Factors Blog
Insights Across All Things B2B Account Intelligence & Analytics
LinkedIn Sales Navigator cost, benefits, limitations and more
If you’re part of a sales team, chances are you’ve considered paying for LinkedIn Sales Navigator at some point. LinkedIn Sales Navigator seemingly ticks all the boxes– whether it's accurate data, intuitive, time-saving prospecting, or effortless sales outreach". But do its features justify its steep pricing?
In this blog, we take a close look at LinkedIn Sales Navigator, its pricing, features, benefits, and limitations to see if you should invest in the platform.
What is Linkedin Sales Navigator?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a valuable tool for sales professionals and businesses, It facilitates lead generation and relationship management on LinkedIn.
With Sales Navigator’s features, users can efficiently target promising prospects and stay informed about their activities and organizational changes. As compared to the basic/free plan, sales navigator is far more robust. It provides additional data that helps optimize sales strategies as and when the opportunity presents itself:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator Features:
1. Personalized lead recommendations: Sales Navigator offers tailored lead suggestions based on criteria like industry, company size, and job title preferences.
2. Advanced search functionality: Conduct detailed searches using filters such as location, job title, and company size to pinpoint prospects matching your ideal customer profile.
3. Account and lead insights: It provides valuable insights into prospects, including recent LinkedIn activity, company news, and job changes, aiding in better understanding and engagement.
4. InMail messaging: It helps you reach out to prospects via InMail, even without prior LinkedIn connections, expanding your outreach capabilities.
5. Sales Navigator Pages: Utilize customizable pages to track, save, and receive real-time insights on leads and accounts, optimizing your sales strategies.
You’re probably thinking “But this sounds suspiciously similar to LinkedIn Premium”. Well, you’re not entirely wrong. While they do aim to provide similar benefits such as access to InMail etc, they do have some differences:
What is the difference between LinkedIn Premium and LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
LinkedIn Premium is a whole lot cheaper and seemingly offers similar benefits. Considering you can get LinkedIn Premium at 1/3rd the price, LinkedIn Sales Navigator cost sure seems a bit much. But when it comes to prospecting and outreach in particular, Sales Navigator has so much more to offer.
LinkedIn Premium is designed for a broader audience, including job seekers and recruiters, and offers features such as increased InMail credits, the ability to see who viewed your profile, and access to valuable training courses.
On the other hand, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is designed specifically for salespeople. Accordingly, it offers advanced search filters, lead recommendations, and granular analytics. So, while LinkedIn Premium may be a good choice for job seekers and recruiters, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is certainly the better choice for salespeople.
Let's pit these two against each other:
Why choose LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
Given its reputation and popularity, LinkedIn has to be one of the best social selling tools for B2B businesses. 134.5 million people use LinkedIn daily. It's the first place you go to when you want to post a career update, look for new teammates, or simply post company news. Social selling is a great way to supplement traditional channels. Social selling cannot replace these channels.
The community and trust are certainly the primary appeal of the platform. Here are some other benefits of using LinkedIn Sales Navigator:
Advanced Filters
LinkedIn Sales Navigator has more than 40 advanced search filters. You can filter your search based on company, role, workflow, and keywords. What's unique about this feature is its spotlight filter option. Here are some of them:
- The Job Changes spotlight identifies prospects who have changed jobs within the last three months.
- The Shared Experiences spotlight uncovers prospects who attended the same schools, worked at the same companies, or belong to the same LinkedIn Groups as you.
- The LinkedIn Activity spotlight shows prospects who have posted or shared content on LinkedIn in the past 30 days.
- The Mentioned in the News spotlight uncovers prospects who have been mentioned in the news in the past 30 days.
- The Leads that Follow Your Company spotlight uncovers prospects who follow your company on LinkedIn.
- The TeamLink spotlight finds prospects who are already connected to your colleagues. (not available on all plans)
This feature establishes Sales Navigator as a great “social” selling tool, taking searches a step further and helping sales teams establish connections with leads.
Recommended Leads
LinkedIn recommends leads on Sales Navigator through three methods: on specific company pages, at the top of a lead's profile, and via a recommended leads list.
The Recommend Leads list in Sales Navigator offers an auto-generated list of up to 100 recommended leads based on past user activity, such as searches and saved leads.
Note: This feature relies on AI and functions optimally with increased data input. Therefore, you need to save relevant leads to your lists manually. The more interactions and saved profiles, the more refined your recommended section becomes on Sales Navigator.
Intent Identification and Alerts
LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps sales teams identify buyer intent by monitoring their company interactions– if the prospect has connected with you or your team or if they’ve engaged with your LinkedIn Ads. It sends real-time alerts for each of these activities and helps you make the most of an opportunity.
Note: you need to manually save prospects in a list to ensure you get alerts for activities on their account.
Smart Links
One of the best features of Sales Navigator is the smart link. It allows you to simply create their deck online using this feature on LinkedIn Sales Navigator or even upload an existing PPT. A smart link is shareable and trackable for opens and clicks so you won’t need to switch to your CRM or another software for analytics.
This brings us to the final benefit of the tool:
Performance Analytics
Sales navigator allows you to track user groups and performance trends– you can analyze usage patterns to pinpoint areas of improvement, such as low InMail acceptance rates. Your training programs can be tailored to address these gaps and enhance sales team proficiency.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator Cost
LinkedIn Sales Navigator has a tiered pricing structure. It has three plans: Core, Advanced, and Advance Plus. At the time of writing, the prices for each plan are as follows:
Here are the additional features you get with each of the pricing plans:
Limitations of LinkedIn Sales Navigator
While there are numerous benefits of using Sales Navigator, users have reported some issues with the following:
1. Steep Learning Curve
Some users may find Sales Navigator to have a steep learning curve, especially if they are new to LinkedIn or CRM tools. It may require significant time and effort to fully grasp and utilize all the platform's features effectively, and the complex user interface needs to do more to help. It potentially delays the realization of its benefits apart from taking a lot of resources to set up.
2. Limited InMail Credits
While Sales Navigator provides InMail credits, users are allocated a limited number of Inmail credits each month.
Once you exhaust these credits you need to purchase additional ones or upgrade your plan, adding to the overall cost of using the platform and potentially constraining outreach efforts.
3. Data Inaccuracy
LinkedIn's data, including contact information and job titles, is user-generated, leading to potential inaccuracies or outdated information in profiles. This can undermine the effectiveness of outreach campaigns and result in wasted time and resources.
4. Integration Challenges
Despite offering integration with popular CRM systems like Salesforce and Hubspot, some users encounter difficulties in setting up and maintaining these integrations. Sales Navigator's inability to expert lead or account lists is another challenge for users. These challenges can disrupt workflow efficiency and hinder seamless data management between platforms.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator Cost: Final Verdict
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium service, which can be expensive for individual users or small businesses. This cost may pose a barrier to entry for some potential users, impacting adoption rates and accessibility.
When it comes to social selling, LinkedIn has a unique proposition that can’t be matched by other tools. It is an extension of a professional networking platform and provides insights on “shared experiences” and “commonalities” allowing you to build a rapport with your leads. So if you already have a prospecting or sales intelligence tool and you’re looking to add a social selling tool to your tech stack- we highly recommend LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Having said that, LinkedIn Sales Navigator leaves you wanting more in terms of data accuracy and lead generation. Anecdotal evidence suggests it's clunky and has surface-level integrations with CRMs. So if you’re building your sales tech from scratch, we recommend you steer clear of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Here are some tools we recommend instead-
1. Factors.ai
Factors.ai is a tool that facilitates account-based selling. It not only delivers industry-leading enrichment rates of up to 64% but also helps qualify and target the right accounts based on intent data. Factors.ai takes into account website engagement, intent signals, and firmographic information to qualify leads and expedite the sales process.
In comparison, LinkedIn provides a detailed however limiting view of the customer journey, due to its primary focus on LinkedIn activity. Most of the decisions are made based on interactions with the product’s website, its social channels, G2 reviews, etc. Factors.ai (due to its partnership with Clearbit) provides an extensive database and accurate intent identification as well.
If you want more than a primary database and prospecting solution, Factors.ai is a great tool that provides analytical insights that help you identify target and close leads.
{{CTA_BANNER}}
2. Cognism
Cognism serves as a sales intelligence solution and data provider, offering cell phone numbers, direct dials, and emails across multiple regions. Its browser extension operates seamlessly across various corporate websites, including LinkedIn.
In contrast, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is effective for targeting prospects active on the LinkedIn platform, aiding in the identification and connection with decision-makers within an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). It provides access to public emails and phone numbers of these prospects.
Moreover, Cognism boasts phone-verified mobile numbers, ensuring an 87% connection rate with listed contacts. This surpasses LinkedIn's reliance on user-provided data, which, as indicated by Sales Navigator reviews, may lead to data inaccuracies and user frustration.
If you are looking for a global database and want to reach out to decision-makers through the same solution, Cognism is a great choice for you.
3. Zoominfo
Zoominfo is a leading B2B data provider and is a suitable alternative to Sales Navigator-
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is specialized for targeting known prospects, while ZoomInfo excels at identifying decision-makers within targeted accounts. Sales Navigator emphasizes specific personal details, sourced from user updates, whereas ZoomInfo offers more up-to-date macro-level data, collected from web scraping.
Sales Navigator enhances contact targeting with network tools and professional news updates, while ZoomInfo facilitates bulk contact list exports and offers additional tools like ZoomInfo Engage, Chorus, and Chat for comprehensive sales support. If you are looking for a tool that puts equal emphasis on collaboration along with sales prospecting and lead generation- Zoominfo is the way to go. Competitors like Factors.ai are more powerful account intelligence solutions that can make your lead generation cycle seamless. Know more about Factors.ai here.
AI For B2B Marketing Strategies | Enhanced Customer Insights
For eons—or at least what felt like it—artificial intelligence (AI) lingered on the fringes of our daily existence, hovering like a futuristic mirage that seemed always just out of reach. That is, until it bulldozed its way into the mainstream, proving to be not just a fleeting fascination but a fundamental shift in the way we approach business, technology, and, indeed, life itself.
Suddenly, AI is not just for the nerdy elite or the futuristic dreamers. It's also for the pragmatic marketer who wants to decode the enigma of customer behavior, tailor experiences to perfection, and, yes, finally figure out what B2B customers actually want before they do. This could explain why, presently, a whopping 84% of B2B marketers are either leveraging AI, planning its integration, or eyeing it with keen interest.
But despite AI's proven prowess and the buzz that surrounds it, the leap from acknowledgment to action remains a chasm many businesses are hesitant to cross. That's why, in this blog, we'll take you through the lens of AI in B2B marketing, exploring not just the "what" and the "why," but the all-important "how."
So, without further ado, let's get started!
What is AI?
At its core, AI in the B2B arena is about leveraging machine learning, natural language processing, and other sophisticated algorithms to analyze data, predict trends, automate tasks, and enhance decision-making processes. It's about transforming raw data into gold—insights that fuel smarter strategies, more engaging content, and ultimately, sales that don't just close but smash expectations.
Unpacking AI's Appeal in B2B Marketing
Why are so many B2B marketers turning to AI? Let's dive into how leveraging AI for customer insight mining can revolutionize your B2B strategy.
Real-time Feedback Monitoring
Imagine a world where your business can adapt its strategies at the speed of conversation. AI transforms this into reality, offering a continuous stream of customer feedback across various platforms. It's like having a conversation with the market itself—dynamic, ongoing, and incredibly enlightening. In turn, this agility ensures your strategies are always in lockstep with customer expectations, fostering a level of trust and loyalty that's the stuff of marketing dreams.
Effective Product Development
With AI, every customer interaction becomes a clue to unlocking the next big innovation. The AI listening tools meticulously comb through the vast expanse of digital discourse, seeking out the precious nuggets of customer insights—those unarticulated wishes that'll herald your next breakthrough. This visionary approach guarantees that your inventions transcend mere market expectations to foresee them, establishing a foundation for offerings that not only echo with your target demographic but also sculpt the contours of the industry anew.
Enhanced Sentiment Analysis
AI goes beyond mere words, delving into the finer points of customer sentiments. It reads between the lines, picking up on the subtleties of tone and context that most old-school analysis tools would totally overlook. This deep dive into the emotional undercurrents of your customer base allows for a nuanced approach to customer engagement, transforming mere interactions into genuine moments of connection.
