Intent-Driven Marketing – An Advanced form of Marketing

 Increasingly, companies worldwide are collecting huge amounts buyer behavior data for routine functioning. This offers a great opportunity for B2B marketers to strengthen their marketing campaigns. The collected data is a pool of knowledge and can do wonders if used in the right manner. Marketers who have access to this data can use intent-driven marketing to generate high quality leads. The following write-up will explain what intent-driven marketing means and how it can prove helpful for businesses.

What is intent-driven marketing?

Intent-driven marketing is a marketing strategy that helps businesses predict customers' purchase intent through an in-depth analysis of user behavior. It can be described as tailoring marketing campaigns to customers’ needs with specific intentions. Typically, it involves marketing a service or product based on a customer’s online activities that indicate their choice to purchase or consume that particular product or service. With this method, organizations junk the guesswork and make more effective marketing and campaign decisions for their brand.

Gone are the days for days of ‘spray and pray’ marketing as intent-based marketing, aka intent-driven marketing,  has gained traction, and for good reasons. This methodology is beneficial for marketers as it helps them increase the quality of sales leads, landing page conversion rates, which ultimately increases revenue. Marketers have already made the shift from traditional and have included intent-based lead generation solutions into their marketing mix.

Why intent-driven marketing?

Buyer intent is one of the crucial elements of intent-based marketing. It answers three questions - what customers are interested in buying now, what they want, and where they want it. In many organizations, marketing teams focus on giving customers what they want, but intent-driven marketing takes a step ahead: Intent-based networking and intent-based branding help enterprises gather a tremendous amount of information about buyer behavior and activity to get a bigger picture of what they want. 

Consumers today no longer follow a linear path to make a purchase. In fact, they are very specific about their choices. They want instant answers on their devices, look for precisely what they want, and expect brands to be able to provide it. Every time consumers search for a particular product; they express their intent.

This form of marketing takes the time factor into account. This means organizations need to be vigilant and take action as soon as someone expresses a strong intent. The key is to understand when someone is taking action that showcases a strong intent to transact with your business. This empowers the marketing teams to focus on the right customers and reach them at that apt moment when they’re most likely to make a purchase.

A good synergy between the sales and the marketing teams is essential for organizational growth. It’s also essential for the marketing teams to win the trust of sales. Intent-based marketing significantly helps with sales prospecting as it ensures only marketing qualified leads trickle down the sales funnel.

With intent-driven marketing, businesses can maximize their spend by driving more conversions than they would with more general tactics like demographics-based targeting alone. Businesses who incorporate data to understand consumer intent better and then align marketing to business outcomes can reach customers at the moment that matters — and drive sales as a result. 

Where to reach out for intent marketing data 

Some companies analyze the digital footprints of buyers. They gather information related to the content the person is consuming online. The following factors can help gather customer intents effectively -

·         Product reviews;

·         Website visits;

·         Time on pages;

·         The content topic on web pages;

·         Downloads such as whitepapers.

Benefits of intent-driven marketing

·        Reduces marketing costs

With intent-based marketing, companies can direct their marketing campaigns to people who have shown intent to make a purchase. This ultimately leads to minimizing the amount spent on broad-based marketing.

This means that enterprises can achieve their commercial goals with less budget. The remaining budget can be directed at other marketing campaigns to overscore their other targets. Many successful B2B marketers are not satisfied with achieving their target. The  focus should be to outperform and generate the most value for the company.

·        Makes campaigns more effective

Many marketers are already using a simple form of intent-driven marketing strategy. When selecting the keywords for Search Engine Advertising, organizations want particular ad groups to show when people search for certain keywords. This is a form of intent-based targeting. It is considered one of the simplest forms of intent-based marketing.

The next step, programmatic advertising, is a more advanced way of intent-based targeting. With programmatic advertising, one can place dynamic ads to people depending on the content they are reading, as an example. Moreover, people can see these ads only if they read a certain number of articles.

