Tips For Account-Based Sales

Buyer Intent Data

Article | October 7, 2022

Account-based marketing strategies prioritize intent data to maximize the effectiveness of their sales and marketing workflows. With the help of intent data, businesses can tailor their interactions with target accounts based on their needs and build valuable relationships with them. In an interview with Media 7, Gil Allouche, the Founder and CEO of Metadata.io, talked about the use of intent data for lead generation. “Without the right tools, companies don’t realize what campaigns have zero traction and what campaigns are attracting the most potential buyers, therefore, money is wasted on leads that won’t lead to revenue.” Intent data aids in the prioritization of a list of target accounts to be pursued for conversion. Additionally, some businesses create specialized groups and targeted lists to hyper-personalize their content offerings and influence purchase decisions. Importance of Buyer Intent Data To make the most of intent data, companies engage B2B buyer intent data tools provided by exclusive intent data providers or account-based marketing software providers. They use these tools for effective lead generation. According to Insights on Professionals, almost 40% of businesses spend more than half of their marketing budget on intent data, and 70% plan to increase spending on intent data. Intent data plays a big role in enhancing an ABM strategy. Below are some ways: It helps with target account selection With the help of intent data, you can define your ICP, understand the ICP’s intent, and gather relevant data from multiple intent data tools or platforms and collate it to amplify your target list. As a bonus, you can also divide your target list based on their intent. Finally, you can target the accounts with the help of all the insights that you gained from the B2B intent data. You can zero-in on the best messaging High-quality B2B buyer intent data includes insights like a prospect’s research history. You can uncover actionable prospect trends that you would have otherwise missed. Using this crucial information, you can optimize your messaging because it plays an important role in content marketing. Buyer intent data can enhance sales pitches by shedding light on the buyer’s interests and needs. It improves your sales outreach Prospects are now focused on doing their own research based on the suggestions their friends or acquaintances provide. With the help of intent signals that the buyer intent tools record, the movement of the prospect is revealed. Once your sales team knows the position of a prospect in the sales funnel, they can decide when to get in touch and work towards a conversion. It helps you retain customers If your customers are looking at your competitor’s products or services, intent data signals will alert you. This kind of information indicates that you need to evaluate your offerings. You can set up triggers to gather such instances and seek feedback from customers to understand their expectations. You can reach out to these customers and provide them with support and attention so you do not lose them. You can amplify your content Content personalization is a crucial component of an effective ABM strategy. Using first and third-party data, you can create impactful blog content, email marketing campaigns, and other relevant content pieces to appeal to your leads. Buyer intent data can help you target your ideal customer profile (ICP). Your marketing team can create content on topics your prospects are looking at and revamp old content to make it more effective. Why Are B2B Marketers Intent on Using Buyer Intent Data? ABM marketing is B2B marketing on steroids. For B2B marketers who want to run intent-based marketing campaigns, buyer intent data has become a go-to tool because it helps them understand their target accounts better. Their approach is focused, tailored, and relevant. Such an approach leads to more conversions, shorter sales cycles, and clearer ROI. Let us look at why B2B marketers are making it a point to use account-based marketing software with buyer intent data tools. Increases brand exposure through customized websites, landing pages, and social media pages to cater to a specific audience Aligns sales and marketing teams by bridging the communication gap between them and establishing shared business goals Facilitates hyper-targeted advertising by providing information on search intent, online behaviour, main interests through keyword searches, and propensity to make purchase Accurately predicts buyer behavior with the help of comprehensive datasets to forecast the buying patterns of prospects Enhances customer experience by providing insights into the prospects’ needs and expectations so the curated content resonates with them 3 Best Buyer Intent Data Tools You Should Know About Here is a list of the three best buyer intent data tools that can help you improve your account-based marketing strategy: Demandbase Demandbase’s ABX Cloud uses account intelligence to help its customers orchestrate sales and marketing moves. With the help of reliable and high-quality insights, you can create relevant content for every stage of the B2B buyer’s journey. ABX Cloud has an engagement platform that shows all of the information your marketing and sales teams have gathered in one place. This way, your teams can find opportunities faster, engage with them smartly, and close deals quickly, which will help your business grow. ABX Cloud also uses predictive analysis so your sales team knows when to approach a lead. It conveniently aligns the efforts of both your sales and marketing teams to create an actionable, measurable, and focused ABM approach. