Welcome to The B2B Marketing Brief! Your front-row seat to the ever-evolving world of B2B marketing. Where we keep it real—sharing wins, tackling pain points, and uncovering growth opportunities. Each edition is packed with stories, tips, and the latest trends to help you master the art of B2B engagement. Get your cup of coffee, and let’s get marketing!

In this issue:

• Data as Your Competitive Advantage

• What I Learned About Data-Driven Marketing from a Himalayan Forest Trek

• The Only Guide You’ll Need to Understand Marketing KPIs

• Leveling Up Your Marketing Game with CRM Integration

With audiences having so much choice on when, where, and how to consume content, marketers face unprecedented challenges. However, utilizing data effectively can be your competitive advantage. Data gives marketers opportunities to transform their ability to plan, develop, execute, and measure campaigns with precision.

Planning: Building a Data-Driven Foundation

Data-driven planning helps to deliver hyper-targeted plans to reach your audience where they are, with the right messages, to maximize connection and deliver value to external and internal stakeholders. Here are some key data sources to leverage to deliver more effective marketing plans:

• Firmographic Data: Gain a clear picture of your target companies, including size, industry, revenue, and location. This data helps in segmenting and prioritizing accounts based on fit and potential.

• Technographic Data: Discover the technologies your prospects are currently using. If your product integrates seamlessly with a specific CRM system or competes against a particular tool, technographic insights are invaluable in developing effective, personalized content.

• Wallet Data: Understand tech budget allocations and spending across different providers to help prioritize accounts, aid segmentation, and feed into messaging strategies to emphasize integration possibilities or competitive advantage.

• Optimized Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP): Leverage the combination of firmographic, wallet and technographic data to refine, optimize and build detailed Ideal Customer Profiles. These profiles help define the characteristics of your best customers, guiding targeting and messaging efforts.

• Intent Data: Understand what your audience is actively researching or considering. Intent data provides insights into potential customers' online behavior, such as search terms, content consumption, and engagement trends. For example, a surge in searches for “cloud migration services” might indicate interest in a cloud solutions provider.

Look to utilize multiple sources of data together to build a detailed understanding of both audience and messaging to take forward into developing effective go-to-market strategies.

Strategy Development: Personalization and Positioning

With a data-driven plan in place, the next step is crafting a strategy that resonates with your audience. Here’s how data comes into play:

• CRM Data: Utilize customer relationship management (CRM) systems to analyze historical interactions, purchase behaviors, and customer feedback. This information helps identify patterns and predict future needs.

• Audience Segmentation: Combine intent, firmographic, and CRM data to create highly tailored audience segments. For example, you might design different messaging for small startups and enterprise-level organizations within the same industry.

• Competitor Analysis: Leverage a variety of data points, such as: technographic and firmographic data, SEO insights, performance data (digital advertising for example) to benchmark against competitors, positioning your product or service as the superior solution.

Effective use of data empowers you to deliver personalized and targeted campaigns, ensuring your messaging aligns with the unique needs of each segment.

Campaign Activation: Turning Insights into Action

Data informs not only what you should say but also where, when, and how you should say it. During campaign activation, the following data sources prove invaluable to effectively reach your audience:

• Paid Media Data: Use insights from paid campaigns (e.g., Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook) to optimize targeting and budget allocation. Analyze metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost-per-click to refine your strategy in real-time.

• Content Performance Metrics: Monitor engagement data from blogs, videos, webinars, and other content assets. Identify what topics and formats drive the most interest and replicate their success.

• A/B Testing Data: Test variations of your campaigns, such as different subject lines, visuals, or calls-to-action. Collect data on performance to identify the most effective elements.

• Iterative Optimization: Continuously analyze data to learn what’s working and what’s not. This iterative process ensures your campaigns improve over time, maximizing ROI and relevance.

By integrating real-time data with pre-existing insights, you can maximize the efficiency and impact of your campaigns.

Measurement and Reporting: Proving Impact

The final step in leveraging data is measuring outcomes and utilizing data to refine your strategies. Consider these approaches:

• Attribution Models: Use data to track the customer journey and attribute success to specific touchpoints. Multi-touch attribution provides a comprehensive view of what’s working.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Define metrics aligned with your objectives, such as ROI, customer acquisition cost (CAC), or lifetime value (LTV). Data from CRM systems and paid media platforms can inform these metrics.

• Reporting Dashboards: Build real-time dashboards to visualize campaign performance and continuously track performance to gain clarity on the aspects of the campaign performing well, whilst identifying opportunities to optimize. Reporting dashboards can help to demonstrate campaign impact back to senior leadership and improve data storytelling.