Here, the buying intent will be higher, and then it might even make sense to increase the bid for the ad space. Programmatic advertising is an automated process and is the best example of intent-based targeting. The money needs to be spent only once for the people with a buying intent.

Intent-driven marketing will help businesses reach greater heights

In today’s competitive environment, businesses need to make extra efforts to attract more customers. They need to state compelling reasons so that audiences trust their products and services.

Intent-based marketing is often challenging, but the results are worth it. It’s essential to follow the data. It must also be ensured that the data is of good quality. Organizations must also have good analytics to ensure sound decision making. Partnering with demand generation companies and or those providing marketing qualified lead services is a great idea, too. hey possess a deep understanding of the buyers' pain points; they can deliver on what they need and at the right time to help cut competition. 

We are a demand generation company working as an HQL service provider and PBM Service provider, we provide B2B companies, like yours, with lead generation solutions.

Get in touch with us to give your sales a boost.

Why is Account-Based Marketing Called Need of the Hour?

 

The marketers who have been doing this particular job for ages have seen many evolutions in marketing best practices. They have witnessed a rise in digital marketing vs. offline marketing. Then, there was a visible growth of social media marketing within digital marketing. After that, there was a hype of marketing automation technologies, which replaced human marketing activities.

The recent trends in the market are Account Based Marketing (ABM) or People Based Marketing (PBM). These trends have the potential to transform everything for B2B marketers. In the article, you can learn how ABM marketing and People Marketing differ from each other.

The approach led by account based marketing is listed below in points.

Working on account based lead generation

Marketers must note that intent-driven account-based marketing is compelling because it focuses on a fixed category of buyers. The approach is personalized rather than a generic one.

Further, start gathering the data about the customers you want to reach out. There are platforms such as AngelList and Google searches that can provide a list of prospective customers in the industry. Also, visitor identification tools can give a list of companies visiting your website.

After you have the list, bring out their size, location, and industry type. If there are companies that aren’t your ideal customer, remove them. The remaining companies are your target to be reached out with the relatable and best quality content. You can also term it as the primary job of an account-based marketing company.

Make space for automation

Selling B2B is a complex process because it requires appealing to multiple persons. The method of spending ‘equivalent to a full-time worksheet” comparing alternatives, talking to numerous representatives, and taking a ton of content for third-party sources is tedious.

The negative point that lies here a lot of campaigns lose potential leads during the early stage because they fail to follow up on a timely basis. So, introducing automation with intent-based data will allow the sales development team to spend more time talking to prospects without sacrificing early lead development.

Let me explain via an example. Create an event that pops up as an email campaign when a prospect visits your rating page or add up a new lead to your CRM (customer relationship management). Once the details are collected, then assign them to a salesperson or account-based marketing company.

Intent driven marketing or personalized marketing

People have their inboxes filled with messages and emails. But still, it hasn’t been harder before. The right buyer intent data can make things better. When there are tailored messages for different people with different priorities, then marketing becomes easy. It is then able to identify and attract qualified leads, similar to lead generation services.

You can make a personalized video that will show them how your business can help them grow, or you can also describe a solution addressing specific challenges that the prospect faces. 

The takeaway

Apart from the marketing challenges, the global pandemic also created many challenges. Things are slowly moving to the track again. Some new B2B lead generation strategies that are complementary fit to the realities of the new normal are leading the way. In simple words, high-quality lead generation strategies are firmly rooted in digital and automation.

If you are not using any B2B lead generating strategies such as ABM or PBM marketing techniques, you should probably reassess the entire B2B sales and marketing strategy. You will enjoy seeing how adopting ABM techniques might help you recover from all the downfalls of your business. 

Take a Look at New Magical Era for B2B Marketers

In most companies, it is an ongoing process to generate interest among buyers for their products and services. There are continuous efforts made so that the product or services don’t go missing.

 But the results aren’t always 100% or even 80%. The reason is inadequate preparation. Some of the companies haven’t upgraded themselves. You might not know what works best to attract your customers until you peep into your competitor’s plan. Nonetheless, digging into the mindset of your prospect can work too.