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) for account selection. As a result, your target list is based on intent signals, CRM data, and others, which will help you know your target accounts well enough to create effective messaging. ABX’s account-based analytics measure engagement across each account and track progress throughout pre-defined, unique account journeys. This is how Demandbase uses intent data for lead generation. Demandbase was named a leader in the first-ever 2022 Magic Quadrant for Account-based Marketing Platforms. It is the only company to get the best scores for all three use cases in the accompanying 2022 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Account-based Marketing Platforms report. Demandbase Success Story: SilkRoad Technology, Inc. is a human resource capital management software company. It used Demandbase's ABM platform, which was equipped with intent data, and saw activity and engagement from their top accounts go from 20%–30% to 80%+ in just six months. Bombora Bombora proudly markets itself as a market leader in B2B intent data. It is one of the most popular intent-based marketing facilitators. It has the most comprehensive and privacy-compliant data cooperative on the web. In short, it provides clean, risk-free intent data. It collects data consensually from its proprietary data source that comprises of 4000+ top B2B sites on the internet. It provides the most accurate data on a buyer’s digital journey so you can understand their intent. It has named its intent data solution ‘Company Surge.’ Bombora’s data can be integrated with all major platforms across the ad, sales, and martech ecosystems. This added convenience means you do not have to onboard a new system to access Bombora’s data. You can set it up in your current workflow. Privacy compliance and ethically sourced intent data make Bombora a great choice amongst the tools. It gathers data from websites that are exclusive to Bombora. It has implemented industry-standard consent mechanisms so that all the data is compliant. Company Surge uses BERT-based machine learning to understand the intent behind the words on a webpage and gives you an accurate picture of your buyer’s interest, pain points, requirements, and intent. It also helps with resolving pre-purchase signals of buyers to 2.8 million businesses by using its patented method that fuses behavioral and IP2C (Internet Protocol to Company) data. This data is then amplified by firmographic and demographic data. Bombora detects how many users from a specific organization are researching particular topics, how frequently they visit certain webpages, and how deep their research goes as compared to their usual web activity. Based on this information, it can tell when an organization wants to make a purchase. Bombora Success Story: Hornbill, a global leader of cloud-based workflow application software for IT, HR, security, and customer service teams, integrated Bombora with its HubSpot database. It got net-new in-market accounts every week, which Hornbill prioritized for sales and marketing. In six months, Hornbill found 900+ new accounts that were already in the market, which led to new active sales opportunities. ZoomInfo ZoomInfo Intent helps identify and engage buyers in real-time when they research solutions that your company offers. You can discover ready-to-buy prospects, connect with ideal buyers, and integrate the data with the tools that are already a part of your platform. It is simple to map an ideal customer profile using the buying signals collected by ZoomInfo's database. You can uncover sales-ready leads that are looking at the products or solutions that your company offers. The intent engine triggers signals that are tracked by a network of 300,000 publisher domains. One trillion new keyword-to-device pairs are added to ZoomInfo every month from more than 90% of all the devices in the United States, which is a lot of devices. ZoomInfo can help you identify and understand entire buying teams based on what they research. You can reach decision makers over the phone, through digital marketing channels, and by email to start a meaningful conversation. You can create automated workflows to close more deals by incorporating contact and intent data into your CRM, marketing, and sales software. ZoomInfo Success Story: Speakap, an internal communications app, used ZoomInfo Intent and DiscoverOrg’s combined platform. Their bounce rates fell below 1%, their engagement rate increased by 25%, and their pipeline growth increased by more than 50%. Summing It Up Buyer intent data tools can enhance the way you do business, how efficiently your sales and marketing teams function, and how effectively you can run your ABM marketing campaigns. Choose your buyer intent data tools from trusted intent data providers based on their offerings, their privacy compliance, integration capabilities, transparent metrics, and overall functionality so that you can make the most of your account-based marketing strategy. This way, you can make the most of your marketing efforts. FAQ How can you get buyer intent data? Buyer intent data is collected by buyer intent data tools, which may be a part of your ABM platform or which you can integrate with your platform. They collect the data from website visits, CRM, social media data, content consumption and off-site activity. What are the benefits of buyer intent data tools? Buyer intent data tools provide insights on a customer’s intent to purchase. They do this by mapping the customer journey, performing predictive analysis, behavioral analysis, and tracking competitor data. How can you use buyer intent data to scale your business? By using buyer intent data, you can personalize your website, prioritize your inbound leads, nurture your leads, personalize your emails and identify potential customers who haven’t engaged with you yet. So, you can convert the leads into customers by offering them just what they want.

