Download To Ensure You Are Marketing To The Right B2B Prospect Lead

A
Courtesy of
E-Book
12 Steps
To Ensure You Are Marketing To The Right
B2B Prospect Lead Database
Executive Summary
Marketing managers know that the best messaging, graphics and drip campaigns are doomed to fail
if they don’t reach the right person at the right company. But it has never been harder to ensure that a
marketing campaign hits a target that seemingly is in perpetual motion.
According to Gartner, 30 million of the 138 million American workers will change jobs over the next 12
months. That means workers, jobs, titles and companies are constantly being shuffled. Research from
DemandGen Report found nearly half of all B2B organizations feel inaccurate data affected their
ability to reach the right people in prospect organizations.
Nevertheless, today’s marketing managers are under increasing pressure to generate high-value leads
that ultimately produce revenue. To do that, a marketer must start with a database fueled not only by
well-performing information, but also the best B2B lead data available.
The key to moving a prospect from a high quality lead to a paying customer is clean, accurate
data. But it doesn’t stop there. Each campaign is different, so marketers are constantly refreshing,
augmenting and segmenting data. Combined with intelligence collected from channels such as
streamlined web tracking, landing pages and social media, today’s savvy marketer has multichannel
tools to target a prospect like never before, shortening the sales cycle and increasing revenues.
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Learning Objectives
This E-book will provide lead data strategies and other critical components necessary to fuel high
performance campaigns, starting with connecting with the right prospect. The E-book breaks down
these actionable areas into the following steps:
1. Clarify the Unique Data Needs of Marketing and Sales
2. Give Your Data A Tune-Up
3. Augment & Enrich Your Database
4. Automate The Data Management Process
5. Segment Your Database
6. Target Campaigns to Narrower Audiences
7. Communicate Across Channels
8. Integrate Inbound Intelligence Into Outbound
9. Increase Landing Page Fill Rates
10. Improve Funnel Conversions
11. Use Data To Improve Sales & Marketing Alignment
12. Consistently Address Common Lead Database Issues
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Step 1
Clarify The Unique Data Needs of
Marketing and Sales
Sales and marketing contacts are different creatures. When sales
data sources now available, marketing teams have the ability to gather
representatives are building their own contact database, they often
intelligence such as:
settle for incomplete or inaccurate records that are passed along from
events, purchased from third-party list providers or even crowd sourced.
• Complete contact information, which includes specifics on title
and role;
However, when sales is handed a lead from marketing their expectations
• Important company information and attributes; and
increase dramatically. Many organizations subscribe to the “holy grail”
• Industry data to power micro-targeted campaigns.
of lead qualification based on traditional BANT criteria, which stands for
Budget, Authority, Need and Timing. Following this model, the marketing
team gathers qualifying information on whether the prospect attending
a webinar or downloading a paper is a serious buyer with power to pull
the trigger on a deal, or just someone doing initial research.
“The need for more complete contact records has never been greater to
drive high performance demand creation campaigns,” explains Shawn Dyer,
Director of Data Strategies for Televerde. “Fortunately, there are also more
opportunities than ever before to close data gaps. Marketing automation
enables tracking of digital behavior on a lead-by-lead basis, and all that
In order to qualify leads and build out their profile, marketing needs
intelligence can then be embedded into the contact record. At the end of
deeper data and intelligence to effectively filter and nurture contacts
the day, a more complete contact record enables a more relevant set of
into truly qualified leads.
touch points with each prospect, and relevance can improve conversion
CRM systems provide powerful functionality to help marketers get this
rate and accelerate lead movement through the pipeline.”
done – if they’re fed the right data. Thanks to the growing number of rich
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Step 2
Give Your Data A Tune-Up
Marketing campaigns are like Formula One racecars: both need the
Many B2B marketing executives
right fuel for optimal performance. In marketing, that means having
inherit a database that has
the capability to quickly assess a database to ensure that it is delivering
been handed down from the
up-to-date, accurate information. Research conducted by marketing
company’s CRM system, and
automation vendor Eloqua has shown that a high quality B2B prospect
is often filled with outdated,
database can dramatically improve lead conversion by up to 260%. Yet
inaccurate and incomplete
for some marketers, data quality still remains a low priority.
records. This makes it extremely
One of the first steps in the tune-up process is conducting a needs
analysis to find out what your marketing database should look like in the
future. Part of that exercise is clarifying how marketing’s data will differ
A high-quality B2B
prospect database can
dramatically improve
lead conversion by up
to 260%.