• Predictive Analytics: Leverage data from historical campaigns and programs to predict and plan for future events or opportunities. This helps to create optimized go-to market strategies, optimize resource allocation, and enhance decision making.

• Learning and Optimization: Use measurement data to identify successful strategies and areas for improvement. This feedback loop ensures your campaigns evolve based on data-driven insights.

Regular reporting not only showcases the value of your efforts but also identifies areas for continuous improvement.

Conclusion: Making Data Your Competitive Advantage

Successful marketing isn’t about guessing; it’s about knowing. By incorporating data into every stage of marketing—from planning to measurement—allows you to make informed decisions, optimize performance, and achieve greater ROI.

What I Learnt About Data-driven Marketing from a Himalayan Forest Trek

“Slowly, slowly catch the monkey.”

Perched on an unsteady rock in the middle of a dense Himalayan forest, Hem Joshi thrust his makeshift wooden trekking pole—a repurposed Oak branch—into the moss-covered earth and beamed at us. “Repeat after me,”, he said, “Slowly, slowly catch the monkey.”

My friend and I looked at him, then at each other weary, parched, and slightly annoyed, wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into. It was only day two of our six-day trek in the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary at the foothills of the Himalayas of Uttarakhand, India. We’d been hiking uphill for four hours and our backs were giving way. We were in no mood to solve strange riddles.

Hem, our guide, realized we weren’t amused. “In Kumaoni—one of the many languages of the mountains—we say this when someone’s close to giving up. It means: Walk at your own pace, with intention, and you will achieve everything you set out to”, he said.

The monkey, of course, could mean anything: the challenge of trekking up a mountain, pausing to catch your breath, or the persistence needed to tackle something overwhelming. It wasn’t just about endurance, it was about strategy, taking one deliberate, intentional step at a time.

It reminded me of how, as marketers, we are constantly trudging through the rugged terrain of data, gathering the right tools and strategies, and conquering the steepest challenges of Account Based Marketing (ABM)—one deliberate, intentional step at a time.

A Mountain of Data

As arduous as it was, our trek in the Himalayan forest was equally rewarding. When we neared the top, our guides asked us to take a breath and turn around. Staring back at us, across the valley, was the majestic Nanda Devi. At 7,817 m, the Nanda Devi is the second highest mountain in India—and the only mountain range located entirely within the country. At one point, it was presumed to be the highest mountain in the world.

It was beautiful, intimidating, and daunting all at once. Just like a mountain of data for an effective ABM strategy, full of gorgeous insights and opportunities, can dwarf marketers. It’s true, we share a love-hate relationship with data. Overwhelming volumes, fragmented silos, and irrelevant metrics create more frustration than clarity.

But a mountain of the good kind of data—intent, wallet and technographic—paves the trail for personalization, precision targeting, faster—and more relevant—conversions, and higher ROI.

On our trek, I came to understand the true value of data, how it kept us from missteps, guided us through uncertainty, and revealed the hidden wonders of the forest that we might have missed. Here are three lessons the trek taught me about the power of data-driven marketing.

Intent Data: Reading the Moods of the Forest

Lesson: Just as reading the forest’s hidden cues led us to safety and rare discoveries, marketers must rely on intent data to navigate uncertainty, avoid wasted effort, and uncover high-value opportunities.

In the dense Himalayan forest, the trails are not always clear. They often disappeared into thickets of trees. The looming threat of a storm, chance encounter with a leopard or even missing the sighting of exotic birds—all kept us on edge.

We knew our trekking poles shouldn’t lean on guesswork. We would’ve been lost in a maze of towering Pine and Oak trees if not for our guides who could read the signals of the forest.

They could sense the likelihood of rain by the warmth of the sun, hear a leopard’s rumble and know if it was prowling or resting. And predict the appearance of the elusive Crested Kingfisher or the rare Collared Owlet and decipher if it was thirsty or calling for its mate. Without these signs, we’d have spent our trek aimlessly wandering, investing time and energy, possibly missing both the dangers and the wonders of the forest.

In the marketing jungle too, accounts don’t light up hairpin bends with neon signs screaming: “Here I am, this is me,” in true Bryan Adams style. They leave breadcrumbs—a search for hybrid cloud solutions, repeated visits to your pricing page, or whitepaper downloads on data privacy gaps. These are ‘sounds’ of their intent. Intent data deciphers these signals, showing you where accounts are in their buying journey, whom to target, when to act, and how to engage. It’s your compass in the wilderness, pointing you straight to the accounts ready to engage—instead of wasting time, effort, and costs running around in circles. Because in this jungle, ALL those who wander are lost.