Elevated Pricing Acumen
Pricing isn't just about covering costs and adding a markup. Thanks to the advent of AI tools, enterprises can now embrace dynamic pricing models that intelligently adapt to market fluctuations, competitive landscapes, and the ever-evolving perceptions of value among consumers. This sophisticated approach ensures that pricing is perpetually poised at the sweet spot—maximizing both sales volume and profit margins by balancing the scales of affordability with the allure of perceived value.
Continuous Improvement
AI is the perpetual motion machine of business improvement. It continuously feeds on customer data, offering fresh insights that drive ongoing refinement and innovation. This relentless pursuit of enhancement fosters a culture steeped in excellence, cascading through every stratum of your organization. It positions you not merely as a player but as a trailblazer, fostering a culture of agility, responsiveness, and forward-thinking that keeps businesses at the pinnacle of their game.
Example of AI Tools That Are Changing the Marketing Game
The AI toolbox is vast and varied, but here are five tools that are making significant inroads in the B2B marketing arena:
ChatGPT for Conversational AI
Chatbots and virtual assistants have come a long way from their humble beginnings as rigid, scripted responders. This AI-powered chatbot can engage in conversations so fluid and human-like that you might just forget you're talking to a machine. ChatGPT's proficiency in learning from and adjusting to dialogues in real time epitomizes the blend of technical sophistication and intuitive functionality that marks a new era in customer interaction.
Freepik AI Image Generator
Freepik AI image generator stands as a notable advancement in the realm of digital design and content creation. Leveraging cutting-edge AI image generation technology, it offers users the ability to generate unique and high-quality AI images based on textual descriptions and in different styles, including digital art, anime, vintage, AI photos. Freepik AI Image Generator is particularly beneficial for graphic designers, marketers, content creators, and anyone who seeks to produce visually compelling images without the necessity for extensive design skills or resources.
OneUp
Keeping your social media presence vibrant and engaging is a full-time job. AI-based tool OneUp makes this task not only manageable but downright enjoyable. It automates the scheduling of posts across a plethora of platforms. From the professional plains of LinkedIn to the community-focused spaces of Facebook groups, it even allows for posting to multiple GMB locations. With OneUP, your digital presence is always buzzing, always relevant, and unbelievably streamlined.
Zapier
Zapier acts as the glue that binds different web applications together, enabling a seamless flow of information between them without the need for custom coding. Want to add new email subscribers to your CRM automatically? Or perhaps trigger a welcome email sequence upon a new lead entering your system? Zapier makes these tasks, and countless others, not just possible but effortlessly simple.
Salesforce Einstein
Rounding off our lineup of innovative AI tools is Salesforce Einstein, a CRM assistant that uses machine learning to personalize customer interactions, run sales data analytics, and predict future behavior. Einstein's AI capabilities are integrated across the Salesforce platform, making it smarter and more predictive of your customers' needs and desires. From sales and service to marketing and commerce, Einstein ensures every customer touchpoint is informed, insightful, and impactful, elevating the customer experience to new heights.
Stroydoc
The Storydoc marketing & sales collateral management platform is set to transform the way modern marketing and sales teams create content and how this content is consumed. This tool is built on an advanced AI engine to tailor any content to the target audience to maximize its business impact. Storydoc collateral can be automated and finely personalized through advanced integrations with CRM, sales, and marketing tools. Storydoc significantly accelerates content creation, improves engagement, removes friction from the sales funnel, and gives whoever uses it a significant edge.
How to overcome the AI Integration Hurdle?
The path to AI integration is undoubtedly compelling, lit by the promise of efficiency, personalization, and insight. Yet, it's also strewn with obstacles that can trip the unwary. Here's how savvy B2B marketers are leaping over these hurdles, turning potential pitfalls into stepping stones toward innovation:
Data Privacy
As marketers, it is our duty to do no harm and respect the sanctity of the data entrusted to us. This means conducting rigorous data impact assessments to determine the necessity of every byte of data collected. Anonymizing data where possible, providing clear opt-out options, and explaining your data use policies in plain, jargon-free language are steps that demonstrate respect for privacy and autonomy.
Another layer of safeguarding this trust involves adopting penetration or vulnerability testing platforms. Think of these platforms as the digital equivalent of a health check-up for your data security - they poke, prod, and push to uncover any weaknesses before the bad guys do. By regularly subjecting your systems to thes cyber check-ups, you can patch vulnerabilities, fortify your defenses, and ensure your data practices are as ironclad as they claim to be.
Equity and Accessibility
AI has the potential to personalize the customer experience in ways previously unimaginable. However, this promise of personalization must not come at the cost of equity. The reality of data disparities can lead to uneven benefits, concentrating advantages among certain groups while sidelining others.
Proactively design your AI models for equity, ensuring data samples are inclusive and benchmark tests for fairness are routine. This approach not only broadens your market reach but also champions a more inclusive digital ecosystem.
Skill Gap
The world of AI can seem daunting with its jargon and complexities. But here's a secret: you don't need to be a tech wizard to harness AI's power. Many AI tools today are designed with user-friendliness in mind.
Think of it as learning to drive; it might seem complicated at first, with all those pedals and the steering thing, but with practice, it becomes second nature. Additionally, partnering with AI providers who offer robust support and training can further smooth the learning curve, making AI integration a less Herculean task.
Accountability and Responsibility
It's essential to draw clear lines of responsibility, ensuring that there's always a human in the loop, ready to take the helm should the AI veer off course. This isn't about undermining AI's capabilities but about ensuring that its power is wielded with wisdom and oversight.
Document models comprehensively, establish rigorous oversight procedures across departments, and ensure there are policies in place for reporting unethical AI behavior. This framework of accountability ensures that AI serves your audience's needs ethically and responsibly, reinforcing your brand's integrity.
Marketing Data and Tool Security
The responsibility of safeguarding access to your AI tools and the marketing data they hold falls squarely on the shoulders of businesses. Employ AI tools designed with privacy in mind while encrypting and authenticating your data.
Moreover, embracing innovative security measures like QR codes for access control adds an extra layer of defense, ensuring that the keys to your AI tools are well-guarded yet readily available to those authorized. However, the performance of this mechanism hinges on the reliability and integrity of the free QR code generator used. Opt for generators known for their robust security features to ensure the gateway to your marketing data remains impenetrable to invaders.
AI Tool Allocation
Ensuring that your cutting-edge AI tools don't become a cause of high-tech tug-of-war between different marketing departments requires a blend of diplomacy and strategy. The secret to avoiding a digital debacle? Transparent communication and straightforward guidelines on who gets to play with the cool tech toys and when. You can achieve this by setting up a centralized AI tool management hub, where access and allocation can be monitored and adjusted based on real-time needs and results.
You can also use resource management tools like ResourceGuru or Float to make this process simpler. These platforms are the go-to solutions for B2B agencies and businesses craving to dish out their tech treasures without causing a booking brawl. By deploying them, you ensure that your AI goodies are spread evenly across the board, allowing every team to bask in the glow of AI enlightenment without tripping over one another's power cords.
Setting a Course for B2B Marketing Success with AI
Remember, the future belongs to those who are ready to embrace change, and in the realm of B2B marketing, that change spells A- I. Don't be left behind, wondering what happened. Jump on the AI bandwagon and watch your marketing strategies transform from bland to brilliant. After all, who doesn't want to be a part of a future where marketing is not just about selling but truly connecting?
Google Search Ads: Why More Data Means Better Results for Your Campaigns
The Challenge With Google Search Ads
Search advertising has established itself as the go-to channel for B2B marketers to capture low-hanging demand — and it’s easy to see why. As a marketer for an account intelligence product such as Factors.ai, it makes sense for me to bid on product keywords such as “ABM software” or “visitor identification tools” and competitor keywords such as “leadfeeder alternatives”, so I can attract relevant, in-market customers based on searcher intent.
That being said, a closer look at the numbers reveals that conversions from search ads can actually be pretty disappointing (and expensive). For context, the average click-through rate (CTR) for search ads across industries is only about 3.17%. It’s even slimmer in the technology industry, at a meager 2.09% (Wordstream). Out of the few ad impressions that do translate into clicks, the average landing page conversion rate (sign-ups, demo form submissions, etc) is around 6% (HubSpot). And of the handful of visitors who do convert, only a fraction go on to become SQLs, opportunities, and ultimately, customers.
Even the most optimistic benchmarks find that:
- Only around 30% of Leads become SQLs
- Out of which, 40% of SQLs become opportunities
- Out of which, 30% of opportunities become customers
There are countless reasons for such significant drop-offs along the sales funnel:
- Most lead that land on your website, won’t sign-up
- Leads that do sign-up, may not schedule a meeting
- Leads that do schedule a meeting, may not show up
- Leads that do show up, may not be qualified (non-ICP)
- Leads that are qualified, may not be sales-ready (timing, budget, etc)
- Leads that are sales-ready, may choose to go with an alternate solution
All these factors suggest that to earn a single customer from search ads, you’d need more than 500 paid clicks (of course, this number varies widely based on category). That’s a lot of clicks…and a lot of money.
To solve for this, marketers typically rely on three levers:
- Improve ad performance by optimizing keywords, budgets, etc
- Improve website conversions with conversion rate optimization (CRO)
- Improve quality of clicks via Google Click ID (GLCID) and conversion feedback
In this article, we’ll be exploring the latter of the three. Specifically, we’ll highlight an improved approach to training Google Ads to find the right clicks and traffic for your business via GCLID and conversion tracking. But first, let’s briefly discuss the current approach to Google conversion tracking — and its limitations.
Google Conversion Tracking & GCLID: As It Stands
As a B2B marketer, you’re probably familiar with how conversion tracking and GCLID work to share conversion feedback with Google, but here’s a quick refresher:
Not all ad clicks are equal. A buyer that matches your ideal client profile is probably more valuable to your business than a student looking for an internship. However, to Google and other ad platforms, a paid ad click, regardless of whether it's by a buyer, a student, or a competitor, is a paid ad click.
To avoid the risk of burning through budgets on irrelevant paid engagement, Google supports the ability to digest feedback on the quality of clicks based on Google Click ID (GCLID) and preconfigured conversion actions. Via GCLID, Google assigns each click with a unique identifier. If the user behind a specific click goes on to perform a favorable action, marketers can flag that click to Google as a “high-quality lead”. Google’s algorithm then harnesses countless factors and historical records from its own database to surface your search ads to other audiences that match this criteria for a “high-quality lead”. Marketers typically tag sign-ups, MQLs, SQLs, and opportunities as favorable conversion actions. This lead-level feedback improves the quality of audience that receive your ads, which in turn, improves conversions.
In theory, ad optimization with conversion tracking and GCLID sounds fantastic — a feedback loop between advertiser and advertising platform to continually improve ad performance and conversions. That being said, there are two challenges with Google Conversion Tracking and GCLID as it stands today:
- Limited data: Google Ads recommends at least 30 conversions in 30 days for its algorithms to take effect in understanding what’s valuable and what’s not. In fact, for minimum CPA fluctuation and a quick learning period, Google suggests a whopping 500 conversions in 30 days. For early and mid-stage companies that are yet to hit these volumes of conversions, this lack of data can be a limiting factor.
- Lagging metrics: B2B sales cycles are notoriously lengthy and non-linear. After a visitor submits a demo form, for example, it might be a couple of days before their demo call, a few weeks before they become an opportunity, and more than a month before the deal is closed. Given that most marketers prefer quick iterations and experiments to squeeze the most ROI out of their campaigns, these extended periods between conversions lengthens the feedback loop when sending lead-level data back to Google. This lagging lead metrics is another limiting factor.
With bids and cost per clicks becoming increasingly expensive as a result of growing competition, we need a fresh approach to overcome limitations with lead-level conversion tracking. Our hypothesis? Leverage traffic-level conversions to ensure sufficient, leading data availability for Google to work with.
Traffic-level Conversion Tracking: A Better Approach
Most marketers typically use sign-ups, M/SQLs, or other lead-level conversions as their conversion action goals. However, as noted earlier, only about 6% of visitors typically submit a form, with fewer still converting down funnel, after a delay. This results in small, lagging data sets for Google to work with.
Rather than sending back lagging conversion data for 6 out of a 100 visitors on your paid landing pages, what if you could send leading data for 60? This is exactly what Traffic-level conversion tracking seeks to achieve via IP-based account enrichment, engagement tracking, workflow automations, and GCLID.