- Eloqua Research
challenging to effectively analyze
campaign results and conversion rates.
“The longer an organization goes without addressing that quality, the
from the sales team. Once
worse it gets,’’ continued Dyer. “Our experience has proven that a
those structural steps are
deliberate focus on filling data gaps can dramatically improve lead
addressed, the harder
performance. Many organizations that we work with come to us with
work begins with digging
their own data or data from other sources that typically falls below
into the existing data to
what SiriusDecisions says is a standard 25% rate of unusable records for
determine the health of
organizations that deploy average data quality management practices.
your existing database.
We’re seeing 35% unusable records and in some cases even more.
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Step 3
Augment & Enrich Your Database
With a blend of strong data practices, including comprehensive and
Industry estimates show that data decays at a rate of 25% to 30% per
ongoing data diagnostics, that unusable record rate can improve
year. Therefore, just to maintain a given database, marketers need to
significantly, which makes marketing programs much more targeted,
grow that database by that same percentage each year to replace the
improves conversion rates, and ultimately results in more closed-won deals.’’
contacts whose information has become inaccurate. Marketing teams
The process of identifying and analyzing those gaps typically reveals the
problem areas of a marketing database, which often leads to the next
necessary steps of cleansing, appending and refreshing.
• The cleansing phase identifies duplicate and incomplete records.
Ideally, de-duping names, titles and companies repeated in
now need a strategy to augment and enrich their databases after the
cleanup phase.
Database augmentation becomes even more critical when companies
are launching new products and expanding into new regions or
vertical industries.
inconsistent ways, such as spelling, abbreviations or initials, should
In these cases, marketing teams
result in a single record with current information matched to the
are relied upon to support the
contact’s profile.
sales team with fresh prospects,
• Appending adds information from other areas of an organization’s
database, such as email addresses or phone numbers.
• Refreshing helps to remove records that are outdated or invalid,
and replaces old names with current information.
or new opportunities within
existing leads. For example, if
a company expands into Latin
America for the first time, the
sales team will need some initial
prospects to pursue.
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Case In Point:
Keeping databases
Eloqua Uses Role-Based Contacts To Support
New Geographic Rollouts
“campaign ready” can
Marketing automation provider Eloqua worked with
Reachforce to build a targeted custom database of role-based
contacts focused on four key geographic locations. It used
that information to fuel an automated, multi-touch, multimodal campaign. The fresh leads were scored and passed off
to sales.
on revenue. Working with
“Quality of data has been key in getting our new sales team
ramped,’’ said an Eloqua sales VP. “We can directly correlate
the role-based contacts to the people we want to talk to and
efficiently target them to fill our sales pipeline.’’
have a significant impact
a comprehensive B2B
lead data enhancement
service provider, marketing
and sales teams can
Industry estimates show that
data decays at rate of 25%
to 30% per year. Therefore,
just to maintain a given
database, marketers need to
grow that database by that
same percentage each year.
standardize all account
and company information.
These services also score
email addresses for deliverability and augment contacts and leads with
more information to help power segmentation and targeting.
A data enhancement service can also fill in the database’s “white
While the criteria for leads may be lowered initially, marketing’s
space,” replacing the missing email addresses from outside industry
involvement is even more vital to help sales get up to speed in learning
sources. It also assesses the database to identify and quantify fill
the needs and nuances of a new market.
gaps, as well as calculate the financial opportunity in making a
database campaign ready.
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Step 4
Automate The Data
Management Process
Case In Point:
nCircle Protects Data Investments
Susan McCorriston, Director of Marketing Communications at
nCircle, realized the financial drain on her organization.
Every month marketers lose about 3% of their leads, based on job
switching alone. Depending on the size of the database, this attrition
can quickly add up to a substantial loss in value from a financial
standpoint, and contributes to labor drain when identifying and
replacing those contacts.
By implementing automated contact management solutions, B2B
marketers are able to work inside their CRM systems to clean, grow
and enrich their database with up-to-date and accurate information.
In addition to increasing the completeness of their data and leads,
marketers are using these services to purchase highly targeted and
segmented net new leads to support upcoming campaigns and events.
