Marketers in demand and ABM find themselves with a greater set of responsibilities and expectations for revenue contribution than ever before. They need the most they can get out of the best they can get!
Fortunately, there have never been more tools and sources of insights to harvest signals and identifiers about their customers and future customers to help them find where to focus and when. The result, unfortunately, is that frontline marketers are often left feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed by the amount of data in their hands and don’t know where to begin or how to interpret it. Usually, they’ll seek out a “one-stop shop” that will furnish a full view, interpret what’s important, and spit out a single score for them to work from.
But frontline marketers need to watch out:
- Fit and intent are not all-encompassing. The first thing to realize is that fit and intent are not binary — “Are they a fit?” and “Are they showing intent?” are not simply “yes” or “no” questions. There’s a relative scale between them that needs to be brought to light and interpreted — and that relationship is not linear. If an opportunity is high-fit, it will benefit your organization to build reputation and seed demand even if not in an active buying cycle.
- There are a lot more signals available to you than you might realize. One of the top items that we in Forrester’s demand and ABM service are always bringing up with clients who are interested in intent and insights is that there is most likely more already available to them than they realize. Sources span from public to proprietary to second- and third-party — make sure, first and foremost, that you’re not short-changing your view of the sources you already have. (My colleague Brett Kahnke has a great post about some of the most common issues frontline marketers face with intent data.)
- It’s all about opportunities. I know I’m not dropping any bombshells with this one — my Forrester colleagues in B2B marketing have been spelling out the importance of an opportunity-centric view and understanding for years. But you’ll notice in the first bullet point that I mentioned “high-fit opportunities.” Fit indicators — just like intent signals — can come from the account level, the buying group level, and the buyer level. Bringing the opportunity into focus is what will unleash the power of fit and intent in a way that frontline marketers can act upon.
My colleague Malachi Threadgill and I have recently authored research about bringing fit and intent together in our new framework, the Opportunity Prioritization Matrix, and I’ll be walking attendees through this at B2B Summit in just a few weeks! Forrester clients can also set up an inquiry or guidance session with me to learn more about this topic.
