According to the 2017 B2B Buyer’s Survey report, 92% of buyers stressed the growing importance of sales teams that had insight about personalized company needs. This statistic from Demand Gen Report highlights the growing importance of personalization as an influencing factor in the B2B buyer journey. This leads to the question:
Is your Head of Marketing or CMO giving you all the right insight? Or, the tools that deliver insight.
Critical data or information about your target accounts which can be leveraged quickly into targeted marketing efforts are called actionable insights. In-depth, actionable insight about the target company such as the company’s future technology needs can lead to meaningful conversations. That in turn leads you to personalise your engagement with your target account about their technology needs which further enables you to consistently deliver an impactful buyer’s experience. There is no doubt about the benefit of deep, actionable insight for your targeted marketing programs.
How insight adds fuel to your targeted marketing efforts
Actionable insight, for example, “[XYZ Corporation] follows strategic alliances with other companies in areas where collaboration can produce industry advancement and acceleration of new markets” can lead to meaningful conversations as it helps in deep personalization of message and outreach. It can be the fuel for your targeted marketing efforts through powering personalized engagement with target account(s). There are many other advantages that deep, actionable insight bring such as Sales and Marketing alignment and increased knowledge about customers and competitors which ultimately leads to more meaningful engagements at every touchpoint.
Critical Industry and Account questions that insight help answer
With regards to the Industry, do you know what key technology trends are influencing the industry you sell into? Or, what is going to drive growth in that industry in the future? Or, what might potentially deter growth in that industry?
From an Account perspective the questions that actionable insight help answer are: Do you know what are the major business projects that your major target accounts are chasing? What gives sleepless nights to the CEO? What have they recently accomplished? And, what are the challenges they are facing in their business? or across segments?
How to source actionable insight
While there is no doubt about the abundance on information available, what is not abundant is actionable insight. Actionable insight can be sourced through different ways, one of them being simple desk based research. Insight is an invaluable fuel for targeted engagement activities which rely on information and data to achieve higher personalization levels, even complete 100% personalization levels.
The answer to the lack of insight is simple desk based research. Leveraging simple desk based research and creating a structured process to turn the abundance of information into insight is an invaluable proposition for marketing teams that are using a targeted marketing approach. Deep insight can be found through sources such as Company Websites, Annual Filings and Investor Presentations which reveal information and that are of strategic importance to your target company.
Insight can be sourced through Insight vendors like Business Brainz, a company that specializes in the development of account and industry insight through their in-depth, customized research reports prepared by team of research analysts.