Here’s how it works
Even though only a fraction of the traffic on your paid landing pages will sign-up, there’s still variable value in the remaining ninety something percent of visitors that are yet to convert. Say that 10 visitors land on your website from a search ad. Out of these 10, 2 are in-market ICP buyers that immediately sign up. 5 are ICP buyers that would make a good fit for your business, but decide that now is not the best time for a demo, so they drop off without submitting a form. And 3 are non-ICP visitors: a student, a job seeker, and a competitor — who also drop off without submitting a form.
The typical approach suggests sending the 2 ICP visitors that converted back to Google Ads as feedback. While this is helpful, it doesn’t encapsulate the full extent of data collected here. It fails to acknowledge the 5 clicks (50%!) that albeit didn’t convert but matched our ideal client profile. While these clicks may not be as valuable as the 2 ICP clicks that converted, they’re certainly more valuable than the Non-ICP clicks. If ICP converted is worth $20, ICP not converted could be worth $10, while Non-ICP could be worth $2. This is valuable data for Google to make sense of ad clicks, even in cases where an explicit “conversion action" may not have taken place. By supplying Google with a larger set of relevant data, its algorithms will have a better understanding of what kind of visitors you value most. This data needn’t be limited to ICP data (firmographic) alone; it may be based on engagement (time-spent, scroll%) as well.
Accordingly, traffic-level conversion tracking seeks to identify, qualify, and feed Google with a larger volume of granular, leading data by de-anonymizing website traffic and engagement at an account-level. This is where an account intelligence tool (*ahem* Factors.ai) comes into the picture.
How Factors Fits In: Your Data + Our Data = Ad Magic
The process we’re exploring here involves identifying website traffic, qualifying that traffic based on their firmographics (for ICP fit) and engagement (for intent fit), and pushing that data back to Google as feedback to attract better, more relevant audiences that *we hope* improves conversions and pipeline. Accordingly, we’ll need the following:
- An IP-based intelligence tool to identify and enrich landing page traffic at an account-level
- Assign conversion value to incoming traffic based on your ICP and engagement criteria
- Automate a workflow that pushes this traffic-level conversion data to Google
As luck would have it, Factors.ai supports all three requirements with industry-leading account identification, engagement scoring, and workflow automations. Here’s an example of what a Factors-powered Search ads conversion tracking process could look like:
- Identify up to 64% of anonymous companies landing on your website via search ads but are yet to convert
- Qualify and segment identified companies based on firmographics (industry, size, etc) and engagement (time-spent, scroll-depth, etc)
- Push traffic-level conversion action data (along with lead-level data) back to Google automatically with the likes of Make, Zapier etc
- Google leverages a larger set of leading data to improve the quality of clicks and traffic
- Improved audience quality results in better conversions and cost-effectiveness
Interested to see it in action? We’d be more than happy to set up a similar process for you over a trail with Factors.ai.
{{CTA_BANNER}}
5 Ps of Marketing: Meaning, Importance & Examples
While most of us may have studied or heard about the 5 Ps of marketing, a quick revision wouldn’t hurt, right?
This time, imagine marketing your grandma’s secret recipe - each ingredient is carefully chosen to create a yummy dish that leaves you craving for more. In her special recipe marketing, there's a tried-and-true formula that has stood the test of time: the 5 Ps. Think of it as your secret mix for success in the kitchen!
Did you know?
Prof. James Culliton of Harvard University cooked up this concept in the 1940s. He called it the "4 Ps of the marketing mix." But just like any great recipe, it evolved, adding one more essential ingredient to the mix.
These five Ps are
1. Product
The main dish that everyone's here to taste.
2. Price
Price sets the tone, like the price tag on a menu, signalling whether it's a budget-friendly meal or a gourmet treat.
3. Promotion
Promotion is your chef's special, the aroma that draws customers in, whether it's through flashy ads or word-of-mouth.
4. Place
The cozy restaurant tucked away on a street corner or the trendy food truck parked in the heart of the city. It's all about convenience and accessibility, making sure your customers can feast on your offerings wherever they are.
5. People
The friendly faces behind the counter, the enthusiastic servers, and the satisfied customers and influencers singing your praises. They're the ones who bring your brand to life, turning first-time visitors into loyal fans with every interaction.
As legendary marketer Seth Godin once said, "Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell." And the 5 Ps? Well, they're the mix that helps you cook up those irresistible stories, leaving your customers hungry for more.
So, grab your apron and sharpen those knives. Let's dive right in to uncover the secrets to crafting a recipe for success.
I. Product
The product is the essence of any business; it's what you offer to fulfill your customers' needs or desires. Without a compelling product, the other elements of marketing lose their significance. Your product is at the heart of your brand identity and the primary way you create value for your customers.
Your product encompasses everything from the physical attributes of what you're selling to the intangible benefits it provides. This includes features, design, quality, branding, packaging, and even the customer experience associated with your offering. It's about crafting something that meets a specific need or solves a particular problem for your target audience.
Types of Products
- Digital Products
As you may already know, these are intangible goods or services delivered electronically. Examples include software, e-books, online courses, and digital downloads. Digital products offer scalability, low distribution costs, and the ability to deliver instant gratification to customers.
- Physical Products
These are tangible goods that customers can touch, feel, and use. Examples range from consumer goods like electronics and apparel to industrial products like machinery and equipment. Physical products often involve manufacturing, inventory management, and distribution logistics.
Points for Consideration
- Product Development Activities
These include market research, ideation, prototyping, testing, and refinement. By understanding your target market's preferences and pain points, you can develop products that resonate with them. Continuous improvement based on customer feedback ensures that your offerings remain relevant and competitive.
- Product Lifecycle
Products go through distinct stages – introduction, growth, maturity, and decline – each requiring different strategies. Understanding where your product stands in its lifecycle helps you anticipate market dynamics and plan accordingly. It also informs decisions about product extensions, updates, or discontinuations.
- Distribution Channels
How you deliver your product to customers is crucial. Distribution channels can include direct sales, retail stores, e-commerce platforms, wholesalers, or a combination of these. Choosing the right channels depends on factors like target market preferences, geographic reach, and cost considerations.
Example
Let's consider the example of a smartphone. The product itself encompasses the physical device – its design, features, and specifications. However, it also includes intangible elements such as the brand reputation, user interface, and ecosystem of apps and services. Product development activities for a smartphone might involve market research to identify consumer preferences, iterative design processes to refine the user experience, and testing to ensure reliability and performance. Throughout its lifecycle, the smartphone may be distributed through various channels, including retail stores, telecom carriers, and online marketplaces. In a digital era, smartphone manufacturers also leverage software updates and app ecosystems to enhance the product's value proposition and longevity.
II. Price
Pricing entails setting a monetary value for your product or service that reflects its perceived worth to customers. It involves considering factors like production costs, competitor pricing, market demand, and customer willingness to pay. Effective pricing strategies align with your business objectives, target market, and positioning in the marketplace.
Price is crucial because it determines the value exchange between you and your customers. It's not just about putting a number on your product or service; it's about finding the sweet spot that balances what customers are willing to pay with the profitability of your business. Price directly influences consumer perceptions, purchase decisions, and your overall competitiveness in the market.
Factors that help brands make pricing decisions
- Cost-based Pricing
Calculating the total cost of production, distribution, and marketing, and adding a markup to ensure profitability.
- Value-based Pricing
Assessing the perceived value of the product or service to the customer and pricing accordingly.
- Competitive Pricing
Analyzing competitor pricing strategies and positioning your product accordingly in the market.
- Demand-based Pricing
Setting prices based on supply and demand dynamics, adjusting prices to maximize revenue during peak periods or to stimulate demand during off-peak times.
- Psychological Pricing
Leveraging pricing tactics such as charm pricing (ending prices in 9 or 99), prestige pricing (setting high prices to convey luxury or exclusivity), or price bundling (offering multiple products or services for a single price) to influence consumer perception and behavior.
Pricing Strategies
- Dynamic Pricing
This strategy involves adjusting prices in real-time based on factors like demand, seasonality, competitor pricing, and customer behavior. Airlines, hotels, and ride-sharing services often use dynamic pricing algorithms to optimize revenue.
- Pricing Tiers
Offering multiple price points allows you to cater to different customer segments with varying needs and budgets. For example, software companies may offer tiered pricing plans with basic, standard, and premium features to appeal to different user groups.
- Subscription-based Pricing
Subscriptions offer customers ongoing access to a product or service for a recurring fee. This model provides predictable revenue streams for businesses and fosters customer loyalty through continuous value delivery. Examples include streaming services like Netflix and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms like Adobe Creative Cloud.
- Minimum Pricing and Maximum Ceiling
Establishing a floor price prevents undervaluing your product or service, maintaining brand integrity and profitability. Similarly, setting a maximum ceiling ensures that prices remain competitive without alienating price-sensitive customers.
- Deferred Payments
Allowing customers to pay for products or services over time through installment plans or financing options can increase affordability and purchasing flexibility. However, it's essential to assess credit risk and ensure timely payments.
- Discounts and Coupons
Offering temporary price reductions or promotional incentives can stimulate sales, attract new customers, and reward loyalty. Whether through seasonal sales, loyalty programs, or referral discounts, discounts and coupons can create a sense of urgency and incentivize action.
Example: Coffee Shop
Let's consider the example of a coffee shop. The price of a cup of coffee may vary based on factors such as the quality of beans, location, and competition. The coffee shop may implement dynamic pricing during peak hours, increasing prices to capitalize on high demand and maintain profitability.
Additionally, they may offer pricing tiers for different coffee sizes or specialty drinks, catering to varying customer preferences and budgets. To encourage repeat business, the coffee shop could introduce a subscription model, where customers pay a monthly fee for unlimited coffee refills or exclusive discounts. They may also participate in price comparison sites to showcase their competitive pricing and attract new customers searching for the best deals.
Finally, the coffee shop could offer discounts or coupons during off-peak hours to drive traffic and boost sales during slower periods. Through a strategic approach to pricing, the coffee shop maximizes revenue while delivering value to customers.
Example: Netflix Subscription Tiers
Netflix's pricing strategy for its subscription-based streaming service is a prime example of catering to diverse customer needs while maximizing revenue. Netflix offers multiple subscription tiers, each tailored to different usage levels and budget preferences.
The basic tier offers access to standard-definition content on one screen at a time, making it an affordable option for individual users. In contrast, the premium tier provides access to ultra-high-definition content on up to four screens simultaneously, catering to families or users who value premium features.
Furthermore, Netflix adjusts its pricing periodically to reflect changes in content offerings, market demand, and competitive pressures. This dynamic pricing approach allows Netflix to optimize its revenue while providing value to its diverse customer base.
By offering a range of pricing options and periodically adjusting its rates, Netflix effectively balances affordability with value, ensuring a competitive edge in the crowded streaming market.
III. Promotions
Promotions encompass all activities aimed at communicating the value proposition of a product or service to the target audience. This includes advertising, public relations, sales promotions, personal selling, direct marketing, and digital marketing efforts.
Your promotions play a crucial role in the marketing mix because they serve as the primary means of communication between businesses and consumers. While the product addresses customer needs, the price reflects the perceived value, and the place ensures accessibility, promotions amplify these elements and influence consumer perception and behavior.
The goal of promotions is to create awareness, stimulate interest, generate desire, and ultimately drive action or purchase intent among consumers. Effective promotions can differentiate a brand, build brand equity, and ultimately drive sales and revenue.
Distribution Channels for Promotions
Promotions can be distributed through various channels, both traditional and digital, depending on the target audience, budget, and marketing objectives.
Common distribution channels for promotions include:
- Television, radio, and print advertisements
- Social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn)
- Online display ads and search engine marketing (Google Ads)
- Email marketing campaigns
- Influencer partnerships and collaborations
- Public relations activities (Press Releases, Media Events)
- Sales promotions (Discounts, Coupons, Rebates)
Factors to consider while choosing the Promotional Channel
Choosing the right promotional channels requires careful consideration of various factors, including
- Target Audience
Understanding the demographics, psychographics, and media consumption habits of your target audience helps identify the most effective channels to reach them.
- Budget
Assessing the available budget and cost-effectiveness of different channels helps prioritize promotional activities and allocate resources accordingly.
- Objectives
Aligning promotional channels with specific marketing objectives – whether it's building brand awareness, driving website traffic, or increasing sales – ensures that efforts are focused and measurable.
- Reach and Frequency
Evaluating the reach and frequency potential of each channel helps maximize exposure and engagement with the target audience.
- Competitive Landscape
Analyzing competitors' promotional strategies and presence across different channels can inform decisions about where to allocate resources for maximum impact.