This automated approach to data enables marketers to monitor and
manage the overall accuracy of information, as well as source new
records in a very smart way that reports what blanks and gaps need
filling relating to target markets and personas.
“We spent so much of our budget on acquiring names, I couldn’t
stand to see so many of them simply `go dark’ when we couldn’t
make contact,’’ she said. “When someone hits the delete key, we
flush $25 of marketing spend down the drain. It was gut wrenching
for me.”
McCorriston “stopped the bleeding” by bringing in an automated
system that did more than just standardize, de-duplicate, merge lists
and append missing information prior to CRM implementation. It
added missing attributes such as phone, mailing address, industry,
company revenue and flagged the number of employees.
Duplicate records were identified not just by names, but by
addresses, titles and phone numbers. Standard industrial
classification (SIC) and North American Industry Classification
System (NAICS) codes were appended and email deliverability was
scored. Overall, in the first quarter after working with ReachForce,
nCircle was able to identify over a half million dollars in sales that
grew out of lead records that were candidates for deletion.
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Step 5
Segment Your Database
In the current business climate, every marketer must demonstrate
Once a database is segmented,
real value and show how marketing spend contributes to the top and
it becomes easier to create
bottom line in ways that are measurable. The days of batch and blast
profiles of top customers
emails where campaigns are tossed over the wall in hopes of landing
and identify their similar
leads are long gone.
characteristics. For instance,
Best practices have shown one of the best ways to achieve these
goals is by segmenting lead databases. The more a database is
segmented into smaller, similar groups, the easier it is to target the
marketing’s message. Targeting your lead generation activities can
an organization may be more
Targeting your lead
generation activities
can improve your
revenue outcomes
by 781%.
successful selling to larger
- Jupiter Research
companies, companies with
several divisions or smaller businesses.
improve your revenue outcomes by 781%, according to a recent
After those common characteristics have been established, an
study by Jupiter Research.
organization can identify those companies with the highest propensity
to buy. By matching those profiles to the database, the marketing team
Some of the segmentation criteria marketers are using to increase the
can determine where contacts are needed and fill in the blanks on
intelligence and value of their data include:
empty fields or with additional contacts.
•Geography;
•Special interest group;
•Industry;
•Company size or revenue; and/or
•Prospect title;
•Technology install base.
•Role (decision maker or end user);
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Step 6
To target more effectively, organizations can ask questions like:
• What is the need that the customer wants to address?
• Who is the customer’s end user?
Target Campaigns to Narrower Audiences
Not every marketing campaign can be all things to all customers. In fact,
the average response rate for a generic marketing campaign is less than
3%. To determine which customers should be included in a narrower
campaign, start by asking “who” rather than “how many,” as in who are
• What is the contact’s role in the organization and are there other
people you must consider?
the most likely prospects.
As marketing and sales teams become more sophisticated with their
In addition to providing the answers to many of these questions,
segmenting campaigns can also help companies better understand
their prospect profile, based on their activity. By combining
segmentation strategies
into nurturing campaigns,
marketing and sales teams
measurement and execution, SiriusDecisions’ Managing Director
John Neeson recently pointed out that segmentation and targeting
capabilities have emerged as key competitive differentiators. Neeson
said segmentation and targeting are especially important as companies
look to “get into new segments, or consolidate” existing verticals or
product lines.
have also developed
Industry analysts have also cited an emerging trend around behavior-
deeper intelligence into
based segmentation in driving personalized/customized content to distinct
typical buying cycles.
buyers. Progressive marketing organizations are now working more closely
with sales to define campaigns for very targeted groups of prospects.
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Using online prospect intelligence tools, marketing teams are able to
By reviewing recent pipeline activity
build and execute campaigns for very refined groups with a specific call
and customer-win data, marketing and
to action.
sales can map their campaigns around
These targeted prospect groups are often modeled based on the
attributes of current customers. With access to profiles of similar
prospects, sales and marketing are able to narrow their focus and
deliver a targeted message that has a better chance of resonating
with an audience.
key qualifying characteristics and key
questions such as:
The average response
rate for a generic
marketing campaign
is less than 3%.
• In which market segments am I
closing the most deals?
• In which market segments are deals closing the fastest?
• What are the common characteristics of companies in those
market segments?
