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David Crane, VP of Product Marketing at Intentsify, explains why making smart investments that prioritize digital initiatives and smart budget tradeoffs drives business resiliency, growth, and profits .
Many companies are hesitant to invest in their technology stacks due to the uncertain economic outlook. 70% of digital leaders They reported that they missed significant progress towards their digital transformation goals last year.
Economic uncertainty makes it natural for organizations to take a conservative approach to technology spending. Carving out systems and tools from your martech stack is appealing as a quick fix to budget problems, but it’s not always the most practical one. The main advantage of technology is always efficiency. And now efficiency is very important.
Leaders who choose to level up their stacks and, more importantly, how they use their stacks, can gain a significant advantage over their competitors. Strategic technology investments and smart implementation will support resilience today and foster rapid growth when economic headwinds subside.
Prioritize tools that increase efficiency across your team
Although there is still significant headroom in the total labor market (mainly in the hospitality, healthcare, and government sectors), many B2B companies have been hit hard. This is especially true in the technology industry. And for some mind-boggling reasons, many marketing teams are still often considered cost centers and are a fraction of their previous size. Technology is not a panacea, but it is often a key element to the efficiency that today’s businesses require.
But despite banner ads and seller hype, effective technology implementation is rarely quick or easy. Usually it’s a process of one step back and him three steps forward. Careful navigation of cross-functional coordination, change management, fine-tuning of strategy, education, skills training, and indeed vendor support often determines the success of technology deployments.
So how can B2B marketing teams ensure their technology investments achieve their desired goals?
- By investing in solutions that support a clearly defined strategy and solve well-understood challenges (preferably in a variety of ways).
- Ensure buy-in from all stakeholders
- and develop a thoughtful implementation strategy.
That’s why we’re turning to a technology solution that has seen rapid adoption in recent years: intent data, with its ability to drive efficiency and improve the buyer experience across numerous use cases across the customer lifecycle. Let’s take a look. Although this is the most efficient driver, it is not necessarily the easiest to implement, making it the perfect example to consider here.
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Intent data and its many benefits and use cases
At the most basic level, intent data Information collected about an account or individual’s content consumption and research activities. A good intent data solution, when implemented correctly, along with a solid go-to-market (GTM) strategy, allows B2B marketing teams to:
- Identify which accounts to target for marketing and sales efforts, allowing for more efficient time and resource allocation.
- Identify where your prospects are in their buyer journey and help choose the right engagement channels and tactics.
- Understand your target accounts’ challenges and what they care about so you can choose the right messages, talk tracks, and content to use with those accounts.
- Uncover your current customer mindset, needs, and priorities to highlight upsell opportunities and churn risks.
- Identify changes and opportunities within your market and across your target audience.
- Map typical buyer behavior and continually update it
- Assess competitive risk
Additionally, such intelligence can drive the effectiveness of the demand funnel and the numerous systems used throughout the customer lifecycle, multiplying the value that intent data brings to B2B organizations.
Simply put, the best intent data solution improves the buyer experience, increases conversion rates and pipeline velocity, and saves time and money while reducing customer acquisition costs and customer churn.
The right tools drive investment
Recent data shows that 79% of GTM teams Leverage intent data to solve the challenge of effective resource/budget allocation for your marketing plan. However, not all intent data solutions are the same. Technologies, features, and value vary widely from vendor to vendor. Here are some of the features to look for when choosing an intent data provider.
1. AI-powered intent data tracking: This has several implications, but at least it uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand the context of the content your audience is consuming, rather than simply counting the number of times your target account visits a web page. Requires an intent vendor to analyze. Contains tracked keywords.
2. Custom intent modeling: Ask your intent vendor how their solution is customized to your needs. For example, does your intent model weight topics and keywords according to their importance to a particular service, use case, etc? A one-size-fits-all intent model has limited value.
3. Wide range of sources and signal types: The accuracy of intent-based insights depends on a large enough sample size. Targeted account activity on a limited number of websites does not indicate intent. That’s why intent solutions that synthesize signals from multiple sources, such as ad exchanges, social media platforms, and publisher cooperatives, provide more accurate and deeper insights.
4. Solutions that help you act quickly on intent insights: Data matters. But B2B marketers, especially today’s lean teams, are busy. Look for solutions to turn insights into action, including triggering actions through media programs and integrated systems.
Intents provides an advanced level of intelligence that allows B2B organizations to deploy time and resources where, when, and how they have the greatest impact. However, there are many use cases that span all GTM features, so rolling out intent data can be difficult.
Implementing intents into your technology stack
Setting up intent models, analyzing the resulting data, and acting on aggregated intelligence can be difficult for unprepared organizations. Here are some important steps to ensure a successful intent data implementation.
1. Start with one or two use cases. It’s easy to get excited about all the ways to use intent data, but it’s best to start with a focused approach and expand from there. We also recommend starting with use cases that are easy to implement, such as digital advertising.
2. Gain broad buy-in from all potential stakeholders: You’ll probably start with marketing use cases (and only a few), but you should talk to your sales and customer success leaders early on. That way, your users will be more excited and prepared when the time comes to expand your use case.
3. Create a strategy for using your intent solution. As discussed earlier, intent data can and should drive the use of other GTM systems. Start thinking about how data flows between systems and how that impacts the strategies and tactics that drive the use of those systems. For example, if you use account or lead scoring intent insights in your marketing automation platform, how do you weigh that information against other variables?
4. Set key goals for using intent data. This allows you to continue striving to extract as much value as possible from your intentional investments, which in turn allows you to generate more value from all your other marketing programs and technology investments.
For B2B companies today, investing in the right technologies and using them correctly is paramount. Most of this article uses intent data examples, but here are the key takeaways: Technology is a perennial priority for today’s businesses, and companies that seek to extract the most value from their current technology stacks will outperform those that blindly reduce investment.
How are you adapting your technology stack for resilience in times of uncertainty? Share your strategies and challenges with us Facebook, Xand linkedin. We look forward to hearing from you!
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