- Integration and Consistency
Ensuring consistency and synergy across promotional channels and messaging helps reinforce brand identity and enhance the overall customer experience.
Example: Clothing Brand
Let's consider the example of a clothing brand launching a new product line targeting young adults. To promote the new collection, the brand might leverage a mix of promotional channels
- Social Media
Launching teaser posts on Instagram and Facebook to build anticipation, followed by sponsored ads showcasing the products and directing users to the brand's website.
- Influencer Marketing
Partnering with fashion influencers and bloggers to create sponsored content featuring the new collection and sharing their reviews and styling tips with their followers.
- Email Marketing
Sending out targeted email campaigns to subscribers announcing the product launch, offering exclusive discounts, and inviting them to shop the collection online. Here are Google’s latest guidelines for bulk email senders (2024).
- Pop-Up Events
Hosting experiential pop-up events in trendy locations frequented by the target audience, where customers can preview and purchase the new collection while enjoying music, refreshments, and interactive activities.
- Public Relations
Securing media coverage in fashion magazines, blogs, and online publications to generate buzz and raise awareness about the brand and its new collection.
Example: Nike's "Just Do It" Campaign
Nike's "Just Do It" campaign stands as a timeless example of effective promotion that transcends traditional advertising to inspire and motivate consumers. Launched in 1988, the campaign features iconic slogans and powerful imagery that resonate with athletes and non-athletes alike.
Through compelling storytelling and endorsements by prominent athletes like Michael Jordan and Serena Williams, Nike positions itself as a brand that champions determination, perseverance, and excellence. The campaign's message of empowerment transcends mere product promotion, fostering a deep emotional connection with consumers.
Moreover, Nike's strategic use of multiple promotion channels, including television commercials, print ads, social media, and sponsorships, ensures widespread visibility and engagement. By leveraging the power of storytelling and aligning its messaging with core brand values, Nike's "Just Do It" campaign continues to inspire and resonate with audiences worldwide.
IV. Place
Place, also known as distribution, encompasses the methods and channels through which products or services are made available to customers. It involves everything from the physical locations where products are sold to the logistical processes involved in getting them there. Place ensures that products are accessible and convenient for customers to purchase.
So why is ‘place’ so important?
Place is critical because even the most innovative product, compelling price, and effective promotion are futile if customers can't access or obtain the product conveniently. It ensures that the right product is available at the right time, in the right quantity, and in the right location.
The ‘place’ is where the transaction between the business and the customer occurs, making it a pivotal part of the marketing mix.
Types of Distribution Channels
Distribution channels refer to the pathways through which products move from the manufacturer to the end consumer. Fulfillment is the process of receiving, processing, and then delivering customer orders.
Common distribution channels and fulfillment methods include
- Direct Distribution
Involves selling products directly from the manufacturer to the end consumer without intermediaries. Examples include company-owned retail stores, e-commerce websites, and direct sales representatives.
- Retail Stores
Brick-and-mortar stores where customers can physically browse, purchase, and take immediate possession of products. Examples include department stores, specialty shops, and supermarkets.
- E-commerce Platforms
Online marketplaces and websites where customers can browse, select, and purchase products remotely. E-commerce platforms offer convenience, 24/7 accessibility, and the ability to reach a global audience.
- Indirect Distribution
Involves one or more intermediaries between the manufacturer and the end consumer. Indirect distribution channels can include wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and agents.
- Wholesale
Selling products in bulk quantities to retailers or other businesses for resale to end consumers. Wholesale distribution involves negotiating contracts, managing inventory levels, and coordinating shipments to distributors or wholesalers.
- Multichannel Distribution
Utilizes multiple distribution channels simultaneously to reach different customer segments or markets. For example, a company may sell its products through both retail stores and e-commerce platforms to cater to diverse customer preferences.
- Intensive Distribution
Aims to make products available in as many outlets as possible to maximize market coverage and accessibility. Intensive distribution is common for everyday consumer goods like beverages, snacks, and personal care products.
- Selective Distribution
Involves carefully selecting a limited number of retail outlets or distributors based on specific criteria such as geographic location, target market demographics, or brand image. Selective distribution is typical for products with higher prices or specialized features.
- Exclusive Distribution
Grants exclusive rights to a single distributor or retailer to sell a product within a particular geographic area or market segment. Exclusive distribution is often used for luxury or high-end products to maintain exclusivity and prestige.
That said, businesses must keep the logistics and supply chain management in mind while formulating their distribution strategies. Managing the flow of products from suppliers to warehouses to distribution centers to retail stores or customers' doorsteps. Effective logistics ensure timely delivery, accurate inventory management, and cost-efficient operations.
Example: Starbucks Retail Stores
Starbucks' retail stores exemplify strategic placement and meticulous attention to the customer experience. With over 30,000 stores worldwide, Starbucks has established a ubiquitous presence in high-traffic locations, including urban centers, shopping malls, and transportation hubs.
The placement of Starbucks stores is carefully curated to maximize convenience and accessibility for customers, ensuring that they can easily find and frequent their favorite coffee destination. Whether it's a bustling city street or a suburban neighborhood, Starbucks' presence is felt in diverse locations, catering to a broad demographic of coffee enthusiasts.
Moreover, Starbucks' emphasis on creating inviting and comfortable environments further enhances the appeal of its retail stores. From cosy seating areas to free Wi-Fi access, Starbucks stores offer more than just coffee – they provide a welcoming space for customers to relax, socialize, and enjoy the Starbucks experience.
V. People
People are at the heart of every marketing endeavor. It's the people who drive demand for products or services, make purchase decisions, and ultimately determine business success.
People refer to all individuals involved in the marketing process, including customers, employees, partners, stakeholders, and influencers. It encompasses understanding their needs, preferences, motivations, and behaviors to create meaningful interactions and relationships.
Understanding and catering to the needs and preferences of people – whether they are customers, employees, or partners – is essential for creating value, fostering loyalty, and achieving sustainable growth.
Moving Beyond your Sales Team
- Sponsorships
Sponsorships involve partnering with individuals, organizations, events, or causes to promote brand awareness, enhance brand image, and reach target audiences. Sponsorship opportunities can include sports events, concerts, festivals, charity initiatives, or industry conferences. By associating with relevant sponsorships, businesses can increase visibility, credibility, and engagement with their target market.
- Cross-promotions
Cross-promotions entail collaborating with complementary businesses or brands to promote each other's products or services. This can involve joint marketing campaigns, co-branded promotions, or product bundling arrangements. Cross-promotions leverage the existing customer bases and brand equity of both parties to expand reach, drive sales, and create mutual benefits.
- Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing involves partnering with individuals or social media personalities who have a significant following and influence over their audience. Influencers can endorse products or services through sponsored content, reviews, or endorsements, leveraging their credibility and authority to sway purchase decisions. Influencer marketing can be particularly effective for reaching niche audiences, generating authentic engagement, and building brand advocacy.
Significance of having industry influencers for B2B selling
In B2B selling, industry influencers play a crucial role in driving credibility, trust, and thought leadership. B2B buyers often rely on industry experts, thought leaders, and influencers for insights, recommendations, and validation when making purchasing decisions. Partnering with industry influencers can provide access to decision-makers, enhance brand visibility, and position the business as a trusted authority in the industry.
Example: Fitness Apparel
Let's consider the example of a fitness apparel brand aiming to target health-conscious millennials. They could leverage people-focused strategies such as
- Influencer Marketing
Partnering with fitness influencers and lifestyle bloggers to showcase their products in action, share workout routines, and promote healthy living tips to their followers. By aligning with influencers who embody their brand values and resonate with their target audience, the apparel brand can increase brand awareness and drive sales.
- Cross-Promotions
Collaborating with fitness studios, gyms, or wellness brands to offer joint promotions, such as discounted gym memberships with apparel purchases or co-branded fitness events. These cross-promotions create synergy between complementary businesses and provide added value to customers.
- Sponsorships
Sponsoring local fitness events, charity runs, or wellness festivals where their target audience is likely to participate. By associating with these events, the brand can demonstrate its commitment to health and fitness, engage with the community, and build positive brand associations.
Example: Tesla's Sales and Service Representatives
Tesla's sales and service representatives exemplify the importance of knowledgeable and customer-centric personnel in driving sales and fostering brand loyalty. Unlike traditional car dealerships, Tesla's approach to sales and customer service emphasizes direct engagement with knowledgeable representatives who are passionate about electric vehicles.
Tesla's sales representatives are trained to provide personalized guidance and support to customers throughout the purchase process, from test drives to vehicle customization options. Their expertise in electric vehicle technology and commitment to customer satisfaction differentiate Tesla's sales experience from traditional automotive retail.
Furthermore, Tesla's service representatives play a crucial role in maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing prompt and efficient support for vehicle maintenance and repairs. With a focus on transparency and proactive communication, Tesla's service team ensures that customers receive the highest level of care and attention.
By investing in knowledgeable and customer-focused personnel, Tesla not only enhances the sales and service experience but also strengthens its brand reputation and fosters long-term customer relationships.
As we come to a close, it's clear that the 5 Ps of Marketing bring their own unique strengths to the table. By stitching these elements together, we create a strategy that captivates audiences, drives sales, and builds relationships that stand the test of time.
If you’re looking to read and learn more about marketing terms, read our blog on 102 Essential B2B Terms.
Top 12 B2B Data Providers in 2024
Imagine having access to a wealth of information about potential customers at your fingertips. That's what B2B data providers offer – a centralized database filled with valuable information about businesses and decision-makers. However, with numerous B2B data providers available, it can be challenging to choose one that best suits your needs.
If you’re trying to find the right pick, this guide is for you. We’ll go over some of the best B2B data provider tools in the market today, what they offer, and if they’re good for you. Let’s get right into it.
Top 12 B2B Data Providers for Businesses in 2024
We’ll explore 12 of the best B2B data providers that you can consider for your business needs in 2024. Let’s start with one of the most popular options—Zoominfo.
1. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is one of most established B2B data providers on this list, offering a wealth of information on companies and contacts. With its advanced search capabilities and real-time updates, ZoomInfo enables you to quickly identify and connect with their ideal prospects.
Features:
- Extensive database of contact and company information
- Advanced search filters and segmentation options
- Real-time data updates and verification
- Buyer intent insights to identify key decision-makers
- Conversation intelligence for sales call analysis
- Integration with popular CRM and marketing automation platforms
Pricing:
ZoomInfo offers flexible pricing packages across their data-driven solutions and premium applications.
- SalesOS helps speed up the entire sales process with accurate contact data, company insights, buying intent signals, engagement apps and integrations.
- MarketingOS aims to achieve more ROI by providing essential contact data, advanced company insights, digital marketing solutions for advertising, website chat, and form management, along with plug-and-play and flexible integrations.
- TalentOS helps find the best talent faster through advanced candidate search with accurate contact data, sourcing intelligence with candidate alerts and company insights, engagement apps and integrations.
ZoomInfo also offers three support package options—the free Standard, Preferred, and the Premium white-glove service package to further enhance the features provided within the plans.
Who it's good for:
ZoomInfo caters to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises, seeking a reliable and comprehensive B2B data solution.
2. Cognism
Cognism is a powerful sales intelligence platform that combines high-quality data with advanced analytics and automation features. Cognism's intuitive interface and easy-to-use tools make it simple for you to find and engage with your target audience, while its integration with popular CRM and marketing automation platforms ensures a seamless workflow.
Features:
- Offers 47 million mobile numbers with 87% of them being verified
- Wide global coverage across EMEA, NAM, and APAC regions
- Compliance with global data protection regulations
- Intent data powered by Bombora for identifying high-priority prospects
- Seamless integration with popular CRM and sales engagement platforms
- User-friendly Chrome extension for easy data access and enrichment
Pricing:
Cognism doesn’t publicly list their plans nor any features and you can get access to the required information by booking a demo with their sales team. Learn more about Cognism pricing.
Who it's good for:
Cognism is an excellent choice for businesses that prioritize data accuracy and compliance while seeking a user-friendly platform to support their sales and marketing efforts.
3. Clearbit
Clearbit is a data enrichment and lead generation platform that helps you gain deeper insights into your target accounts and prospects. With its real-time data enrichment capabilities, Clearbit can automatically fill in missing information in your customer records, such as company size, industry, and contact details. The platform also offers a range of tools for lead generation, including a powerful API and integrations with popular marketing and sales tools.