• What other market segments share those common characteristics?
This focus on narrower, more targeted audiences, augmented with more
sophisticated demand generation and marketing automation tools,
often results with a renewed appreciation for the quality of leads over
quantity. By having relevant data on a targeted group of prospects, both
marketing and sales can establish a digital dialogue and greatly increase
their chances of progressing a contact to a customer.
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Step 7
Connect Across Channels
Step 8
Integrate Inbound Intelligence
Into Outbound
B2B sales and marketing strategies have historically focused their lead
In order to build a relevant conversation with prospects, it is critical to
generation initiatives on traditional channels such as email or telesales.
have a two-way dialogue that is able to identify the needs of buyers. For
However, the reality is most B2B buyers now start their research process
B2B marketers, this means building strategies that integrate both inbound
with a Google search and continue across multiple channels. Therefore,
and outbound intelligence.
it is essential that marketers develop databases that have complete
records and enable them to communicate with prospects across media
and channels.
Inbound leads strategies can help prospects discover an organization
organically. The trick, of course, is converting those inbound leads
by having web site visitors voluntarily give their contact information.
The good news, according to MarketingSherpa, is that knowing how
Inbound-generated marketing leads can deliver up to 10 times more
customers want to obtain information on the web can increase
revenue than outbound campaigns. In its 2012 Search Marketing
average conversion rate by 21.6% or more. Looking at it another way,
Benchmark Report, MarketingSherpa found that “using social media
organizations can drive an extra 250 leads for every 1,000 that are paid
boosts leads by 30% and
for. Marketers need to develop a multi-touch contact strategy that works
revenue by 114%.” Additionally,
across multiple channels.
“revamped and optimized web
For instance, some people like to get their information by listening rather
than reading. For that audience a podcast would be appropriate.
content was found to double
lead conversions.”
Other people are visual learners or like interacting with people. To get
their attention try a webcast. Additionally, marketers can connect with
prospective buyers via social networks or through partners and colleagues.
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Step 9
Increase Landing Page Form Fill Rates
Of course, integrating inbound intelligence into outbound efforts
Industry best practices have recommended that marketers limit web
assumes marketers have the appropriate level of contact data to
forms to the following four fields:
fuel those campaigns. This level of needed data, as well as battling
abandonment rates, requires landing page form best practices,
including better designs, to make the experience fast and easy.
Name:
Through the use of progressive profiling and intelligent database
solutions, B2B marketers have dramatically improved their ability to
Title:
convert anonymous visitors into named prospects by eliminating the
need to ask peripheral firmographic questions, such as company
revenue or number of employees.
“Using social media
boosts leads by 30%
and revenue by 114%.”
Company:
E-mail:
2012 Search Marketing Benchmark,
Marketing Sherpa
These are the primary 4 categories to effectively profile
and categorize site visitors.
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Step 10
Improve Funnel Campaign Conversions
With intelligent database solutions running behind the scenes on a
As B2B marketers increase their sophistication with demand generation
landing page or web form, companies can append a wider set of
campaigns, analysis and metrics associated with those campaigns
attributes, such as:
have also evolved. Broad analysis has given way to a far more
• SIC Code;
• Employee Count;
• Annual Revenue;
• Company address;
detailed examination of key stages within the sales and marketing
funnel. Marketers and sales are now spending more time analyzing the
progression of raw leads to qualified sales opportunities and, ultimately,
closed deals.
One of the best paths to increase conversion rates is having accurate
• Phone;
and actionable data at each phase of the funnel. “We have always
• Country code;
recognized the critical role of accurate data in demand creation
• URL; and
programs,” said James H. Hooker, President and CEO, Televerde. “Data
• Headquarters or branch.
impacts all stages of the sales pipeline, with the biggest impact at
the early ‘top of the funnel’ stages of demand discovery and lead
These intelligent data solutions have proven to be an effective way to
generation. The data must be pristine at this stage in order to achieve
balance the need for shorter forms, while at the same time building
the ultimate downstream objectives of top-line revenue growth and
complete and accurate profiles on inbound traffic. More complete and
maximum marketing ROI.”
accurate inbound traffic profiles arm the sales team and accelerate the
sales cycle.
