According to a recent SWZD research study, return on marketing investment (ROI) is the top metric tracked by B2B marketers. This metric will grow in importance as organizations increasingly shift to a revenue marketing model in which marketers are held more accountable and marketing spend is more closely linked to the ultimate goal of generating revenue.
The key to building a robust pipeline is implementing full-funnel demand generation campaigns. Marketers can optimize campaign performance by leveraging intent data to realize greater return on marketing investment by using insights to reduce cost of acquiring new accounts, shorten sales cycles, identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, improve conversion and customer retention rates, and more.
Let’s look at how intent data helps amplify demand generation performance.
How Intent Data Maximizes Demand Generation Performance and ROI
Lower Customer Acquisition Costs
Businesses acquire new customers by identifying prospects and nurturing them along the buyer’s journey until they become paying customers. Intent data can accelerate this process and lower customer acquisition costs by allowing marketers to focus their efforts on accounts with the highest propensity to purchase, allowing for more targeted messaging, more relevant content delivery, and improving lead qualification.
Pro tip: Intent data isn’t just for targeting. By tracking intent signals across multiple touchpoints, you can:
- Know at which stage your prospects are in their buying journey
- Create paths to purchase for each account
- Identify decision points as prospects move through the funnel
- Get contacts qualified faster
- Enable the sales team to close deals faster
- Acquire net new accounts at lower costs
Shorten Sales Cycles
The needs of the buying collective are complex. Customize your nurture campaigns and sales pitches with messaging that speaks to stakeholders’ wants, objections, and questions. By addressing these issues head on, marketers can better influence purchase decisions – accelerating the process of qualifying prospects and shortening sales cycles.
Ask yourself the following questions to help focus your demand generation efforts on prospects who are the right fit and are in-market to buy:
- Who’s considered in-market to buy?
- How do they engage with different types of content?
- What are their views about the market related to your product/solution?
- What are the factors that define a qualified lead?
Pro tip: Evaluate important performance metrics (e.g., win-rate percentages, conversion rates) to understand:
- How effectively MQLs are qualified, nurtured, and converted to be sales ready
- When a demand generation strategy needs to be optimized (e.g., when a prospective contact loses interest and drops off in the middle of the funnel)
Improve Customer Retention Rates and Identify Cross-Sell and Upsell Opportunities
Intent data tracks signals from your existing customers and gives valuable information that can help identify at-risk accounts. Understanding who is researching competitor products/solutions serves as an early warning system, allowing you to kick off retention and re-engagement efforts proactively, thereby reducing churn and increasing renewal rates, optimizing marketing budgets, and improving sales performance.
Pro tip: While your peers and competitors may be monitoring webpage visits to capture intent signals, you can take it a step further by capturing signals from “behind the firewall” and other sources such as remote support interactions, Q&A, and professional online communities, where your prospects and customers come together to discuss, share reviews, and address challenges.
Intent Data: Strategic Insight to Amplify Demand Generation
In a competitive world, where uncertain economic circumstances are leading to a constant shift in buyer sentiment, demand generation marketers need to be at the top of their game. Adding Authentic Intent™ to your demand generation toolkit can help you track buyer intent signals across multiple platforms, create paths to purchase for each group, and tailor messaging as prospects move through the purchase funnel.
Suggested further reading: The B2B Guide to Intent Data Solutions: The Strategic Value of Intent Data