 The CSO Insight study reported, “42 percent of sales reps feel that they don’t have the right information before making a call.”

 However, you can still lead the race if you know how to market. Your business portfolio can be strengthened. You can turn more prospects into customers by putting more accurate customer data and the right strategies to use. 

Here’s how to do it.

Generate demand and create customers

You do not have to go a long way from where you are. You are already targeting customers based on their choice, location, and preferences. There is just a slight change to the previous approach. Try for a personalized way to market your product and customers. That’s it.

Installed base campaigns

This involves studying the database of users who use one or more of your products. Also, one needs to analyze the data of competitors, partners, and complementary products/services. This approach will help you understand the buyer’s needs and preferences and make a stream to cross-sell, up-sell, and retain your customers.

Therefore, the installed base campaign refers to considering multiple factors such as technology, choice, location, and trends related to people so that the results are accurate.

B2B data management services

Be it a retail setup or commercial plan, one cannot survive in the market unless they can manage the data well. To help companies incorporate, organize, and collect data, there are various data management services offered by B2B marketers. B2B data management services further include deduplication, data migration, data verification, and data quality maintenance.

B2B demand generation services

Your business might need a revamp, and that could be done with demand generation and lead-nurturing strategies. Some businesses are dedicated to attracting top-of-funnel leads via paid media or delivering the tailored message through marketing automation. All of it comes under the B2B Demand Generation Services.

It is recommended to opt for customized lead generation or demand generation services to achieve your business goals.

Account-based marketing solutions

Since a few old customers or accounts are well-known to a business, personalized message or customization is possible. Marketing to these people is one of the keys to getting the most value from the largest accounts. This account-based marketing takes a holistic view of marketing and goes beyond lead generation.

PBM service provider company

PBM refers to person-based marketing, which is a personal approach to marketing. It relates to personalizing the message and delivering the campaign at an optimal time. The marketers in a person-based marketing service provider company focus on each consumer as a unique target, rather than categorizing them into different groups. They gather customer data from other online and offline sources, and combine it all to target the detailed and rich customer profiles.

Not only this, but there are data management solutions, high-quality lead (HQL) services, sales enablement services, and lead generation services too in the list of a marketer.

It’s endless.

But B2B marketers don’t have the leisure to walk away from these multitudes of platforms as they want to execute a comprehensive marketing strategy. All that they can do is gather bits of valuable data from each of these strategies and execute their well-intentioned plans.

To survive, you know what to do next?

Hire the right B2B marketer.

When data management, lead generation, demand generation seems challenging to be managed by your internal team, take the right help. Once you know that cold-calling, targeting a large group of people together won’t work, change it immediately.

Understand Marketing Nuances to Generate Highly Qualified Leads (HQLs)

The world of marketing is tangled and full of puzzles. Agree or not!

Since 19-something, when the concept of marketing incepted, till today, there has been a drastic change in the way people market their products and services. More so, methods and techniques that marketers practiced a few years back might not be ineffect today.

To be precise, there was a monopoly of manufacturers, and the marketing fundamental was simple – the product will sell automatically if the consumer really needs it. In fact, they used to sell at higher prices since the customers had very little choice.

To now, when you can find thousands of vendors for a single product type. With an advanced mindset and awareness, where people emphasize utility, quality, value for money items, the competition is tough. The theory is if the product is manufactured, keeping in mind the quality, environment, and social concerns, it is more likely to sell.

In addition to it, the efforts have to be in multiple directions today. It is only possible to reach the customers easily if the marketers ensure to lure the customers with marketing tactics such as install base campaigns, sales enablement services, HQL sales campaigns, content syndication marketing, and PBM solutions. However, the similarity is thatmarketers can still identify the potential leads and make strategies based on the target audience. They can still find out what entices the audience and strategize the marketing tactics revolving around it, which is more or less the same to the early years of marketing.