Buyer Intent Data

Article | September 11, 2023

Selling more and selling faster is the goal that drives B2B marketers. Strategically implementing account-based marketing (ABM) to target individuals with hyper-personalized messaging across different channels is what helps them achieve it. But what is Buying Group Marketing (BGM), and why do B2B marketers need to keep up with it? Buying-Group Marketing (BGM): Taking ABM up a notch by focusing on an entire buyer group instead of the account as a whole, it’s called buying-group marketing (BGM). According to a recent Forrester survey, 94% of B2B organizations sell to groups of three or more. They do this instead of spending time identifying a set of ICPs and making a purchase decision. Let us take a look at what BGM is all about. Buying Group Marketing: The Next Evolution of ABM To implement BGM, you first need to understand what buying groups are. A purchasing group is a group of people within a target account who have a say in the purchasing decision. This makes them crucial in B2B targeting. Once B2B marketers learn about their target personas, they can come up with an effective marketing plan and approach them strategically. In large enterprises, purchase decisions are never restricted to one individual. The larger the purchase decision, the larger the size of the buying groups. When a decision involves new technologies, services, or products, an individual struggle to make a purchase decision swiftly. According to Gartner, more than 75% of customers describe these purchases as very complex or difficult. With the help of BGM, the decision-making process can be streamlined and shared among multiple people within an organization. Driving Success with BGM To better execute BGM, organizations need to change their mindsets, processes and technologies and work to understand how buying groups work together. Until demand management matches the ways buyers are making purchasing decisions, marketing and sales alignment will not be possible. Organizations need to first understand how buying groups work together, then align their mindsets, technologies, and processes to efficiently execute BGM. When the marketing and sales teams align their demand management goals with the decision-making groups, only then can they drive success in their campaigns. Interest from more than one person from a single company can lead to more success and influence in the buying phase. B2B marketers need to move beyond the idea that only the first person to respond from a company should be entertained as a lead if a second person from the same company shows interest in their product or services. They need to understand that no matter how tempting account-based advertising may seem, it doesn’t guarantee success. They should focus on engaging the actual decision-makers of their target accounts. When customer personas are mapped according to their buying roles within a group, organizations will have the much-needed intelligence required to make personalized sales. The success of BGM demands the delivery of content that resonates with an individual as per their role in a buying group. B2B marketers must meet them where they are with the content that they need. Organizations can have crucial intelligence on their customers after mapping their personas and considering their roles in the buyer groups. Delivering content that the target individual can relate to is a prerequisite of BGM. BGM may not be new as a concept, but B2B marketers see improvements in their performance by harnessing it as their principal strategy. Adapting to BGM will give them the edge that they seek, while the rest try to keep up with the changing trends of the ABM industry. ________________________________________

Account Based Data

Article | June 29, 2023

Many marketers define ABM as good B2B marketing. Targeting the right accounts at the right time with an appropriate message is the golden aim of account-based marketing (ABM). ABM ensures not only reach but also accuracy. In an interview with Media 7, Ryan Phelan, Marketing Chief / Fractional CMO at Origin Email, talked about the importance of ABM technology and the challenges in marketing after the COVID-19 pandemic began. "B2B companies should adopt ABM technology to level up their communications and react quickly." ABM technology enables marketers to hit pipeline and revenue targets swiftly while working alongside sales teams. Salesforce provides ABM automation to its clients using AI Einstein technology in their Customer Success Platform. But what does Salesforce’s ABM platform look like? How are they finding accounts that need a sophisticated AI-run ABM marketing platform? How Salesforce Created Its ABM Program Salesforce considered B2B buyer behavior (purchase intent and engagement) to deliver a solid marketing and sales experience for each of its strategic accounts. Accordingly, it took the following steps to kick-start its ABM program: Defining ABM Salesforce ABM marketing team handles campaigns that target 300 or fewer accounts. An ABM program can have many approaches. It can be 1: Many, 1: Few, or 1:1. The smaller the radius of the process, the more hyper-focused the