Savvy digital marketers have learned that by now, when it comes to boosting results and efficiency, you can’t beat intent data for the ability to reach and engage users who are “in market.”
For B2B marketers, where the buying process is more intricate and collaborative, intent is an even more important factor in building and nurturing relationships with customers. Knowing just when to reach out to them with exactly what they need is what keeps long term B2B relationships going.
Within the B2B buyer’s journey, there are several stages where marketers must actively nurture that relationship, making them much more empowered during that process if they know exactly when the customer is ready to pull the trigger on the sale.
Pinpointing Key Moments
The data that can help marketers pinpoint those key moments during the consideration process can be found in customer interactions, both in their personal and professional spheres. The trouble is, those interactions occur across a variety of channels and devices, so it can be difficult to keep up with your customer’s journey as it jumps between them.
Consider a hypothetical day in the life of a busy executive. She wakes up in the morning, checks her email and reads Facebook and Twitter on her cell phone, clicking a few links in each channel to read a few online articles. She goes into her office and goes through a similar ritual on her desktop computer.
She later heads to the airport to catch her afternoon flight, continuing to read and respond to messages on her mobile phone while waiting at the terminal. While on the flight, she decides to use her tablet to do research on a potential business partner, as well as conduct personal business on email and social networks.
Once she lands and checks into her hotel; she pulls out her laptop to finish up some work for the day.
For this busy executive, every bit of this online behavior is seamless, as she has synced her many devices to be able to access the same work email and personal social media accounts no matter which one she uses. Her customer journey was taken through both personal and professional interactions on a variety of devices, internet connections/IP addresses, even geographical locations.
Now imagine being the B2B marketer, one of those potential business partners, who is trying to keep up with this executive on that journey, seeking out and responding to her signals of intent. Exhausted yet?
Create A Clear Picture Of Where Your Customers Are
The key to effectively tracking intent relies on bridging the gap between those channels to create a clear picture of where your customers are in their journeys, even as they jump between devices.
As counterintuitive as it may sound, embracing the “noise” of billions and billions of data points can help you not only pinpoint those indicators of intent throughout the customer’s journey, but it can also help you identify and respond to those signals in a timely fashion regardless of the device your customer is using.
However, this is only possible if you have in place the data analysis systems necessary to turn that noise into actionable insight.
Winning in the B2B marketing space means engaging your purchase decision-makers, as well as their sphere of influence, at the right times in both their professional and personal interactions online.
Constant Monitoring Of Lots Of Data
Knowing how and when to reach out to your customer means constantly monitoring their content consumption and working with a platform that layers that rich intent data atop other demographic and behavioral data points to create highly-qualified, accurately-targeted audience segments.
Once the creation of those segments becomes automatic via the right data platform, then it is easier to engage with them in a timely manner and at scale.
The purchase research process has evolved since tablets and smartphones have become more and more a part of doing everyday business. Integrating the data from these channels and, effectively analyzing and responding to it in real-time, at scale, will be vital to B2B marketing success.
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