Features:
- Data enrichment to fill in missing information in customer records
- Lead scoring and routing for focusing on high-priority leads
- Intent-based outreach to build a pipeline from website visitors
- Advanced segmentation for intelligent go-to-market strategies
- Precise B2B targeting and data-driven prospecting
- Personalized email campaigns based on prospect data
- Extensive database with over 100 filters and nearly 400 million contacts, refreshed monthly
Pricing:
Clearbit does not provide public pricing or features available within the plans. You need to request a demo for the pricing.
Who it's good for:
Clearbit is well-suited for businesses that want to enrich their existing data and gain deeper insights into their target accounts, as well as those looking for a reliable API solution.
4. 6sense
6sense is an account-based orchestration platform that uses machine learning to help businesses identify and engage with their most valuable prospects. The platform's predictive analytics capabilities enable you to anticipate buyer behavior and intent, allowing you to focus your efforts on the accounts most likely to convert.
Features:
- AI-powered account identification and audience building
- Predictive analytics for optimal engagement timing
- Account intelligence for prioritization and personalization
- Prioritization dashboards for sales teams
- Revenue AI insights accessible from LinkedIn and other B2B websites
Pricing:
Again, 6sense does not publicly list its pricing. However, they have a free plan where you get 50 free credits to test out the platform before booking a demo and moving to paid tiers.
Who it's good for:
6sense is ideal for businesses that have adopted an account-based marketing (ABM) approach and want to leverage predictive intelligence to optimize their sales and marketing efforts.
5. Factors.ai
Factors is a B2B analytics platform and data provider that helps you reveal anonymous accounts visiting your marketing channels. The platform combines data from industry leaders like Clearbit and 6sense to deliver highly accurate and comprehensive insights—revealing upto 64% of accounts. Factors enables businesses to identify and engage with their prospects, track website visitor behavior, and attribute revenue to marketing efforts.
Factors also provides engagement insights and analytics, enabling sales and marketing teams to make data-driven decisions and optimize their efforts. It seamlessly integrates with existing workflows, making it easy for businesses to benefit from accurate data without disrupting their current processes.
Features:
- IP-matching with a database of over 4.7B IP addresses and 100 million+ companies and a match rate of up to 64%
- AI-powered account scoring and prioritization based on attributes, behavior, and engagement
- Account activation through intent data and high-intent audience targeting on LinkedIn and real-time sales alerts
- Intuitive account timelines and user journeys for visualizing buyer progression and intent
- Seamless data integration with a wide range of platforms
- Comprehensive platform for account intelligence, website visitor tracking, engagement insights, and revenue attribution
{{CTA_BANNER}}
Pricing:
Factors.ai offers four pricing plans to suit different business needs:
- Free plan at $0 per month
- Basic plan at $249 per month
- Growth plan at $799 per month
- Custom plan tailored for agencies, enterprises, and established teams looking to scale, with pricing available upon request.
Learn more about
Who it's good for:
Factors is an excellent choice for businesses that want a comprehensive B2B data solution that combines the accuracy of Clearbit's data with the intelligence of 6sense, as well as powerful features such as LinkedIn view-through attribution, website analytics, engagement scoring, and more
6. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful tool for B2B sales professionals looking to find and engage with potential buyers on the world's largest professional network. With its advanced search capabilities and lead recommendations, Sales Navigator makes it easy to identify and connect with decision-makers in your target accounts or companies.
The platform's InMail messaging feature enables you to easily include LinkedIn into your existing sales workflow, while its insights and analytics help track and optimize performance.
Features:
- Pinpoint ideal B2B buyers with advanced search filters (industry, title, company changes)
- Sales Navigator shows fresh prospects based on your preferences, expanding your data reach
- Get alerts when hot leads engage with your content or hit career milestones
- Identify key decision-makers within target accounts for a complete sales picture
- Reach high-value prospects, even if unconnected, with a limited number of monthly InMails
Pricing:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers different pricing plans to cater to various business needs.
- The Core plan starts at $79.99 per month
- Advanced begins at $135 per month
- Advanced Plus: Custom pricing that can be requested by booking a call
Who it's good for:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is ideal for sales professionals and teams who regularly use LinkedIn for their lead generation and want to tap into the power of LinkedIn to find more
7. Lusha
Lusha is a user-friendly B2B contact and company data platform that helps businesses find and connect with their ideal prospects.
With its extensive database of accurate and up-to-date contact information, including email addresses and phone numbers, Lusha makes it easy for you to reach out to potential customers and partners. Lusha’s browser extension helps you access and use data directly from your existing tools and workflows.
Features:
- Intent data through a partnership with Bombora, collected from over 5,000 consenting sources
- Simple setup and short onboarding process with an intuitive dashboard
- Seamless integration with Salesforce and other third-party CRM vendors
- Popular choice for sales teams using a "warm outbound" approach
Pricing:
Lusha, a B2B sales intelligence tool, offers three pricing plans to suit different business needs and budgets.
- Free Plan lets you find 50 emails and 5 phone numbers every month
- To upgrade to a paid plan, you need to register for a demo
Who it's good for:
Lusha is a great choice for businesses and professionals who value simplicity and ease of use, and who need quick access to accurate contact information for their outreach efforts.
8. Lead411
Lead411 is a comprehensive B2B lead generation and sales intelligence platform that offers a range of tools and features to help businesses find and engage with their ideal customers. With its extensive database of accurate and verified contact and company information, Lead411 enables users to quickly build targeted prospect lists and outreach campaigns.
The platform's advanced search filters, data enrichment, and real-time alerts help you stay on top of key insights and opportunities, while its integration with popular CRM and marketing automation tools ensures a seamless workflow.
Features:
- Unlimited access to high-quality, verified B2B leads, emails, and direct phone numbers
- Phone-verified mobile numbers for connecting with a high percentage of your list
- Database regularly checked and cleaned against global DNC lists
- Accurate B2B intent data powered by Bombora
- Company growth intelligence, including employee growth and other triggers
Pricing:
Lead411 offers several pricing plans tailored for different team sizes.
- The Basic Plus Unlimited plan costs $899 per year per user and includes unlimited email and direct phone number views, 2400 exports per year with rollover, free CRM integration, and a Chrome extension.
- The Pro with Bombora Intent plan is designed for growth with 10,000 exports per year with intent data, discounted rates for multiple seats, chat support, and additional export credits at $0.44 each.
- The Unlimited plan is the most popular option with unlimited exporting, onboarding/dedicated support, optional Bombora Intent Data add-on, API access, Chrome extension, and flexible single or multi-user options.
All plans include features like sales engagement with Reach, data append, international search, currently hiring filter, suppression lists, technology stack search, custom triggers, lead scoring, and company intelligence news.
Who it's good for:
Lead411 is ideal for businesses that are looking for a comprehensive B2B data solution with advanced search and lead generation capabilities, and who are willing to invest in a higher-priced platform.
9. UpLead
UpLead is a user-friendly B2B data platform that offers high-quality contact and company information at affordable prices. With a database of over 54 million contacts and 14 million companies, UpLead makes it easy for you to find and connect with your ideal prospects. The platform's real-time email verification, data enrichment, and list-building features also help ensure the accuracy and relevance of user data.
Features:
- A database of over 155 million B2B contacts from 200+ countries
- 95% data accuracy guarantee and real-time email verification for all available data
- Data enrichment for contacts, emails, and companies
- Seamless integration with popular CRM systems and third-party tools
- Real-time intent data for identifying high-priority prospects
- Google Chrome extension for LinkedIn and website data scraping
Pricing:
UpLead offers a variety of pricing plans to cater to different needs. The Free Trial provides a 7-day free trial with 5 credits, including verified emails, mobile phones, and a Chrome extension.
- The Essentials plan costs $99 per month and includes 170 credits, verified emails, mobile phones, CRM integration, and company news.
- The Plus plan, aimed at individuals, costs $199 per month and offers 400 credits, data enrichment, email pattern intel, technographic, advanced filters, and suppression list uploads.
- For organizations, the Professional plan is customizable with a custom number of seats and credits and includes buyer intent data, all search filters, full API access, advanced CRM integrations, competitor intelligence, team management, a dedicated success manager, an onboarding specialist, and priority phone support.
Who it's good for:
UpLead is a great choice for businesses that value simplicity and affordability, and who need a reliable source of accurate B2B contact and company data.
10. LeadIQ
LeadIQ is a sales prospecting platform that combines powerful data insights with intuitive tools and features to help sales teams find and engage with their ideal customers. With its contact and company information, LeadIQ enables you to quickly build targeted prospect lists and outreach campaigns.
The platform's real-time data enrichment, lead capture, and CRM integration features help streamline the sales process, while its analytics and reporting capabilities provide valuable insights into team performance and areas for improvement.
Features:
- Automated lead capture for identifying and saving potential customer information
- Real-time notifications and alerts for promotions, position changes, and company updates
- Duplicate detection to maintain database integrity
- Custom field mapping for data consistency
- Comprehensive analytics dashboard for data-driven insights
Pricing:
LeadIQ offers four pricing editions, with a free trial available and a freemium plan at no additional cost.
- The Essential edition costs $39 per user per month
- The Pro edition is priced at $79 per user per month.
- The Core edition, designed for individual sales professionals, costs $79.99 per month billed annually.
- The Advanced edition, tailored for small to medium-sized teams, costs $135 per month billed annually.
Who it's good for:
LeadIQ is ideal for sales teams and professionals who want a comprehensive prospecting platform that combines accurate data with powerful tools for lead generation and outreach.
11. SalesIntel
SalesIntel is a comprehensive B2B data platform that offers high-quality contact and company information, along with a range of tools and features to help businesses find and engage with their ideal prospects. It has a smaller database of 5 million companies and 70 million contacts compared to other platforms on this list.
Features:
- Focused account targeting using technographic and firmographic data
- Accurate contact information, including direct dials and human-verified contacts
- Regular data verification every 90 days to ensure data quality
- Seamless integration with marketing automation tools and CRM systems for identifying ideal candidates
Pricing:
SalesIntel provides three pricing plans for B2B data.
- The Individual plan costs $69 per month and includes a 14-day trial.
- The Teams plan is priced at $199 per month per user and also includes a 14-day trial.
- The Unlimited Everything plan is designed for teams that don't want to worry about credits, with pricing built to suit specific needs.
Who it's good for:
SalesIntel is a good choice for businesses that prioritize data accuracy and verification, and who need a reliable partner for their sales and marketing data needs.
12. Kaspr
Kaspr is a powerful B2B prospecting tool that combines data insights with automation features to help businesses find and engage with their ideal customers. Kaspr enables you to quickly build targeted prospect lists and outreach campaigns.
The platform's real-time data enrichment, email verification, and CRM integration features help ensure the accuracy and relevance of user data. Kaspr's user-friendly interface and affordable pricing make it accessible to businesses of all sizes.
Features:
- Fast and easy installation for quick setup
- Instant access and collection of B2B contact data
- Automated outreach with three workflow options: LinkedIn, Enrichment, and Integrations
- Robust lead tracking and organization, consolidating contacts in one place
- Highly accurate contact information, including emails, phone numbers, and social media profiles
- Data enrichment capabilities for automated campaigns and data enhancement
Pricing:
- The free plan includes 5 phone credits, 5 direct email credits, and 10 export credits per month.
- The Starter plan costs $49 per user and includes 1,200 phone credits, 60 direct email credits, and 3,000 export credits per user.
- The Business plan is priced at $79 per user, while the Organization plan costs $99 per user.
Users can get unlimited email addresses when they invite three colleagues to sign up. Kaspr integrates with many platforms via Zapier, including SalesForce, Hubspot, PipeDrive, Sendinblue, and Lemlist.
Who it's good for:
Kaspr is ideal for businesses that are looking for a user-friendly B2B data platform with advanced search and data enrichment features, and who want a reliable partner for their sales prospecting and outreach efforts.
How to Choose The Right Platform?
Let’s go over a quick list of things you may want to consider when picking a B2B data provider platform.
- Think about what your business needs and what you want to achieve
- Check how big and reliable the provider's database is
- Look for providers with accurate, current, and relevant data
- Make sure the provider respects data privacy and follows the rules
- See if the provider works well with the tools and software you already use
- Compare prices and pick one that fits your budget
- Read what other users have to say about their experience and success stories
If possible, find a platform that not only provides data but can integrate with your existing marketing stack and give you data about your leads, website visitors, and even those who click on your ads—clearly pushing your account-based marketing efforts further.
Wrapping Up: Finding the Best B2B Data Partner for Your Business
The right data helps you find the perfect customers, understand what they need, and reach out to them in the most effective way possible. B2B data providers give you access to this valuable information to help your business grow and succeed.