Why Intent Data Matters:

• Precision: Intent data eliminates wasted effort, guiding you to high-value accounts already signaling interest.

• Timeliness: It helps you engage at the right moment, before competitors.

• Relevance: By knowing what accounts are researching, you can craft personalized messages that resonate.

Wallet Data: Carrying Only What You Can Sustain

Lesson: Just as trekking with unnecessary weight drains your energy and slows your progress, marketers must rely on wallet data to focus on accounts with the capacity to invest.

On a trek, “always take a couple of extra pairs of everything” said no one ever. But everything is an essential when you are certain of scarcity. As a result, our backpacks spilled over like pinecones covering narrow trails.

As the trail steepened, the weight of what we carried began to wear us down. Backpacks bulged awkwardly, straps cut into shoulders, exhaustion set in early, and inclines got harder to climb. We had to sacrifice some of the ‘essentials’ mid-journey. Carrying too much can grind you to a halt.

Turns out, marketing isn’t very different. If all your accounts, irrespective of their spending capacity—or worth their weight in gold, yes, we are greedy (but in a good way)—are essential, then none of them is essential.

Wallet data is what helps you from lugging dead weight up the ABM mountain. It is your packing guide and it shows you which accounts have the financial strength to make the journey with you. Financial reports, third-party tools, CRM insights, sales conversations—this checklist saves you from stuffing your pipeline with low-budget leads that stall out halfway.

It’s really ok to make it all about the money because, let’s admit it, ABM is expensive. Targeting accounts with high budgets not only improves conversion rates but also fosters long-term relationships that can grow over time, offering higher lifetime value. What’s not to like?

Without wallet data, marketers risk carrying the burden of accounts that lack the budget to invest, overloading themselves with low value leads that will never convert. Lighten up and go farther faster.

Why Wallet Data Matters

• Clarity: Helps you focus only on accounts that have the capacity to invest, avoiding wasted effort on low-potential leads.

• Maximized ROI: Channels your time, budget, and energy into high-value opportunities that drive meaningful results and growth.

• Smarter Decisions: Prevents overloading your pipeline with leads that stall, ensuring every campaign is deliberate and impactful.

Technographic Data: Following the Natural Rhythm of the Forest

Lesson: Just as understanding the forest’s interconnected ecosystem reveals the best paths forward, technographic data helps marketers seamlessly align their solutions with an account’s existing tools.

On day three of our trek, we had to cross the dancing streams of the Binsar river. If that wasn’t adventurous enough, our curiosity tempted us to chase a waterfall, where I slipped and fell twice (that’s a story for another day, suffice to say I lived to tell this one!).

The water was shallow but rapid and rocky. One misstep and we’d literally be in the lap of the Himalayas. Our guide pointed to a series of rocks, designed by the forest, that created a stepping-stone path that allowed us to pass with some effort. What also helped was our gear: trekking shoes, waterproof attire, and light-weight backpacks. We were able to merge seamlessly with the forest’s terrain, its ecosystem, and adapt to the rigors of the trails. Without all of that paraphernalia, you’re like a fish out of the water.

Now, nobody likes to be a fish out of the water, flailing and out of their depth. As a marketer, that’s exactly how it feels when you’re pitching a solution that doesn’t fit an account’s tech stack. Yes, we’ve all been there. Maybe they already have a shiny CRM, or maybe your cloud offering is as useful to them as a life jacket in a puddle. You’d know if you had technographic data that reveals the tools and platforms that an account already uses, from their CRM, and cloud providers, to cybersecurity and collaboration solutions.

An account’s technology stack defines the terrain you must navigate to offer a solution that fits seamlessly. Save your next big pitch from floating downstream.

Why Technographic Data Matters

• Seamless Integration: Technographic data ensures your solution fits naturally into an account’s existing systems, reducing friction and accelerating adoption.

• Solves Real Problems: Address inefficiencies in their current setup, positioning your solution as a game-changer.

• Strategic Positioning: Build trust by demonstrating that you understand and respect their existing ecosystem.

Delivering what customers need—when, how, and even before they need it—is a factor of how well we gather, analyze, and leverage intent, wallet, and technographic data.

Getting there is not always easy. But as a great man once said, “Slowly, slowly catch the monkey.”

The Only Guide You’ll Need to Understand Marketing KPIs

How to Choose The Right KPIs for My Business?

Every brand’s growth follows a journey. From capturing attention to earning loyalty, each step mirrors the stages of a relationship, moving from a spark of interest to a deep and lasting connection. At the heart of this journey are KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), the metrics that guide you, revealing what’s working and what needs improvement.

