score your accounts (both existing and net-new) against your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Move to Direct Activation
- Combine predictive, persona and intent scoring to reach the right people, at the right accounts, with the right content, at the right time.
- Increase conversion-rates using real-time enrichment and lead-to-account matching to ensure optimal automated follow up for ad-sourced leads.
Measure and Optimize
- Measure and optimize your campaigns.
- Monitor your sales and marketing data quality in real-time and fix issues as soon as they arise with on-demand enrichment.
- Optimize ABM digital ad campaigns with in-depth analytics to visualize and analyze how your audiences perform over time.
Many vendors claim to assist you throughout some of these steps, but nothing comes close to facilitating the end-to-end process as does a Customer Data Platform (CDP). As Forrester puts it, “CDPs construct, progressively maintain, and provide timely access to customer profiles. CDPs promise data orchestration capabilities to deliver more compelling customer engagement, including more personalized targeting, interaction design, and offer management across channels.”
At its core, a CDP is a sales & marketing tool that leverages and unifies first-party data with third-party data then incorporates a variety of buying signals to create dynamic profiles of companies, contacts, buying centers and teams to explore your TAM and hone in on closeable business. Download The Ultimate Guide on Driving Revenue with a B2B Customer Data Platform if you would like to learn more about how CDPs empower your sales & marketing teams to significantly improve pipeline, cut costs and boost downstream ROI.
Going back to Lori Wizdo’s point of view in the Future of B2B Marketing report – “All B2B marketers should feel a sense of urgency,” quoting the 20th-century entertainer and folk hero Will Rogers, she says, “even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Changes happening in B2B marketing are rapid and imminent. Learn more about what is driving it in this complimentary Forrester report: The Future of B2B Marketing.