Choosing the right platform comes down to thinking about what your business needs, looking for providers with high-quality data, and making sure they play nicely with the tools you already use.
So, try all the platforms you can, and wherever required, get on a demo call to get a better understanding of the product. You want to first test things out as much as possible before locking yourself and your team into a new platform.
{{CTA_BANNER}}
Get started now by booking a demo with Factors—a B2B account intelligence and marketing analytics platform that pulls data from across your marketing channels, and then reveals anonymous accounts with up to 64% accuracy.
Inbound Marketing Funnel Explained - From Traffic to Turnover
You’re browsing online trying to find a solution for that leaky faucet in your kitchen.
As you Google “how to fix a leaky faucet” you come across a blog post from a local plumbing company.
The post gives step-by-step instructions for diagnosing the leak and describes the parts you’ll need to pick up from the hardware store.
“This is super helpful!” you think. You check out a few more posts on their site about common plumbing repairs.
A week later, your neighbor asks if you know a good plumber to install a new bathroom sink. The company you stumbled upon pops back in your mind. “I came across ABC Plumbing online. Their articles were really useful, so they seem trustworthy. I’ll send you their website,” you tell your neighbor.
This scenario highlights the power of inbound marketing. With valuable, relevant marketing assets tailored to what potential customers are looking for online, the plumbing company turned a random website visitor into a brand advocate. But why stop there?
Their blog posts and resources also aim to convert website visitors into leads by capturing contact info and nurturing those leads to eventually becoming paying customers.
It’s all part of a methodology called the inbound marketing funnel. Let’s dive into how it works.
What is the Inbound Marketing Funnel?
Remember those old-school sales funnels from Marketing 101?
They depicted a linear sequence starting with many potential prospects who enter the “top of the funnel,” then get whittled down throughout the sales process until only a small portion convert to become customers at the “bottom of the funnel.”
The inbound marketing funnel is quite similar—some may split the funnel further for more clarity or control.
Rather than relying on outbound sales tactics such as cold calling, it uses digital content, ads, and even organic social media marketing to attract prospects, convert them to leads, and then guide them through a sequence aimed at turning them into customers.
This marketing funnel didn’t appear overnight.
The inbound marketing funnel developed as buyers started relying on online research to make purchasing decisions. In fact, a recent TrustRadius showed virtually 100% of B2B buyers prefer to do their own independent research and validate vendor claims, rather than get product information directly from a salesperson.
As buyers changed their habits, marketers had to adapt.
That’s where inbound marketing came into play—creating helpful marketing content for your blog, ads, socials, podcasts, and other channels, designed to meet searchers’ needs, gain their trust, and ultimately convert them into customers.
Let’s walk through the journey a prospect takes through the inbound funnel, and the types of marketing assets they’ll encounter along the way.
Top of the Funnel (TOFU): Attracting Website Visitors
Publishing content on the web functions similar to casting a fishing net.
As people search for topics related to your business, your content “catches” these prospects and brings them back to your site.
Blog posts, social media content, YouTube videos, and other general query-focused content functions well for casting a wide net due to their in-depth educational nature. They attract website visitors by answering common questions and demonstrating expertise related to your products or services.
- For example, a catering company may publish recipe blogs and party food ideas.
- A preschool may create ebooks with advice on preparing a toddler for kindergarten.
- A marketing technology software company may create educational webinars for B2B marketers
This educational content targets “problem phrases” people are likely to search for during early research stages, before they’re even considering vendors—things like “event catering tips” or “getting toddler ready for school.”
This content increases the odds of the prospect discovering your company early on in their journey.
Moving to MOFU: From Visitors into Leads
Continuing from our fishing example: consider that you’ve pulled a net full of fish.
The job isn’t done yet. Before cooking up any dishes, a chef first sorts through the haul–keeping the good quality fish to prepare a meal, throwing out any rotten ones.
This sorting process aims to predict which fish...err, website visitors...demonstrate buying potential versus those unlikely to convert.
Landing pages and forms play a pivotal role here.
Once a website visitor arrives on your site to consume content, they provide behavioral signals, hinting at their readiness to buy. This could be:
- Visiting many pages.
- Downloading a gated asset
- Visiting pricing or feature pages
These conversion points allow you to capture visitor data and score their actions to determine buying potential..
For example, after reading a blog post on toddler kindergarten prep, a parent may click to download the accompanying “Kindergarten Readiness Checklist.” To access the checklist, they fill out a form providing their name and email address.
Now they’re in your sales funnel! You have their contact information and know they’re interested in preparing their child for kindergarten based on the content they engaged with.
The company now customizes follow-up emails with related information on preparing little ones for the classroom. They know sending this relevant content increases the prospect’s likelihood of buying related services like academic evaluation testing, summer “test prep” camps or learning skill development programs. It’s all about nurturing that lead by demonstrating how you can add value.
Guiding Leads to Become Customers
You’ve likely heard the phrase “content is king.” But we mustn't forget that context is queen. Understanding who is engaging with your content allows you to adapt sales messaging to match their needs and interests.
Buyer personas help create this contextual understanding. Common persona profiles may include:
- demographic details like age, gender, profession
- firmographic details like company size, industry, location
- and psychographic details like values, priorities, pain points.
Building buyer personas for your most common customers allows you to tailor content accordingly throughout the sales funnel.
Our preschool may develop personas for first-time parents, growing families with multiple young kids, and dual income power couples focusing heavily on early childhood development.
Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU): Closed Deals
The inbound marketing funnel ultimately aims to guide qualified leads into becoming paying customers. But this final conversion relies on human interaction. Once a lead demonstrates solid buying potential, they get passed to sales teams for closing.
What signals readiness for sales contact?Harvesting enough information to reasonably “know” key details about that lead.
Contact info, demographic and firmographic data, content engagement patterns, plus lead scores predicting their likelihood to buy all guide sales messaging and personalization.
There are many lead scoring models and lead scoring platforms that you can work with to further improve the efficiency of your sales pipelines.
With this head start from marketing, sales representatives don’t waste time pitching unlikely candidates. They can prepare custom pricing packages and product bundles with the knowledge of what that specific persona wants based on their original content preferences.
In our school prep example, leads may experience highly personalized email sequences addressing concerns for young students struggling with change and how they can create structure around new routines.
Once the email sequence is complete and your platform signals lead readiness (either because users opened majority of your emails, or they replied to emails, etc), the sales staff can use captured info and prepare individualized packages for the students.
For instance, a package may include a summer “classroom camp” program to practice school skills targeting those parents who downloaded the Kindergarten Readiness Checklist.
See how it all tied back together?
How to Implement an Inbound Marketing Funnel
Theoretically plotting the marketing funnel is easy. But when marketing is spread across multiple channels, creating a proper funnel can become extremely difficult.
Every platform has its own data analytics, learning curves, and challenges with adoption
For instance, Google Analytics shows website visitor data, LinkedIn analytics shows your social media and advertising data, while Google Ads shows your ad performance.
But what if you could bring all of this together? Enter Factors.
Factors integrates with your Ads, social media platforms, CRMs, search analytics, and more giving you a unified reporting experience.
But that’s just one small part of it.
You have full control over every aspect of the reports, pulling in data from multiple sources and showing them all on a single screen—making it easy to create marketing funnels.
Along with reporting, you can also use Factor’s account intelligence to reveal up to 64% of anonymous accounts engaging with your marketing channels.
This gives your marketing and sales teams accurate information on who they’re targeting, what the personas are, and how they can best approach their account-based marketing strategy.
Factors helps you bring your sales and marketing teams on the same page, giving them complete access to all the required information they can best achieve their goals.
It’s the missing piece to help you execute a cohesive inbound methodology that transforms strangers into delighted customers.
Drive Growth Through the Inbound Marketing Funnel
Now that you know how inbound marketing funnels guide strangers into becoming loyal customers, you can appreciate why this methodology revolutionized growth. So instead of interrupting strangers with annoying sales pitches, you’re delighting people by solving their problems. The inbound funnel transforms throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks to methodically transforming prospects into delighted customers.
{{CTA_BANNER}}
Factors can help you take your inbound methodology to the next level.
Integrating data from all your marketing channels into one unified platform, Factors gives you a complete 360-degree view of your prospects' journey. You can easily track engagement across touchpoints, identify behavioral signals, and uncover important details to guide your marketing and sales efforts.
Who wouldn’t want to buy from someone with such precision and care for the customer experience?
Try Factors on your marketing channels for free and experience the impact it can have on your marketing efforts, today!
Datorama Pricing, Features, Limitations & More | 2024
Datorama is a marketing cloud intelligence software developed by Salesforce. Given the immense popularity of Salesforce, Datorama has parallelly gained popularity amongst the B2B marketing community.
This blog will explore Datorama, its features, and pricing to see if it is best suited for your business.
What is Datorama?
Datorama is a marketing intelligence and analytics software that helps B2B teams integrate marketing data across different sources.
Today, customers connect with brands through multiple channels like social media and websites, prompting a marketing paradigm shift. Tools like Datorama use advanced data integration and analytics to address this. With over 4200 users, Datorama streamlines data management and empowers stakeholders across the organization with valuable insights.
By furnishing clear, comprehensive analytics reports, Datorama enables marketers to communicate their value proposition effectively, fostering trust and credibility with clients and partners alike.
At its core, Datorama aims to facilitate collaborative decision-making and drive collective efforts toward optimizing marketing performance.
Datorama Features
Here are Datorama’s salient features and offerings that make it a great marketing intelligence tool:
I. Data Capture
Datorama boasts over 300 API connectors that seamlessly integrate diverse data types from your API native library into any preferred format. This versatile platform facilitates the ingestion of structured and unstructured data from sources like social media, email, Google Analytics, CRM data, etc. You can refine their datasets with precise filtering options, tailoring the analysis to their specific requirements.
It has two different API connectors that help achieve this goal:
1. TotalConnect
It augments this functionality by enabling users to supplement data obtained from API connectors with additional datasets. For instance, if there are pertinent custom data extracts from platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud that lack API integration, TotalConnect serves as the remedy. It facilitates the transformation and cleansing of this supplementary data, rendering it suitable for reporting and visualization purposes within the Datorama platform.
2. Liteconnect
For non-marketing data sources such as weather forecasts, geographical information, or sales data. Although these datasets may not directly align with the Datorama data model, LiteConnect allows users to incorporate essential details into their reports effortlessly. By simply dragging and dropping data files into the platform, users can instantly visualize and analyze the information, enhancing the depth and richness of their insights.
2. Data Model
Datorama streamlines the data modeling process by furnishing marketers with 19 adaptable templates tailored to various data source categories, including online advertising, eCommerce, social listening, and web analytics. Beyond the initial data importation phase, the platform empowers users to further refine their data modeling efforts. This includes the ability to reconfigure, enhance, align, and categorize data according to specific requirements, ensuring flexibility and precision throughout the modeling process.
3. Reporting
You can export data from Salesforce Datorama to various destinations with no additional charges- whether it's your database or third-party data visualization or analytics platforms.
Datorama's Query API facilitates scalable data exports in diverse formats such as .csv, .pdf, and more. This makes it easy to create reports and share your findings and progress with all internal and external stakeholders.
4. Dashboards
Datorama's tool InstaBrand empowers users to create custom branded designs for their reports and dashboards. With its visualization section, users can generate impactful dashboards featuring graphs for various key performance indicators (KPIs) with just a single click. Alternatively, users can opt for preconfigured dashboards available in the standard version, simply specifying the campaigns and timeframes for the desired data.
The best thing about InstaBrand is the high level of personalization. Users have the flexibility to incorporate company logos, apply corporate colors, and integrate customizable widgets, tailored to their specific branding requirements.
Pivot Tables:
Pivot tables help visualize data and enable users to analyze information from various perspectives. They facilitate the filtering, sorting, and grouping of extensive datasets based on specific metrics or dimensions, enhancing the granularity of data analysis. Furthermore, pivot tables play a crucial role in generating personalized reports that succinctly summarize data insights without necessitating complex queries.
Datorama Use Cases
Datorama helps marketing teams address the following problems in their everyday functions:
1. Unify Data
Unified data integration through Datorama eliminates the inefficiencies associated with manual data processing tasks. Marketers with marketing intelligence tools like Datorama do not need to spend valuable time and effort on redundant activities such as manually filtering or entering data from disparate sources. With Datorama's numerous APIs, you can easily integrate data from various sources, regardless of format. This allows teams to redirect their focus toward revenue-generating tasks, prioritize strategic initiatives, and aim to engage potential customers more effectively.