Tracking the right KPIs at each stage of the customer journey helps you go beyond numbers. It fosters loyalty, deeper engagement, and stronger retention by building trust and delivering value. The results? Customers who not only stay but also advocate for your brand, creating lasting growth.

Let's imagine you need to prepare KPIs for a B2B accounting app called "Rejoice Invoice." We can explore their application with real examples at each stage.

Make A Strong First Impression: Awareness

When your brand steps into the spotlight, it’s like going on a first date. The goal isn’t just to be seen; it’s to make an impression that lasts. KPIs help you gauge whether your message is reaching the right audience and whether it’s being noticed.

In B2C, this might mean a bold social media campaign or a memorable ad, while in B2B, it could involve targeted LinkedIn outreach or industry-specific content.

Key metrics to track:

• Reach and Impressions: How many people are seeing your content?

• Website Traffic: Are they curious enough to explore further?

• Social Media Followers: Are you growing your visibility?

At this stage, quality matters as much as quantity. It’s not just about how many people you’re reaching, but whether you’re reaching the right ones and resonating with them emotionally. Your audience should walk away with a sense of what makes your brand unique.

Build Engagement and Trust: Interest

Once you’ve captured attention, it’s time to nurture that initial spark. At this stage, your audience starts leaning in—they may follow you on social media, explore your website, or sign up for your newsletter. It’s your opportunity to engage them and start building trust.

For B2C brands, this often means having a content strategy that entertains, educates, or inspires. In B2B, it could involve offering valuable insights through whitepapers, webinars, or blog posts.

Key metrics to track:

• Click-through Rate (CTR): Is your audience taking action on your content?

• Bounce Rate: Is it staying to learn more, or leaving quickly?

• Engagement Rate: Is it commenting, liking, or sharing your content?

Use your KPIs to understand what’s working and double down on delivering value. The goal is to create content that speaks to your audience’s needs and keeps them coming back for more.

Nurture The Relationship: Consideration

Now that your audience is engaged, they’re seriously considering your brand. This is where you need to show why you’re the right choice. Whether you’re selling sneakers or software, your messaging should address their needs and concerns, building confidence in your brand.

In B2C, this might mean showcasing customer reviews, creating comparison guides, or running tailored promotions. In B2B, it’s about demonstrating ROI through case studies, product demos, or personalized proposals.

Key metrics to track:

• Lead Conversion Rate: How many engaged prospects are becoming leads?

• Email Open Rates: Are your messages cutting through the noise?

• Content Downloads: Are decision-makers engaging with in-depth resources?

This is the phase where you shift from broad attraction to personal investment. Tailor your approach to your audience’s challenges and use your KPIs to refine your messaging for maximum reach.

Turn Interest into Action: Conversion

This is the moment of truth—where interest turns into action. Whether it’s a purchase, a sign-up, or a signed contract, this is where your efforts pay off. At this stage, KPIs help you measure how effectively you’re moving prospects from consideration to commitment.

In B2C, it’s about optimizing the customer journey, ensuring a seamless checkout process, or running limited time offers. In B2B, this might mean closing deals with compelling proposals or negotiation strategies.

Key metrics to track:

• Conversion Rate: How many people are completing the desired action?

• Cart Abandonment Rate: Are there obstacles in your purchasing process?

• Sales Growth: Are you scaling your efforts successfully?

The conversion phase is all about confidence. Your audience needs to feel secure in their decision to choose you. Use KPIs to identify friction points, smooth out the process, and make the leap to conversion effortless.

Turn Customers into Advocates: Loyalty

The journey doesn’t end with a sale. In fact, this is where the real work begins. Loyal customers not only come back—they become advocates who champion your brand to others.

In B2C, this might involve creating loyalty programs or exceptional customer service. In B2B, it’s about maintaining relationships through dedicated account management, ongoing support, and value-added services.

Key metrics to track:

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Are your clients/customers staying with you over time?

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely are they to recommend your brand?

• Repeat Purchase Rate or Renewal Rate: Are you retaining your audience?

Loyalty isn’t built overnight. It’s about consistently delivering value and delighting your customers. KPIs at this stage show how well you’re meeting their expectations and ensuring your brand remains their go-to choice.

In both B2B and B2C, KPIs are more than numbers—they’re a reflection of your relationships. They reveal if your audience feels seen, valued, and understood at every stage of their journey.

By focusing on the right KPIs and aligning them with your customer acquisition funnel, you can ensure your brand becomes more than a product or service—it becomes a trusted partner or an emotional touchpoint your customers return to time after time.

Enhance Campaign Performance With CRM Integration

The key to closing more deals lies in smarter, data-driven buying journeys that deliver maximum value for every dollar spent. Looking to level up? Enrich your ad platform data by connecting it directly to your CRM (think Salesforce). Setting up this connection is straightforward and can quickly result in big wins.