So, one thing is clear – the marketing hustle becomes easy when you have access to quality leads or highly qualified leads. The experts of this domain are demand generation and marketing qualified leads companies.

What are highly qualified leads for your business?

Do you work at or run a business that lives or dies by the number of qualified leads that come in. For those in the services business, especially B2B businesses, know the struggle. The b2b businesses are about getting more leads than they close into contracts. The second answer is “converting more leads into sales,” this happens after the business has figured top-of-the-funnel lead generation processes.

“The sales team owns the sales funnel. But as a B2B marketer, you feed the top of their funnel.” – Doug Kessler, Co-founder and Creative Director of Velocity

Meaning, the duties lie in the hands of B2B marketer to fill the top layer with qualified leads, including marketing qualified leads (MQL), sales qualified leads (SQL), and highly qualified leads (HQL).

These are the leaders that fulfillthe service level agreement (SLA) between marketing and sales. Someone who meets the ideal customer profile, has an interest in learning about the company, can answer some basic qualifying questions, expressed interest in talking to one of the sales executives can be termed as a highly qualified lead.

How to generate qualified leads?

Lead generation is a broad term consisting of various methods & techniques. Marketers either prefer the below techniquesof lead generation:

·         Content syndication

·         Outbound content promotion by phone or email

·         B2B appointment setting services

·         B2B demand generation services

·         Website chat

·         Event leads

OR

Ensure the inclusion of these steps in their marketing strategy:

Understand what makes a qualified lead

Whatmakes it look like a quality lead is when they find that lead sees a lot of value in your solution. Also, it is required for them to know your business purpose, credibility (years in business or success story), and solutions that define your business idea. It gets easier to convince someone to purchase if they have a good idea aboutyour business.

Establish buyer’s persona

It is also required to get inside the brain of the buyer as it provides a deeper level of insight like none other. Customer surveys, focus groups,and install base campaigns are all the tools for learning how to build the trust of target buyers and influencers.

Use the right data

After identifying the potential buyers for your business, you can find the tangible aspects of their desires and behaviors. It is not only the generation of data but also making the right use of the data to communicate with the buyers and develop methodologies for converting them. So, ensure that your plan has room for data solutions services too.

Building revenue model

HQL lead generation is about talking to the right people at the right time in their business stage. As quality comes into focus, it is required for you to emphasize less on more number of prospects but more on sales-ready leads. Though you will get a limited number of leads with marketing services such as PBM solutions and BANT campaign, all of those are sales qualified leads thathave a higher chance of a conversion.

Moreover, your efforts can also revolve around using long-tail keywords, referring to social media to build a relationship with customers, creating landing pages in the form of product demos, advanced webinars, and software trials. All of these practices will create a path toward sales qualified leads or highly qualified leads for a business.

And,

You might be doing this last practice, but, if not, give it a go. Actively connect with prospects in professional networks such as LinkedIn, AngelList, and F6S. These platforms help professionals, start-up founders, and decision-makers connect, which is ultimately positive for building a marketing base.

To sum up

In a business environment, where buyers are making decisions about what companies to engage with using interactive tools, the quality of leads has become an essential thing to consider. A key feature of the change is that there will be concentration toward fewer but more profitable deals.

Fortunately, there is a clear roadmap for HQL lead generation now. It is not a single factor or method that leads to highly qualified leads ready to convert. Several techniques and marketing strategiescome together in the right manner for final conversion. The above article involves a list of methods and techniques, when implemented,will draw positive sales results.

Note: These are not all in all tactics for the generation of highly qualified leads; you might come across several other ways.

Understand what works best for your business and put it into practice! 

How to Play with Data for Qualitative Lead Generation and Effective Marketing?

You hold good command of your business. You know the right drill to sell the product or service. You have the right bunch of people around you—your team. But there could be one thing which is holding back your business from growth.

It is the right set of information or data.

Once you own the right set of data–ranging from consumer persona, buyer’s demands, likes, and dislikes, and of course, the right product to offer—you may very well venture out on the targeted install base campaigns and marketing strategies.