campaign, content, budget, and customer journeys are. By simply aligning their approach strategy with defined ABM, Salesforce achieved larger deal sizes, higher sales win rates, higher ROI, and faster revenue growth compared to other marketing strategies. It suitably approached accounts that it thought were high value and showed buyer intent for their products and services. Choosing a Suitable Account-based Platform Salesforce was aware that it would have to engage a variety of vendors and platforms to run its ABM program smoothly. It had to go beyond building a foundation for its program. For that, it needed dedicated tools and resources. Without account-based partners that could provide them with these tools and resources,it would be difficult to implement their program. They chose RollWorks as their account-based partner, to set up their ABM program. Putting Together a Dedicated Team to Ensure ABM Program’s Success Creating a single team to support and execute the ABM program was crucial before launching the ABM campaigns Salesforce had planned. They had teams who knew what ABM was all about; they even ran campaigns in silos. So, Salesforce pooled its ABM resources and formed a single team to carry out ABM-related operations. Identifying Strategic Target Accounts With the support of technology, Salesforce validated the list of target accounts and filtered out accounts that weren’t such a good fit using their first-party data. They made sure they looked at all the possible data they had, including third-party, so there was no scope for error. As a result, they had a list of high-value accounts with an ideal customer profile (ICP). Engaging the Target Accounts After the target accounts were identified, Salesforce ran campaigns of highly customized content for each stage of the sales journey to entice prospects. Once the prospects entered the sales pipeline, hyper-personalized messages, ads, and emailers were sent to them using AI. Using Data for Continued Engagement Salesforce ABM campaigns used all available data to create new or repurpose existing content assets like customer stories, consultation forms, research reports, and blog posts to nurture the leads at every stage. Cultivating Customer Relationships Using a specially created ABM dashboard, Salesforce monitored its campaign results to understand which content its leads engaged with the most. Then, it removed the content that did not generate engagement to streamline engagement with previous unengaged leads. The secret was to create humane content that didn’t have buzzwords, consistently maintain brand voice and tone, and make special content that the leads could resonate with. Educating and engaging the leads increased the deal sizes and customer lifetime value. Holistic reporting helped them evolve their ABM strategy continuously. By creating a robust ABM program that took care of its targeting accounts’ evolving needs, pain points, and expectations, Salesforce saw a 24 percent faster revenue growth and an 87 percent higher ROI. How Salesforce Got a 30 Percent Close Rate by Using ABM Technology While promoting their Boston World Tour Series, Salesforce used ABM campaigns to get registrations. One out of their fourtarget accounts engaged with their content, and an average of five contacts per account engaged with them. In six weeks, they got in touch with 410 target accounts, of which 110 engaged with them. They achieved a 30 percent close rate for their campaign. Creating an ABM Program like Salesforce Salesforce has come a long way by using ABM technology to expand its offerings. It has AI-powered products, tools, and services that provide ABM automation to other companies. For example, their ABM Salesforce Marketing Cloud product has helped brands like Herman Miller achieve a 200% increase in their email revenue. To create an effective ABM program like Salesforce, you can use their steps as a blueprint. These steps apply to all kinds of businesses, but if you still don’t know how and where to start, find the answers to the following questions to comprehend what you can do next: Do you think ABM is right for your business? Are there any customer accounts that require special attention? Can your business fund expert consultation for ABM and eventually an ABM program? Once you find the answers to the above questions, you can take your first step towards building an effective ABM program that can help you scale your business. Conclusion ABM technology is revolutionizing B2B marketing by harnessing AI and targeted approaches, personalization, and automation using high-quality intent data. Implementing an effective ABM strategy is crucial to driving ROIs and growth. FAQ How does ABM differ from a traditional lead generation marketing strategy? ABM helps you target high-value accounts with hyper-personalized content, instead of presenting generic content to unclassified accounts. What is an ABM platform? An ABM platform is a technology that helps marketers run their ABM programs at scale. Why is ABM important in your marketing efforts? With the help of ABM, marketers may be able to shorten their sales cycle, increase their marketing involvement in the sales funnel, and achieve a high ROI.

