Data plays a big part in completing a successful lead generation campaign. It is key to identifying, profiling, and finding the right prospect who qualifies to leverage your product or service. But, you can only fully maximize the power of data if you know where and when to find it.
Let’s first take a look at the different kinds of data.
Firmographic Data
Know your customer by verifying their identity as a target, by collecting firmographic data such as industry, company size, revenue, and location, and all other relevant details that would complete your ideal customer profile, like contact name, contact number, job role, email address, and social media account. Having all this information in place will verify if your lead generation arrow is aimed towards the right target or not.
And of course, top up your strategy with popular B2B approaches like Account-Based Marketing to widen your search horizon, by reaching all relevant decision makers and help you discover more opportunities along the process.
Psychographic Data
Know more about your customer by validating their suitability as target buyers by building their psychographic profiles. These are data sets or answers derived from qualifier questions such as what are their needs, when do they plan to purchase, how do they want to pay, why are they switching providers, etc., that will give you insight into their buying habits, system preferences and capabilities; and ultimately, enable you to design the right buyer’s journey for your target customers.
Technographic Data
Profile your target customer by knowing which system they use. Profiling your targets in a more granular way will let you probe into their pain points and help you lay out the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) to the customer, and eventually customize the best fit solution for them.
Firmographic, psychographic and demographic data are pillars that will support and complete the picture of your ideal customer. But, there’s more to it than just crafting a collage of information. There’s a data gathering tool that can advance your lead generation tactics by uncovering your prospects’ needs and their buying habits even before you get them engaged in any communication channel, and get you right at their doorsteps before your competitors do.
Intent Data
Wondered how photographers catch the best shot of their subject in wild forests?
Wildlife photographers set up several cameras in specific areas in the forest and leave those for months, which automatically triggers when there’s motion or signals of roaming animals. That’s likely how Intent Data works.
Intent Data is the collection of information that signals that someone may be in the market looking to buy a product or service. It’s a data gathering tool that intercepts prospects in the early part of the buyer’s journey by tracking digital footprints through the topics they browse or download online, websites they visit, product or service trial they engage in, newsletters they subscribe to, content that they view, and events they register and attend.
Some experts suggest that employing a third party vendor who has the tools to track online searches and content consumption is the easiest way to get B2B intent signals. Apart from that, however, traditional customer interactions like email replies, phone and office meetings, and events, are equally strong buyer intent signals that you can gather through your own efforts and further the engagement between you and the prospect.
The key is to capture it fresh, which means that you need to be fast, and be the first to track prospects’ digital footprints on the web like when they view infographics, download tech publications, browse contents or click links.
Here’s a 4-step takeaway to help you maximize the power of intent data:
Identify and Connect
Identify and connect with organizations that are most likely to buy based on their digital footprints such as Downloads, Website Visits, Product Reviews, Newsletter Subscriptions, Content Views, Attendance in Webinars, and all other interest signals on topics related to your solution.
Profile and Segment
Profile and segment target accounts based on their technology stack such as CRM, Content Management, Marketing Automation, and Infrastructure & Data Storage. By including technographics data, you can easily identify qualified potential customers fit to benefit for your product or service.
Reach
Reach out to companies with recent buying intent signals based on Projects, Funding, Leadership Moves, and all other press releases posted on company bulletin.
Discover
Find out which organizations are often visiting your website and landing pages, and gauge their interest based on Multiple Visits and Number of Unique Visitors.
With the surge of marketing platforms, data can just be roaming everywhere – could be viewing a content on a website, attending a webinar, or talking right in front of you in a telecon meeting. But, perfect timing is beat. If you catch these signals ahead of anyone, then everything will go like clockwork, and you will win the campaign.
The picture below is titled, “The Embrace”, a stunning shot of one of the rarest animals on earth caught on cam.
Capturing this amazing image was not all luck, but skills. Camera traps were set up in the Leopard National Park for 10 months, by professional wildlife photographer Sergey Gorshkov, which captured the stunning moment the tiger rubbed herself against the bark to leave a scent and mark the spot as territory. The clever shot won Gorshkov this year’s Wildlife Photographer Award.