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Step 11
Use Data To Improve Sales and
Marketing Alignment
By having deeper intelligence into an early stage lead, marketers are able
When marketing and sales are aligned, prospects move quickly from
to send more targeted nurture messaging and accelerate conversion to
“hearing about an organization online, to engaging with sales to,
the opportunity phase. This deeper intelligence also supports the closed-
hopefully, taking the final step toward a purchase,” according to David
loop process many B2B marketers are looking to achieve, where they can
Thompson, CEO and Co-Founder of marketing automation vendor
track what type of buyers are converting at various stages and then use
Genius, and author of “Sales 2.0 for Dummies.”
that information to influence future campaigns.
Unfortunately, in many B2B organizations, marketing and sales teams
plan separately, act separately and report separately, which contributes
to the problem of inaccurate data. By aligning their data management
processes, progressive organizations are building a shared sales and
marketing funnel that delivers measurable results.
These aligned organizations are seeing tangible benefits such as:
• Reducing the amount time wasted by sales on bad contacts;
• Unclogging the pipeline and directly affecting the conversion
rates within the demand waterfall; and
• Decreasing opt-out rates due to irrelevant messaging.
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Step 12
Plan For Data Consistency:
Address Common Lead Database Issues
The Data Warehouse Institute estimates that bad data costs
DemandGen Report found that
American businesses $600 billion a year. The three most prevalent
almost 2/3 of B2B organizations
and economically damaging lead database issues are duplicate,
rely on data that is largely
incomplete or obsolete records. But the list doesn’t end there. Bad data
incomplete or inaccurate. This
can include non-standard formats (VP for Vice President), inappropriate
starts with CRM or SFA databases
data (notes in the wrong field) and undeliverable emails.
containing bad records and then
continues into marketing.
“Almost 2/3 of B2B
organizations rely
on data that is
largely incomplete
or inaccurate.”
- DemandGen Report
With people regularly changing
jobs, titles and companies, reaching the correct person at the correct
company has become a daunting challenge for marketers. With 3% of
today’s new information useless within a month, having the best B2B lead
data is essential.
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Conclusion
There is a growing need for alignment and collaboration among marketing and sales in today’s business
environment, but it also is important to remember that marketing has unique needs for data and
intelligence into prospects. With the continued adoption of automated systems and better processes,
marketers are now expected to generate higher quality, more impactful leads. In order to continue to
improve in this area, B2B marketers need deeper data and intelligence in order to effectively filter and
nurture contacts into opportunities.
As this E-book has outlined, data plays a key part in solving all of these challenges. In order to efficiently
manage their valuable investment in building an accurate contact database, progressive marketers are
automating the data management process. They are taking steps to clean and refresh their data, augment it
to support key business initiatives and segment that data for more targeted messaging.
Ultimately, by ensuring that they are marketing to the right contacts, marketers are seeing significant payoffs by
generating more qualified leads and converting those leads into revenue.
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About
About Reachforce
9020-I Capital of TX Hwy N, Ste. 270
Austin, TX 78759
ReachForce delivers high-performance marketing lead data services that accelerate revenue for B2B
companies. With the industry’s largest (more than 100 million records) company and contact data set,
512.327.9000
ReachForce fuels inbound, outbound, and database marketing initiatives for revenue-driven marketers
www.reachforce.com
with powerful tools to assess, clean, append, and acquire the right data and increase their market
reach to the right audience.
About Televerde
Televerde is the leading B2B provider of sales pipeline development solutions that drive increased
4636 E. University Dr
Phoenix, AZ 85034
480.736.8137
www.televerde.com
revenue for our clients by integrating contact data, marketing automation and world-class teleservices.
We identify new customers, accelerate and convert sales opportunities, and discover fresh, actionable
market insight. The outcomes we produce are improved performance of your sales pipeline, net new top-line
sales revenue growth, measurable return on marketing investment, and sales & marketing alignment. We
provide a sensible, integrated and disciplined approach to optimizing sales and marketing program
performance.
411 State RT 17, Suite 410
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ 07604
1.888.603.3626
www.demandgenreport.com
About DemandGen Report
DemandGen Report is a targeted e-media publication spotlighting the strategies and solutions that
help companies better align their sales and marketing organizations, and ultimately, drive growth. A
key component of our coverage focuses on the sales and marketing automation tools that enable
companies to better measure and manage their multi-channel demand generation efforts.
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