Article | September 10, 2020

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter. You can’t work in the marketing industry these days without constant talk of data. Data-driven marketing. Big data. Marketing analytics. Facebook is worth more than $650 billion, and it’s not because cat pics and grilled cheese sandwich selfies are so valuable. It’s because Facebook is just a big ol’ bag of user data. But I must admit and you might find yourself in the same boat using data doesn’t come naturally to me. I work in marketing because I’m a creative, not a statistician. If you feel the same way, here is an analogy that changed my mind. I was interviewing Wharton’s Peter Fader and Sarah Toms. We were discussing how Electronic Arts used data to improve the product. “When they realized the power of the data that Pete was just talking about, they had a bit of a crisis about identity. They're like, ‘but we're a creative company. How can we now be all data, all the time?’” Toms said. Zach Anderson, the chief analytics officer at Electronic Arts, won over those creative hearts and minds with this analogy: Cooking competitions shows where the chefs are doing incredibly creative things with ingredients that are given to them. So data is really just another ingredient you have at your disposal as you make your creative take on a classic matzoh ball soup or marketing campaign. “Data is actually a good thing that they should be embracing because it allows them to be even more creative,” Toms said. So with that approach in mind, let’s look at a few examples of using data as a force for the good while improving marketing results. Example #1: Focused view of data helps nonprofit that sells through ecommerce identify the best opportunity for revenue increase Data can quickly become overwhelming. So many numbers. How do you find the opportunity? TenbyThree© is a nonprofit that actually sells products. The charity sells baskets created by artisans in rural communities of developing countries to help the artisans pull themselves out of extreme poverty. And it had a whole lot going on with its team pulled in many directions. Where to focus? That focus because particularly important with the rise of COVID-19. TenbyThree mostly sold these baskets in brick-and-mortar locations like Whole Foods Market, Disney theme parks and specialty retailers. But with the pandemic came a massive drop in foot traffic and thus sales, so the nonprofit has tried to increase ecommerce sales through its website. The MECLABS Institute team (parent organization of MarketingSherpa) worked with TenbyThree to determine where to focus its conversion optimization discoveries. This data analysis uncovered an opportunity hidden in plain sight product tags. Each basket sold in stores had a tag with information on how to connect with the individual artisan who created the basket by going to TenbyThree’s website. Very few customers were using this feature. If the tags could be optimized to get more people to use the website’s artisan lookup feature, that increase in traffic would also likely help produce an increase in sales through the website. In The Marketer as Philosopher Episode 2, The Data Pattern Analysis: 3 ways to turn info into insight you can see the methodical approach used to uncover this data insight to help you identify more opportunities in your own data. The episode also teaches viewers how to use a Data Pattern Analysis Tool (you can download the tool for free here). To get more data help, you can participate in a Live Coaching Session with Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS Institute, on Thursday, August 20th 2020, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT. In this Q&A session, participants will learn how to set up and use the Data Pattern Analysis Tool, simplify their data with three key dials, and apply the principles of The Marketer as Philosopher: Episode 2 to their own company. Example #2: Targeted database helps tent maker pivot It would be an understatement to say that COVID-19 has forced businesses to make significant changes. We’re all living it, we all know the impact. But some changes are more difficult than others. When that change is to focus on a new ideal customer, it can be difficult to pivot quickly. Many companies have built their customer base and customer contacts over many years. This is where external data can be helpful. For example, TentCraft sells tents to event producers for concerts. But the events industry halted worldwide in March. While the team always knew they were too narrowly focused on just one industry and should diversify the business, they never got around to acting on it. But as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Suddenly they needed to pivot their entire go-to-market approach and find a new target customer quickly. The team came up with the idea to turn concert tents into drive-thru COVID-19 testing facilities, but they never sold to hospitals and didn’t know any hospital administrators. The team looked for a way to quickly enter a new market without increasing overhead. They worked with ZoomInfo to get data and insights for hospitals and other healthcare systems. They used the company and contact search to quickly execute a layered approach. The marketing team would start with a broader approach to outreach building an outreach list of 2,000 to 3,000 contacts. Based on open rates, responses and conversations, they learned not only about the specific roles they should be targeting but also what their pain points were. The sales team would use this information to create a more targeted outreach list of 100 to 200 contacts and then tailor messaging and visuals to demonstrate how TentCraft could address the specific pain points. The click-to-open rate for the broader emails ranged from 15% to 28% while the more targeted lists typically ranged from 35% to 45% with a handful nearing 60%. Keep in mind, when you see those numbers, that