2. Data Insights and Visualization
Datorama's robust data insights and visualization tools provide marketers with a powerful means of communicating with key stakeholders, including C-suite executives and cross-functional teams. The platform's easy-to-understand dashboards and visualization features enable marketers to present complex data clearly and compellingly. This not only simplifies reporting processes but also enhances internal communication and accountability. By leveraging Datorama's visualization capabilities, marketers can effectively demonstrate the value of their campaigns and initiatives, fostering greater transparency and alignment across the organization.
3. Analytics/Intelligence
Datorama's analytics and intelligence capabilities empower marketers to gain deep insights into their marketing efforts without the need for extensive manual analysis. Datorama enables marketers to quickly identify trends, patterns, and opportunities for optimization. This comprehensive understanding of marketing performance allows marketers to make data-driven decisions with confidence, optimizing their strategies to maximize results. It enables agile decision-making and continuous improvement without sacrificing focus on core tasks such as customer acquisition and engagement.
Datorama Limitations
1. Steep Learning Curve
Users have reported that Datorama's extensive customizability, tailored to cater to diverse industries, results in a steep learning curve. While the platform offers an umbrella solution for various needs, this high level of customizability can be overwhelming for teams tasked with setting up their own SaaS ecosystem. Particularly for smaller organizations lacking robust tech support or with limited resources, navigating Datorama's complexities may prove challenging.
2. Expensive Tool
Online reviews suggest that Datorama's pricing is relatively high compared to other solutions in this domain. This places Datorama firmly in the realm of enterprise solutions rather than catering to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The elevated price point of Datorama may deter SMBs from considering it as a viable option for their marketing intelligence needs.
3. Limited Number of Seats
Another limitation is Datorama's restricted number of seats, which poses challenges to fostering sales-marketing alignment and cross-functional collaboration. Marketing intelligence tools should ideally accommodate more seats to facilitate seamless collaboration between departments. However, Datorama's seat limitations hinder the ability of teams to leverage the platform for cross-functional initiatives effectively. Given that growing businesses rely heavily on cross-functional teams, Datorama might not prove to be the best choice for rapidly evolving companies.
Datorama Pricing
Datorama offers three types of plans for users: Starter, Growth, and Plus.
- Starter plan: $3000 per month per organization (billed annually)
- Growth plan: $10,000 per month per organization (billed annually)
- Plus plan: Available on request
To summarize, Datorama is a great tool that helps marketers with three avenues- data unification, visualization, and data analysis. It is designed to serve various industries and has numerous integrations through APIs and built-in customizations for different needs. This is a great solution for enterprises that have tech-support teams, can invest time to tackle steep learning curves and pay a significantly higher price for the freedom of choice and robust features that Datorama provides. However, for solopreneurs and growing businesses, there are alternative solutions that can get the job done for a significantly lower cost.
Demoboost + Factors.ai: Capturing Intent From Product Demos
B2B SaaS buying journeys are complex. Between independent research, ad campaigns, web sessions, events, sales outreach, social media, customer reviews, product demos, and more — buying journeys involve countless non-linear touchpoints across multiple channels and stakeholders.
While this may seem daunting at first, each of these touchpoints reflect unique buying intentions that may be leveraged to improve the customer experience and drive bottom of the funnel conversions. In some cases, the buying intent is obvious: if a customer submits their email ID to download an eBook, we know who they are and what they’re looking for. This challenge is further exacerbated by the fact that buyers are increasingly cautious about submitting their true email addresses. Professionals are educated to keep data safe and share contact details only if they’re absolutely sure of the need. Buying intent is generally the sum of incremental steps taken along the buying journey before reaching this inflection point. Recognizing these hidden intent signals — and the buyers behind those signals — is easier said than done…well, until now.
This article explores interactive product demos as a high-intent touchpoint in B2B SaaS buying journeys. Specifically, we highlight how tools such as Factors.ai may be used in tandem with Demoboost to identify otherwise hidden intent from a ubiquitous element in SaaS today: the product demo.
Interactive Product Demos: Scale, Distribute & Analyze
Product demos have been at the cornerstone of SaaS buying journeys forever. They’re an effective way to showcase your software’s features, functionalities, and benefits all while addressing key use-cases and pain-points. Although live product demos continue to take place over real conversations with sales reps, businesses are increasingly adopting product demo softwares to support pre-sales efforts. This may be a result of B2C buying behaviors bleeding into B2B deals: Rather than submitting a demo form, finding a convenient time, and then speaking with sales reps, buyers today expect instant access to the info they need. Only after they educate themselves do they engage directly with sales reps. Businesses have adapted accordingly.
Product demo softwares help businesses build automated interactive product demos that are available to prospects on-demand. Interactive product demos are async product walkthroughs that users can access and navigate themselves without the involvement of sales reps or support personnel. Automated product demos are typically designed to be user-friendly, allowing potential customers to explore the product at their own pace. Among several other benefits, automated demos are scalable, easy to distribute, and provide helpful usage analytics. They may be embedded on websites, outbound emails, brand awareness campaigns, and more, so interested buyers have on-demand access.
So far so good…but you may be asking yourself: “but wait, who’s actually engaging with these demos?”
This would be a valid question. In the case of live demos, we know exactly who we’re showcasing our product to — they’re right there in front of us! But unless we gate an automated product demo (more on this later), how can we identify and analyze companies engaging with this touchpoint? In other words, what’s the full extent of intent signals from interactive product demos and how can we capture them?
Intent signals from product demos include information about who is engaging with the demos and what they're interested in. This helps marketers and salespeople know which companies are interested in their products and what parts of the demo they find most engaging.
Until recently, capturing this intent was a challenge. Intelligence and analytics tools could do their job on most web pages, but their functionality was limited within interactive product demos.
Demoboost solves for this by uniquely supporting third-party tags (SDKs) inside its interactive demos. The following sections highlights how this ability may be leveraged by tools such as Factors.ai to:
- Identify and enrich anonymous companies engaging with interactive product demos
- Capture valuable intent signals beyond page views and clicks from demo engagement
- Qualify, score, segment, and activate accounts based on demo engagement
But first, let’s establish why capturing intent signals from interactive product demos is so important.
The Importance Of Intent Signals From Product Demo
There’s no doubt that the interactive product demo is a crucial touchpoint along the buying journey. Gartner’s analysis of buyer interactions finds that a supplier’s interactive tool (35%) is only behind the website (37%) and social media (36%) in terms of buyer engagement. Given that interactive product demos typically sit within the website, we can confidently claim its significance in the purchase process.
But even beyond the data, B2B marketers and sales folk would certainly be interested to capture intent signals from companies engaging with high-intent touch points such as pricing pages, paid landing pages, and in this case, interactive product demos. These intent signals help identify sales-ready accounts, determine winning touchpoints, and prove go-to-market’s wider influence and ROI.
In a way, intent from product demos acts as a wonderful replacement for lead gen forms. Of course, marketing teams would love to place a lead gen form within the product demo as the resulting sign-ups wouldn’t need external intent data — we'd already know a lot about them via the form! However, given that buyers are increasingly growing to appreciate friction-free buying flows, capturing intent from ungated assets such as interactive product demos ensures the best of both worlds. This is where the Demoboost x Factors.ai integration comes in.
Demoboost + Factors.ai: Intent Signals From Product Demos
How it works
Factors.ai is an account intelligence and analytics software that uses industry-leading IP-lookup technology to identify, qualify, and activate anonymous companies engaging with websites and more. Tools like Factors work by placing a small piece of code (Javascript SDK) on the header of a website to de-anonymize website traffic, track account activity, and tie the dots between channels, website & CRM. Demoboost is a product demo software that offers all-in-one demo automation and demo-building functionality to reduce CAC, shorten sales cycles and increase win rates. Factors.ai now integrated with Demoboost to deliver the following use-cases:
As previously mentioned, such analytics tools have had the ability to track who clicked or landed on a product demo page. From there, however, users wouldn’t have visibility into what visitors are exactly engaging with inside the product demo. To solve for this, Demoboost’s open platform allows users to embed third-party javascripts within the product tour to capture account-level intent & engagement. This means that users can identify companies engaging with their demos as well as capture the extent of engagement — especially upon integrating Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar as well — at an account level.
Demand capture to demand generation: The implications of this are significant. Typically, interactive demos have served the functions of evaluating product pre-sign ups and improving lead quality. Now, in addition to this, interactive demos may also be used to identify and retarget high-intent accounts based on demo engagement.
Use-cases
Integrating Factors.ai and Demoboost results in a wide range of use-cases. Here are a few of them:
1. Identify & enrich engaged accounts
A fundamental use-case of integrating Demoboost with Factors is the ability to identify and enrich otherwise anonymous companies engaging with your interactive product demos. Along with analyzing demo engagement with Demoboost, you’ll also know the accounts behind the engagement via Factors.
2. Score & prioritize accounts
Given that several companies are likely engaging with your product demos, you may use demo usage insights from Demoboost in tandem with cross-channel engagement scoring across LinkedIn, G2, web sessions, and sales touchpoints to holistically score, qualify and prioritize high-intent accounts.
3. Relevant ABM campaigns
Once you identify and qualify high-intent accounts engaging with your product demos, you may then leverage this list of accounts for relevant account-based marketing. Rather than casting a wide net, you may initiate personalized ABM campaigns based on companies interacting with your product demos, website, LinkedIn ads, G2 review, sales touchpoints, etc to drive more conversions from existing efforts.
4. Personalized email & LinkedIn campaigns
Outreach and targeting is the next logical step after building your target accounts list. But rather than targeting every account with the same messaging — or tediously, manually orchestrating personalized campaigns, you may instead automate tailor-made campaigns based on engagement captured from Demoboost and other touchpoints. Configure your automation rules within Factors and every time an ICP company, say, completes more than half the interactive product demo, they’ll be pushed into a bottom of the funnel LinkedIn retargeting campaign or mail sequence to seal the deal.
B2B buyer journeys involve a wide range of fragmented touchpoints across several channels. Factors.ai’s Demoboost integration empowers GTM teams to capture another source of intent data from interactive product demos to complement Factors.ai’s larger range of first-party intent signals across website, LinkedIn, G2 and more. As it stands, interactive demos are a mainstay amongst SaaS websites — and with this integration, marketers & sales folks have an opportunity to make the most of the data generated via these valuable touchpoints.
What Does An Impression Mean on LinkedIn? | LinkedIn Explained
LinkedIn, the world's leading professional networking platform, serves as a digital hub where professionals connect, engage, and share insights within their respective industries. At the heart of this ecosystem lies the concept of impressions — an essential metric that quantifies the visibility and impact of your presence on the platform.
💡Did you know? LinkedIn pages that are active, receive 5x the page views.
What does an impression mean on LinkedIn?
Impressions on LinkedIn refer to the number of times a post has been viewed by other users. Essentially, it quantifies the visibility of an entity’s presence on the platform. Each time someone sees your profile, encounters a post you've shared, or comes across an update you've made, it contributes to your impression count.
To put it simply, imagine you're attending a professional conference. As you mingle with other attendees, exchange business cards, and engage in conversations, you're leaving an impression on those you interact with. Similarly, on LinkedIn, each time someone encounters your content or profile, it's akin to leaving a digital footprint—a mark that signifies your presence and relevance within the professional community.
The Significance of LinkedIn Impressions
Now that we understand what impressions entail, let's explore why they matter. Impressions serve as a key metric for gauging the reach and impact of your activities on LinkedIn. They offer valuable insights into how effectively your content resonates with your target audience and how visible your profile is within the platform's ecosystem.
Consider this scenario: you're a marketing professional aiming to promote your expertise in digital advertising. Through strategic content creation and engagement on LinkedIn, you share insightful posts, participate in relevant discussions, and optimize your profile for maximum visibility. As a result, your impression count steadily increases, indicating that more individuals are viewing your content and becoming aware of your expertise in the field.
Decoding LinkedIn Impressions: Types and Measurement
Impressions on LinkedIn can be categorized into three types: organic, paid and viral impressions. Organic impressions occur naturally, without any monetary investment, when your content appears in the feeds of other users based on factors such as relevance, engagement, and connections. On the other hand, paid impressions result from sponsored content campaigns where you allocate budget to promote your posts to a broader audience.
Organic Impressions
Organic impressions on LinkedIn refer to the number of times your content is displayed naturally in the feeds of other users, without any paid promotion or advertising. These impressions occur based on factors such as relevance, engagement, and connections, and they reflect genuine interest from your audience.
