Don’t Leave Your #DigitalMarketing Campaigns on Autopilot: Use These 3 Data Strategies Instead

Finding the right balance with your B2B marketing campaigns can be challenging. From messaging, to design, audience, and channels, many elements must work well together to reach the right people, at the right time, with the right message. When you do find the right combination—when clicks and conversions are up—it can be tempting to think that if you keep everything the way it is, it will stay that way. 

But when the environment changes, your campaigns must too. B2B marketing can’t be left on “auto-pilot,” as a recent Forrester article put it. Especially when the environment has changed and is still changing at a rapid pace. Forrester’s 2021 B2B Buying Study highlights several significant differences, including:

-Decisions are being made by “buying groups” rather than independent buyers. Even with many teams working remotely, 63% of purchases have more than four people involved (compared to 47% in 2017). 

-Buyers are conducting more research across multiple sources. The average number of buying interactions during the pandemic jumped from 17 to 27, relying on a variety of outlets such as webinars, social media content, review sites, industry experts and peer recommendations.

These changes, along with the many we’ve seen as a result of the pandemic, mean your campaigns need to be evaluated on an ongoing basis if you’re going to keep up. Here are three proven ways you can lean in to data to create dynamic campaigns and get a handle on today’s fast-changing market.

 

• Leverage Intent Data to Identify Prospects and Tailor Campaigns

One way to adjust to a changing environment is by using intent data to fuel target audience research and campaign execution. Intent data insights are gathered when buyers’ online activities are anonymously monitored, captured and analyzed based on their website visits, content downloads, product reviews, registration for webinars, etc. to identify purchase intent signals. They can be used to improve and tailor email campaigns, content marketing, programmatic advertising, account-based marketing and more. As well, they not only empower marketers to identify buyer interest but also augment lead scoring, account prioritization and the process of analyzing and retaining customers.

 

• Mix it Up with Programmatic

According to a recent McKinsey study, 83% of marketers believe omnichannel is as effective as traditional sales methods. In fact, even as in-person options have re-emerged, buyers are choosing a cross-channel mix. But buyers today have high standards and expect interactions with brands, including their campaigns, to be cohesive.

 

In line with this, programmatic can deliver frictionless experiences across channels by sparking a prospect’s interest with an email message and then following that up with a targeted, relevant display ad – and vice versa. Responding to a prospect’s engagement with retargeted ads or triggered emails allows you to get in front of them again to remind them of that interest and offer additional new information that pertains to how they’ve previously engaged with your campaign.

 

• Connect Identity Graph Data for a More Complete Prospect Picture

Digital marketers looking for a solution to better connect, control and activate data from multiple sources are turning to identity graphs to optimize their campaigns. Identity graphs enable marketers to build custom audiences by pulling high-quality data from a vast array of sources. Identity graphs enable a deeper and more complete view of prospects, allowing marketers to better identify the right decision-makers for their offers and engage more effectively with them.

 

And if the data supplier has a high match rate – as OMI does in the LiveRamp identity graph – you can easily create a follow-up email campaign for the same audience (minus whichever records didn’t match). Or you can retarget those contacts who opened or clicked on your message. This data strategy elevates digital marketing initiatives without the hassles of dealing with multiple data providers or worrying about data privacy concerns.

 

In theory, most marketers know it’s important to adapt campaigns to keep up with the changing environment, customers and competition. And while there’s an overwhelming amount of data available, knowing how to efficiently and accurately use that data is a formidable task. But these three data strategies can empower marketers to take control of the data to better target customers and tailor messages, instead of letting campaigns run on auto-pilot—and run into the ground.

 

How are you adapting campaigns to meet prospects where they are?

 

Outward Media’s proven data cleansing services and targeted, accurate B2B data can enable you to achieve better digital marketing ROI and, ultimately, convert more prospects into customers. Go here to find out about leveraging our SMB and medical market data on the LiveRamp Data Marketplace.