this was all cold outreach. Because they had phone numbers, job titles and location data, the marketing team was able to supply this information to the sales team in real-time when emails were being opened and links being clicked. This helped the teams prioritize, move to conversation quicker and shorten the sales cycle. Over $600,000 in revenue disappeared in March alone, but during the first two months of this pivot the company booked more than $2 million in revenue, and April was the biggest revenue month in company history (during a pandemic with the core revenue shut off). They are now 12% ahead of last year’s pace. In the first month of the pivot, they went into contract with more than 100 healthcare facilities which, remember, is an industry the tent maker had no prior experience with. This pivot was reactive. And while it has worked out thus far, the mindset in the company has now changed. “A big takeaway for our team is that we need to always be pivoting to new markets, new products, features and partners. That means pairing speed and agility with execution,” said Matt Bulloch, President, TentCraft. Example #3: Test data shows the benefits of value sequencing for HR software There may be many elements of appeal in your company’s value proposition. But your customer may not be ready to receive them all at once. That’s why effective value sequencing is so important. Where in the customer journey should the customer be introduced to different elements of your company’s value? Data can help show you the way. David Richter wanted to use marketing data to discover how to position his company’s brand and the messaging used at each stage of the marketing funnel. Richter works for CIPHR, a software platform that serves HR departments. “It’s a crowded market, and in any one year we find ourselves competing with upwards of fifty different vendors. In terms of functionality, it’s incredibly rare that any one provider has a distinctive edge over the entirety of the market. If functionality does get developed that is a game changer, then it’s quickly replicated by other similar providers,” said Richter, Director of Marketing, CIPHR. The one thing that sets CIPHR apart, according to Richter, is its attitude to integrating its people management platform with specialist, third-party tools. Since larger competitors have strategically acquired complementary businesses, they are less incented to integrate with third-party tools they don’t own, Richter says. However, Richter had concerns about leading with this “connectivity” in marketing communications. “Connectivity is the USP (unique selling proposition) that CIPHR has hung our hat on in our marketplace and the position we want to build a strong brand around,” he said. “The trouble is that, at the initial point of engagement, most HR professionals, when looking for an HR system, aren’t thinking about what it can integrate with.” Including terms like “API” or “integration” in subject lines cut the HR SaaS platform’s email open rate in half. Approximately two-thirds of all sales leads are generated through CIPHR’s website, so getting the messaging optimized for conversion is essential. To prove to the senior leadership that CIPHR should tailor the focus of its messaging through each stage of the sales cycle, Richter’s team decided to try different messaging on various landing pages on the website. The landing pages were only used for PPC traffic from the same, exact match keywords with the same ads displayed to generate the click. Landing page headline #1 — Generic HR Software with benefits message, e.g., “HR Software that reduces admin and helps you to work more efficiently,” converts traffic to inquiry at 14.1%. Landing page headline #2 — HR Software with connectivity message, e.g., “HR Software with brilliant connectivity,” converts traffic to inquiry at 10.2%. Landing page headline #3 — Connectivity message with no mention of HR Software, e.g., “Connect your people data throughout your organization,” converts traffic to inquiry at 6.4%. Armed with this data, CIPHR’s leadership is now happy to lead with relevant, product and benefit-led messaging on the website (pre-engagement) that positions connectivity as the differentiator. “We now also have a strong lead nurturing campaign to educate leads about the benefits of connectivity,” Richter said. Example #4: Online meditation school’s A/B testing on blog doubles student enrollment rate If you engage in A/B testing, you can learn from real customer behavior to serve your customers better while improving results. Here’s an example. “In building our platform, we have seen immense success from using a data-driven approach for most of our marketing decisions,” said Kyle Greenfield, Founder, TheJoyWithin.org. “One example is how we used Google Optimize testing combined with heatmap and flow data from Hotjar to improve our blog layout.” The online school for meditation, happiness, and personal empowerment discovered that less than 1% of blog readers were signing up for a free meditation course. The bounce rate was between 79-81% even though most readers were spending three to five minutes on the site. The team tested two elements of the blog's layout the sidebar and one inline internal ad placement. The team tested a new approach to be more direct about different options new students have on the platform. They moved away from a banner ad with the headline “Discover a Clear, Modern Path to Bliss” coupled with a list of potential benefits. The new approach was a direct question to the user, asking “How Can We Help?” coupled with a one-sentence explanation of what was offered, and three possible paths: “learn how to meditate,” “increase my happiness,” and “manifest my dream life.” They tested different variations of this idea, and ultimately found that making the message clearer and more direct, with fewer graphics and design elements, resulted in better conversion. This change was combined with