The world that we live in today is full of technological marvels. Now, more than ever, it becomes quite important that even the remotest marketing agency has the necessary armor to survive in the competitive world. For small, medium, or large scale enterprises, the leaders can make a difference to the outcomes by resorting to marketing qualified leads services, data solutions, demand generation solutions, and HQL generation services for the consumers.

The importance of the right data cannot be underestimated in the modern landscape. You won’t find the strategies that are created on the basis of instincts and education.

Do you relate to this list of data gaps?

With data gaps, it refers to key pieces of information that are missing in planning and execution. You and your teams are in search of data to conduct some analysis or draw a conclusion. These data gaps can include knowledge about customers, sales prospects, list of competitors and their approach, and the internal performance of the company. Generally, people find out these gaps in the upfront strategy setting and at all stages of execution.

Build up your marketing and sales plan with the right data

For businesses, it is not just sufficient to create an effective marketing and sales plan but also implement ways to generate marketing qualified leads.

1.     Data solutions

For optimizing data, it is required to cleanse the data and remove duplication (if it exists). The service of de-duplication includes identification and removal of duplicate records in marketing automation and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platforms. Data solutions include normalization of data, which is about ensuring that the data is clean, complete, and meaningful for the business.

2.     Demand generation solutions

It involves a technique where customers are engaged and informed up to a level where they get excited about the offered products and services. The process of engaging customers to complete the process of demand generation includes reaching out to the market, promoting new products, and nudging silent, inactive customers. It is about creating a strong database of potential customers proactively for the future sales requirements of the market. Demand generation involves the complete strategic process of acquiring potential customers.

3.     Install base targeting

With the identification of the database of users that use one or more of the products, and by analyzing the install base of competitors, you can easily unveil new insights into the buyer’s profile and preferences. The approach is generally recognized by install base targeting or install base marketing.

4.     HQL solutions

You might not know, but some leads are perfectly primed to purchase. Some individuals are involved in the decision-making process, and who are ready to get into meaningful conversations and have a requirement that your solution can address.

So, the drill is to identify these sales-ready leads and then develop assets and campaigns to engage and qualify them. The data is generated in a way where the analysts find out potential leads, also called high quality lead generation, examine whether they will fit or not, and then pass on their info to the sales and marketing teams.

5.     ABM & PBM solutions

The ABM (account-based marketing) integrates touchpoints with key account contacts across multiple channels with an objective to increase engagement and conversion. It generates data that contains the list of prospects that are likely to buy and the right time to engage accounts. ABM marketing involves personalizing user experience by gaining their trust, custom creation of content, and educating the audience about the products and services.

Another quite similar and next level method to ABM is PBM (person-based marketing). In this approach, the marketers and salesperson get to talk to the prospective consumers and learn about their behavior and choices. They then send out ads only to the decision-makers in the targeted company and generate data out of the ad impact and the reaction as soon as the email is sent.

Sharpen your marketing and sales plan with the right approach

1.     Improve customer lifetime value

There are several opportunities to identify underserved customers. Take a step toward identification, which will boost the company’s revenues fivefold for its products. This approach also helps in the retention of customers. Also, the business needs to find out how to engage a customer well before he takes some action and decides to leave. Install base marketing and install base targeting come in quite handy here.

2.     Change management

Earlier, traditional sales planning relied on account segmentation and historical knowledge than up-to-date facts. But it leads to a sales model that will become inefficient and inconsistent over time. If a sales operations team introduces basic analytics to sales planning, resource allocation becomes much more effective. It has the ability to turn up sales by 5–10%. Analytics has the power of revolutionizing the understanding of sales talent and field behavior.

These analytics also help in identifying the best salespeople and allocate them the most important accounts. It will also reveal the important traits of high-performing people, which will help in the development of other individuals too.