Connecting Your CRM Data for Impactful Optimizations

When you connect CRM data to platforms like Google Ads, LinkedIn, or Meta, you can optimize campaigns based on meaningful business metrics like SQLs, opportunities, and closed deals. Our Head of Marketing Gina Inks noted, “Optimizing campaigns to the lower-funnel actions that directly align with our clients’ goals—rather than outdated marketing metrics that fail to reflect true performance—can mean the difference between a high-performing campaign and one that drains your budget with no bang for your buck.”

Google’s CRM integration process is seamless and simple to connect. LinkedIn and Meta’s are in earlier stages and require a bit more involvement. That said, if a full connection cannot be established on these channels, similar results can be achieved by enriching audience sets with back-end CRM data. Unlike top-of-funnel optimizations focused on clicks, impressions, or even form fills, CRM data helps ad algorithms prioritize prospects with the highest intent.

So What’s The Catch?

No catch here, but some organizations are hesitant about leveraging CRM data in their ad platforms due to security concerns. Let’s break them down:

• Security Concerns: Every company has different compliance rules that govern the viability of this solution, but modern integrations are built with the safety and security of proprietary or sensitive data in mind. Platforms like Salesforce, Google Ads, and LinkedIn offer robust protections and compliance with industry standards like GDPR and CCPA.

• Internal Competition: Some companies are hesitant to input their data as they feel it competes with a core area of their business (think bigger tech companies who have their own data solutions).

• Cost Fears: Others feel like inputting data will be used to drive up advertising costs (spoiler alert: it won’t). While these concerns pop up occasionally, they’re more the exception than the rule. Still, we’ve seen a few groups drag their feet, letting hesitation slow their progress.

It’s helpful to think of connecting CRM data as providing anonymized signals that allow ad platforms to optimize for meaningful business outcomes without compromising security.

Three Areas to Drive Performance with CRM Data

When precision targeting and lead quality matter most, integrating CRM data into ad platforms is most impactful for mid-to-lower funnel campaigns. The added visibility is ultra-useful no matter the channel. This is true for targeted demand gen campaigns to sophisticated ABX plays.

1. Google Ads & Paid Search

CRM integrations enable strategies like offline conversion tracking and value-based bidding to optimize bids toward leads that drive actual pipeline value. By syncing Salesforce signals with ad platforms, you train the algorithm to prioritize high-quality conversions, not just clicks.

• Best For: Targeting decision-makers or high-intent searchers with optimized messaging and CTAs.

Our Senior Team Director of SEM Aaron Woolway explains, “Offline conversion tracking is imperative in B2B search marketing. It gives automated bidding algorithms high-intent signals to optimize effectively to improve lead quality, opportunities, and pipeline velocity.”

2. LinkedIn & Paid Social

LinkedIn and Meta thrive on precise targeting. While establishing a direct connection to your CRM might be more intensive on these channels, it is entirely possible. In lieu of this, a lot of clients will opt to map back-end lower funnel data to enrich audiences and connect with high-value prospects.

• Best For: Engaging specific personas like decision-makers and influencers with tailored ad copy and offers.

3. Retargeting & Nurture Campaigns

When you leverage CRM data for retargeting, you get to focus ad spend on accounts and users that have shown prior engagement or intent. That amounts to better efficiency and a lower CPA.

• Best For: Accounts already in your pipeline that need additional touches to convert.

The Impact of CRM-Integrated Campaigns

Our Associate Team Director of Media Strategy Hope Waggoner notes the upgrade that CRM data brings to the table. “An integrated CRM takes the guesswork out of performance and helps us succeed or optimize faster. The level of confidence that comes from it is unmatched.”

We’ve seen that optimization in real-time for clients who leverage CRM data in their paid media campaigns. Here are anonymized highlights from real clients across industries and channels:

• A 10% decrease in cost per lead (CPL) year-over-year, leading to an increase in leads on less budget

• A 20% reduction in cost per MQL year-over-year

• A 20% increase in opportunities and a 75% pipeline boost

• A 40% increase in lead-gen form conversion rate

• A 60% increase in MQL conversion rate while decreasing CPA

The Bottom Line

When done right, CRM data integration can supercharge your campaigns, turning them into revenue-generating machines. It’s a straightforward, secure way to give your campaigns the fuel they need to perform at their absolute best. With ever-increasing costs and competition in the market, it’s more critical than ever to leverage the right data at the right time to give your campaigns the competitive edge they need to succeed.

Catch our next issue out on 26 February 2025!

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