testing of the placement of the inline ad. It began as a top-line insert before the post. But the team discovered that users were more engaged when the ad was placed a few paragraphs into the blog post. The previous data informed this decision, since the team knew users were already reading the content and scrolling down the page. With this change, the team was able to more than double student enrollment rates and reduce bounce rate by 12.5%, to 70%. Example #5: Incubator generates 300 leads to help the fight against hunger For marketers looking to do good in the world, sometimes they overlook a data basic your website should have a landing page with the ability to capture data from those interested in helping the cause. For example, Not Impossible Labs (NIL) describes itself as a one-of-a-kind technology incubator and content studio dedicated to changing the world and making the impossible possible for individuals faced with a range of problems (what it calls “absurdities”). Most recently, NIL tackled the absurdity of hunger, made all the more pressing by the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, NIL began working with Salesforce and Postmates on a prototype platform to feed insecure people at scale. The incubator created a text-based service that connects people in need of food with pre-paid, nutritious, to-go meals from nearby restaurants. A child or family in need of food can text “hungry” and the solution connects them with nearby restaurants with extra food that would likely go to waste. In March of 2020 when the pandemic hit the United States, NIL was in the midst of deploying programs across the country to serve some of the 42 million people, of which 15.9 million are children, who go hungry each year. How did they make it possible or should I say, not impossible to fight hunger? A marketing landing page. Verndale and Sitecore offered pro bono help to create a landing page on the site to capture information from visitors in a form connected to a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to store the data. “We kept everything simple, from messaging and experience design, to providing several frictionless pathways to get involved. More conversion points created more opportunities to engage,” said Ross Lucivero, Manager Director of Verndale's Los Angeles office. NIL was able to gather data on approximately 300 leads who were ready to give, partner, spread the word, nominate a new city or get involved in their local community. “The newfound capability to capture individual leads as well as scale our ability to re-engage audiences is a game-changer,” said Joseph Babarsky, Director of Strategy & Partnerships, Not Impossible Labs. That re-engagement relies on the ability to have the data about who has visited the landing page previously and then present another marketing message to them a call-to-action on the Not Impossible homepage for those who have visited the Hunger campaign page but had not converted through a form submission or donation. “This customized prompt re-engages informed visitors and drives them back to the campaign environment to take action,” said Liz Spranzani, EVP of Technology, Verndale. “If you have an open mind the seemingly impossible can become possible. You can see this proven time and again through the work Not Impossible Labs has done to help individuals with a range of disabilities and, of course, with their hunger project,” said Paige O’Neill, CMO, Sitecore. Example #6: The inner workings of a customer review site Most discussions I’ve seen about data use in marketing focuses on categorizing how the data is collected. First-party data is collected by the company itself, and third-party data is sold to you by a company that aggregates data from many other companies. In addition to how data is collected, you should also consider how customers experience data. I would categorize that data in two ways data you control and data you don’t. The data you control might be in your advertising or your website, like “Nine out of ten dentists recommend Brusha Brusha toothbrushes.” The data you don’t control can be shared in the press or social media, and especially on review sites. One example is a site called Best Company. “The entire mission of Best Company is to harness data to improve the decision-making process for consumers across several industries. As a company, we believe we are changing the world for good by empowering consumers to make the best possible decisions with their money. We are a truly independent and impartial review site, promising accurate rankings and honest reviews and refusing to reward unmerited ranks for money,” said Rebecca Graham, Content Manager, Best Company. What this means for your company is that customers’ product and service experience is also part of your marketing. The more you can control and optimize the experience, the more you can optimize this type of data for your brand. “When reviews are available for all to see, companies practicing business with high value and integrity will naturally emerge as reputable leaders, whereas less trustworthy companies drop lower in rank,” Graham said. You can also learn from these websites as well. They provide valuable customer intelligence about how your brand is being perceived by real customers as well as opportunities for social proof and third-party credibility you can leverage in your marketing. “For example, on business lender Lendio's reviews page, prospective clients can see breakdowns of the star ratings on 400+ verified customer reviews, including the ratings of sentiment criteria like value for your money and customer service. Lendio, which currently has an average of 4.7/5 stars from customer reviews, can leverage the data referenced above by sharing on social media and through content marketing and email marketing copy,” Graham said. So pull out your company’s value proposition, take a look at how you express it in your marketing, and then