Conclusion

So, basically, when the idea is to enhance the sales and marketing plan, as a team, you should find out what you don’t know. It is like arming yourself with intelligent data that will help in making meaningful and informed decisions. The data can be generated after implementing HQL generation, ABM, install base targeting, and demand generation solutions. Take the help or outsource a marketing qualified leadscompany offering these solutions and lead the way toward actionable insights. Therefore, the data and information will always lead to a thriving business as the status quo is a dangerous place in a business marketplace.

What are the B2B Lead Generation Solutions that Expedite ROI?

Have you been investing a fortune to get leads but still have not reached the desired ROI?

Marketers today are blending traditional and modern marketing tools and techniques to drive revenues. But is that really working the way it is expected to?

Well, one of the biggest and most prominent challenges businesses face in the race to achieve their bottom line is to get qualified leads without wasting time and funds.

So, what is the solution?

Outsource running the right marketing qualified leads campaign to a promising marketing qualified leads provider.

It is crucial for every marketer involved in creating the most lucrative strategies to understand that achieving superior ROI requires not just a business reboot but expertise, resources, and turnkey solutions.

This is where B2B lead generation services change the game by making a difference across several stages of the sales funnel by adding more value and a call to action before taking the process to the next step.

Interestingly, a terminology called “BANT” when understood in detail helps clear the air when it is the question of banking on demand generation services to drive sales and revenue.

Decoding BANT

B – Budget

A – Authority

N – Need

T – Timeline

What is BANT?

In simple terms, BANT is a sales qualification approach that allows salespeople to identify if a prospect is worth investing time and effort. Basically, the methodology helps understand the potential of the lead based on factors such as the budgetary conditions of the firm, need, or urgency for the product, and the purchase timeline.

Deployed to know more about the business prospect in every category, BANT helps identify quality prospects for your business and enables you to realize if it is actually worth it to spend long dedicated working hours and efforts on that proposal.

2020 and BANT

Even in 2020, qualifying leads based on budget, authority, need, and timeline make complete sense.

In today’s business setup, multiple decision-makers, tight budget, and multiple options at disposal make BANT even more essential to find quality leads that can transform efforts to revenue.

Now that we know the importance of quality leads for business success, it is time to understand how these can be harnessed to drive sales and revenue. And the solution is right here.

All you need to do is look for a reliable demand generation solutions company that offers businesses a plethora of B2B lead generation services to cater to their demand generation needs.

Following is what the range of solutions should look like to build on a robust demand generation strategy.

· Data solutions

Data solutions harness the power of data to derive a successful sales and marketing strategy.

· Demand generation solutions

The word demand says it all. And to get everything related to demand in place, quality lead generation with the help of content syndication, marketing qualified leads, and install base leads is a must.

· HQL (high quality leads) solutions

Doesn’t it feel great to deal with prospects that are interested in receiving a call back from the sales rep? This is exactly what HQL solutions are all about. Choose a firm that dedicatedly concentrates on elements like intent to purchase, lead nurture, SQL/BANT, and appointment garnering.

·Account-based Marketing (ABM) & Persona-based Marketing (PBM) solutions

Are you looking for a strong alignment between sales and marketing? The  ABM & PBM solutions are just the perfect fit for you.

As more and more B2B organizations are practicing the art of perfection, ABM & PBM offer enhanced alignment with a promising pipeline that has the potential to close larger deals. You must be sure that the company you choose practices extensive research with skilled resources and up-to-date technology.

It is about time you look for a company that offers marketing qualified leads, B2B lead generation services, sales qualified leads, marketing qualified leads, or high-quality leads under one roof. Because demand is the new buzzword, and you don’t want to be left behind in the revenue race.

Conclusion

B2B leads can add value to your marketing strategy and play a vital role in generating revenue and facilitating business growth. However, it is extremely essential to choose the right B2B lead generation solutions partner that can support your business in deploying a powerful demand engine and enhance the efficiency of the marketing efforts.

Remember, leads obtained from professional high quality lead generation companies will be validated, quality, and conversion-driven.