see where customers agree and disagree. Where can you learn from customers to express elements of value in your marketing that customers are experiencing but you’re not communicating well? For example, Cotton Mask Co. discovered that its face masks were especially helpful to hearing aid wearers by monitoring customer reviews, and pivoted its marketing accordingly. But also, take a good hard look at the reviews and determine where your brand falls short. Is it because customers assume your company has a certain element of value that isn’t part of your stated value proposition? If so, change your marketing to clarify. Or is it just that your company is not living up to its value proposition? In that case, you have the data to show why the marketing department should get involved in the customers’ product and service experience to improve it. Since consumer reviews platforms provide data to customers when they are considering a purchase decision, it is important for brands to understand how they operate. So I asked Graham for a bit of an inside look at Best Company. There’s some she couldn’t share (like how their algorithm works), but I hope the below mini-interview helps you get a better understanding of how this data about your company ends up online and a little more about the companies that put it there. MarketingSherpa: How do you make money? What is your business model? Rebecca Graham: Our two revenue streams come from: 1) Lead generation for affiliate partnerships 2) Business Suite subscriptions. Like many sites, we may be compensated through affiliate relationships with the companies on BestCompany.com. But we do not have any relationships with companies that guarantee or impact their ranking or score and we never will. A basic profile is free for any qualifying company in the United States. The purchase of our B2B Business Suite reputation management product can't bump up your brand's rank, but it can provide traffic-based insights regarding your profile page as well as enhance it for improved visual aspects and thoroughness, such as featuring product images and videos, adding an FAQ section and highlighting how you stand out from your competitors. MS: How do you get reviewers? How do you verify them? RG: Best Company receives thousands of review submissions each week. Every review that is submitted goes through a very thorough moderation process to ensure its accuracy prior to it being published on BestCompany.com. Reviews are generated in four ways: 1) Organic and direct traffic, i.e., from users visiting our site 2) BestReviews, our review generation process in which we collect reviews from customers on behalf of the company. We offer fully managed email and phone review solicitations for companies with customer contact lists as well as a custom form for companies to utilize for outreach themselves. 3) Reviews from charity and fundraising groups 4) Reviews solicited from our members ALL reviews, whether organic or company-solicited, are subject to our review moderation process, which include email address verification and analysis via our fraud threshold algorithm (the details of which we do not divulge in order to prevent companies from trying to “game” the system). Furthermore, Best Company reserves the right to reject or remove reviews that violate our standards, which includes content that does not relate to the company or company's service being reviewed, appears to be incentivized, or contains false information. We also encourage consumers to resubmit reviews with their most up-to-date experience with a company. MS: How do you ensure your data isn’t manipulated by companies to make themselves look better? RG: Here are a few of the protocols we have in place to ensure accurate claims regarding the data on our site: Companies are not given a numbered rank until they have at least 10 reviews on their profile. Badge accreditations are only made available to companies meriting them (such as #1 ranked company or a position in the Top 10) A company cannot hide or delete negative reviews from their BestCompany.com profile Best Company believes the moderated reviews published on its site to be valid unless proven otherwise by the company with factual evidence of false information, moderation errors, or duplicate reviews. More information regarding disputes can be found here. Example #7: Independent financial adviser cites his sources to build credibility This next example is a bit of a different take on using data in marketing, but I thought it was worth bringing to you because I’ve noticed the marketing industry has a rampant problem with crediting sources. There are so many bold-faced marketing claims that shout and brag. But why should anyone believe those claims? Alec Tuckman shared with me the story of a seminar he was conducting about stock market performance. He was frequently challenged by an attendee. “Not wanting to make him look bad in front of his spouse, I did not get confrontational or upset, I simply pulled out a thick notebook full of Wall Street Journal clippings I have compiled over the last five years,” said Tuckman, owner/operator, Wealth Management Partners of Los Angeles. Every one of those articles was supportive material for the statements Tuckman made about the market. While he didn’t get the business from that particular attendee, Tuckman felt that it gave him instant credibility. “Data is the best marketing tool,” he said. “Being able to cite a credible, well-known source gives you credibility.” But don’t just cite any data, or you may end up hurting your brand’s credibility. “Make sure the data is from a reliable source. I wouldn’t recommend quoting something you read from a friend on Facebook IM when you’re trying to prove you are an expert on a particular subject like the stock market. Make sure you are sourcing material from credible sources like Kiplinger’s, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Bloomberg,” Tuckman advised.