Benefits of Organic Impressions:
Authenticity and Trustworthiness
Organic impressions are perceived as more authentic and trustworthy by LinkedIn users. Since they occur naturally without any paid promotion, they reflect genuine interest from your audience, which can enhance your credibility and reputation on the platform.
Cost-Effectiveness
Unlike paid impressions, which require monetary investment, organic impressions are obtained without spending advertising dollars. This makes them a cost-effective way to increase visibility and engagement on LinkedIn, especially for individuals and businesses operating on limited budgets.
💡Did you know? 77% marketers agree that they achieve the best organic results from LinkedIn.
Long-Term Sustainability:
Building organic reach through consistent content creation and engagement fosters long-term sustainability on LinkedIn. By cultivating genuine relationships with your audience and providing value through your content, you can create a loyal following that continues to engage with your posts over time.
Community Building:
Organic impressions facilitate the organic growth of your professional network and community on LinkedIn. By connecting with like-minded individuals, participating in group discussions, and sharing valuable insights, you can foster meaningful relationships and establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry.
Limitations with Organic Impressions:
Limited Reach
One of the primary drawbacks of organic impressions is their limited reach compared to paid impressions. Since organic content relies on the platform's algorithms to determine visibility, it may not reach as wide an audience as paid content, especially if your network is relatively small or your content lacks virality.
Time-Intensive
Building organic reach on LinkedIn requires time, effort, and consistency. You need to invest significant resources into content creation, engagement, and relationship building to generate meaningful results. For individuals and businesses seeking quick visibility or immediate results, this time-intensive nature of organic growth can be a disadvantage.
Algorithm Dependency
Organic impressions are subject to the whims of LinkedIn's algorithm, which determines the visibility of your content based on various factors such as relevance, engagement, and recency. Changes to the algorithm or fluctuations in user behavior can impact the reach and effectiveness of your organic content, leading to unpredictability in your results.
Limited Targeting Options
Unlike paid impressions, which offer sophisticated targeting options to reach specific demographics, organic impressions provide limited control over audience segmentation. While you can optimize your content for relevance and engagement, you may not always reach your desired audience segments organically.
Paid Impressions
Paid impressions on LinkedIn refer to the number of times your content is displayed as a result of paid advertising campaigns or sponsored content promotions. Unlike organic impressions, which occur naturally without monetary investment, paid impressions are achieved through allocating advertising budget to promote your posts, updates, or profile to a targeted audience.
Benefits of Paid Impressions
Expanded Reach
Paid impressions offer the advantage of reaching a broader audience beyond your organic network. By investing in sponsored content campaigns, you can target specific demographics, industries, job titles, and interests, thereby increasing the visibility and exposure of your content to potential leads and prospects.
Immediate Visibility
Unlike organic impressions, which rely on gradual growth and algorithmic factors, paid impressions offer immediate visibility and results. By allocating a budget to promote your content, you can ensure that it appears prominently in the feeds of your target audience, generating instant visibility and engagement.
Enhanced Targeting Options
Paid impressions provide advanced targeting options that allow you to tailor your content to specific audience segments. Whether you're targeting decision-makers in a particular industry or professionals with specific job titles, paid advertising offers precise control over who sees your content, maximizing its relevance and effectiveness.
Measurable ROI
Paid impressions provide robust analytics and tracking tools that enable you to measure the return on investment (ROI) of your advertising campaigns accurately. From click-through rates and engagement metrics to conversion tracking and lead generation, paid advertising offers transparent insights into the performance and effectiveness of your content.
Limitations of Paid Impressions:
Cost
As you may have guessed, the primary disadvantage of paid impressions is the associated cost. Running sponsored content campaigns requires a financial investment, which may be prohibitive for individuals or businesses operating on limited budgets. Additionally, the cost of paid advertising can escalate quickly, especially for competitive industries or target demographics.
Ad Fatigue
Paid impressions run the risk of audience fatigue and ad saturation, especially if your content appears overly promotional or lacks relevance to the target audience. To avoid ad fatigue, advertisers need to constantly refresh their creative assets, optimize targeting parameters, and monitor campaign performance to maintain audience engagement and interest.
Ad Blocking
With the rise of ad-blocking software and privacy concerns among internet users, paid impressions face the challenge of reaching audiences who actively block or ignore advertising content. Advertisers need to employ strategies such as native advertising, influencer partnerships, and engaging content formats to overcome ad blocking and capture audience attention effectively.
Competition and Saturation
Paid impressions operate within a competitive space where advertisers vie for the attention of the same target audience. As a result, achieving standout visibility and engagement can be challenging, especially in saturated markets or highly competitive industries. Advertisers need to differentiate their content, offer compelling value propositions, and continually optimize their campaigns to remain competitive and effective.
Viral Impressions
Viral impressions on LinkedIn refer to the number of times your content is displayed as a result of being shared by others within the platform. Essentially, when your post gains traction and is shared beyond your immediate network, it reaches a wider audience, contributing to viral impressions.
Benefits of Viral Impressions
Increased Visibility
Viral impressions amplify the reach of your content, exposing it to a larger audience than your organic network. This heightened visibility can lead to greater brand awareness and recognition among LinkedIn users.
Enhanced Engagement
When your post resonates with a broader audience, it's more likely to garner likes, comments, and shares, fostering community engagement and relationship-building. Viral content tends to spark conversations and interactions among users, leading to higher engagement rates.
Extended Reach
Viral impressions enable your content to transcend the boundaries of your immediate network, reaching users who may not have discovered your profile or posts otherwise. This expanded reach creates opportunities to connect with new leads, prospects, and industry influencers.
Limitations of Viral Impressions:
Limited Control
While viral content can significantly boost your visibility, it also entails relinquishing control over how your content is perceived and shared. Once a post goes viral, it may attract attention from a diverse range of users, including those who may misinterpret or misrepresent your message.
Risk of Backlash
Viral content is susceptible to scrutiny and criticism, especially when it touches upon controversial topics or sensitive issues. In some cases, a post that goes viral may attract negative feedback or backlash from certain segments of the audience, potentially damaging your reputation or brand image.
Short-Term Impact
While viral content can generate a surge in impressions and engagement, its effects may be short-lived. Once the initial hype subsides, the visibility and momentum of the post may decline rapidly, leading to a temporary spike in metrics followed by a return to baseline levels.
Measuring Impressions on LinkedIn
Measuring impressions on LinkedIn is relatively straightforward, thanks to the platform's built-in analytics tools. Here’s how you can do it:
LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn provides built-in analytics tools that allow you to track the performance of your posts, updates, and profile views. By accessing your LinkedIn dashboard, you can view metrics such as the number of impressions each post receives, as well as the overall reach and engagement of your content.
Third-Party Analytics Tools:
In addition to LinkedIn's native analytics, you can also use third-party analytics tools (like Factors.ai) to gain deeper insights into your impression metrics. Such tools offer advanced features such as trend analysis, audience segmentation, and competitive benchmarking, allowing you to optimize your content strategy for maximum impact.
{{LINKEDIN_BANNER}}
Let’s take an example:
Let's say you're a marketing professional running a LinkedIn campaign to promote your latest product launch. You create a series of sponsored posts and share them with your target audience. Using LinkedIn Analytics, you track the impressions generated by each post over a one-month period.
After analyzing the data, you discover that one particular post received significantly higher impressions compared to the others. Upon further investigation, you realize that this post included compelling visuals and targeted relevant hashtags, leading to increased visibility and engagement among your audience.
With this insight, you adjust your content strategy to prioritize visual content and optimize your use of hashtags, resulting in higher impression rates and improved campaign performance.
Strategies for Maximizing LinkedIn Impressions
Now that we've established the importance of impressions on LinkedIn, let's delve into actionable strategies for maximizing your impact on the platform:
Craft Compelling Content
Focus on creating high-quality, relevant content that addresses the interests and needs of your target audience. Whether it's sharing industry insights, offering actionable tips, or sharing personal anecdotes, compelling content is key to capturing audience attention and driving engagement.
Post Consistently
Maintaining an active presence on the platform increases the likelihood of your posts being seen by your connections and followers. Posting regularly also signals to the LinkedIn algorithm that you are an engaged user, potentially leading to higher placement in feed rankings and increased exposure to a broader audience. By staying active and consistent with your posting schedule, you can enhance your visibility, build credibility, and attract more engagement on LinkedIn.
💡Did you know? Posting on LinkedIn on a weekly basis brings in twice the engagement.
Optimize Visuals
Incorporate visually appealing elements such as images, videos, and infographics into your posts to enhance their appeal and encourage interaction. Visual content tends to attract more attention and elicit higher levels of engagement from LinkedIn users.
💡 Did you know? Posts with images tend to garner twice as much engagement compared to those without visuals. Moreover, larger images boast a 38% higher click-through rate, making them more effective in capturing audience attention and driving interaction.
Engage Authentically
Cultivate genuine interactions with your connections by liking, commenting, and sharing their content. Authentic engagement not only fosters meaningful relationships but also increases the likelihood of your content being reciprocated and shared within your network.
Utilize Hashtags
Leverage relevant hashtags to increase the discoverability of your content and expand its reach beyond your immediate network. By including industry-specific hashtags and trending topics in your posts, you can connect with a wider audience and enhance your visibility on LinkedIn.
Join Groups and Communities
Participate in LinkedIn groups and communities relevant to your industry or interests to connect with like-minded professionals and expand your network. Engaging in group discussions, sharing valuable insights, and offering support can help increase your visibility and establish your credibility within the community.
Consider Paid Promotion
Explore LinkedIn's advertising platform to amplify your reach and target specific demographics with sponsored content campaigns. While organic reach is valuable, paid promotion can provide an additional boost to your visibility and help you reach a broader audience.
Understanding the nuances of impressions on LinkedIn is essential for maximizing your presence and impact on the platform. Whether through organic or paid impressions, the goal remains the same: to increase visibility, engagement, and ultimately achieve your professional objectives. By leveraging the strengths of each approach and adopting a strategic approach to content creation, engagement, and advertising, you can effectively enhance your reach, build meaningful relationships, and establish yourself as a credible authority within your niche.
That said, one point to note is that success on LinkedIn is not just about the quantity of impressions, but the quality of interactions and relationships fostered along the way.
As you continue to refine your approach and adapt to the ever-evolving social media algorithm, we hope this article helps you in your journey of growth on LinkedIn.
May the LinkedIn impressions be with you!
Related Reads:
Cognism Pricing, Alternatives & More | 2024
Cognism is a popular B2B sales intelligence platform that helps users discover and engage with their ideal prospects with premium company and contact information. But with numerous alternatives available to users, how does Cognism fare in terms of its data quality, pricing, and features?
In this blog, we’ll explore Cognism, Cognism pricing, and Cognism’s alternatives in detail
What is Cognism?
Cognism is a sales intelligence platform that provides advanced data enrichment, lead generation, and prospecting features to help businesses improve GTM operations. Here’s how Cognism impacts each of these verticals:
Cognism enables direct dialing of verified contacts, streamlines the process of prospecting for new leads, and provides access to company-specific data, enhancing lead generation and qualification efforts.
For marketing teams, leveraging the platform facilitates the targeting of new accounts with contextual data points that make it easy to build account lists. It also equips marketing teams with intent data for a more targeted approach.
Furthermore, Cognism serves as a valuable tool for GTM leaders in devising strategic initiatives to drive company growth. It aids in identifying buyer intent, matching and populating missing lead values in your database, and setting a more accurate lead scoring system.
Here are all of Cognism’s product offerings that help achieve these results:
Prospector: Cognism combines contextual data with intent data helping you truly understand your buyer to get your relevant message right in front of buyers.
Enhance: Cognism prevents data decay and helps append your database with updated company and contact information so you don’t lose out on revenue.
Intent Data: Cognism Intent Data helps you identify accounts actively searching for your product or service, making the sales cycle shorter and helping reduce CAC.
Cognism’s product offerings and features serve different purposes for different operations, but what about its impact on your growth and revenue?
Why Choose Cognism?
Cognism has great benefits for businesses looking to streamline their sales prospecting and create laser-focus outreach campaigns that shorten the sales cycle and drive revenue and growth:
1. Compliance and Security
Security forms the core of Cognism's service provision. The platform maintains rigorous compliance with GDPR, SOC2, and ISO27001 standards, guaranteeing the protection and responsible handling of your business data in line with globally recognized benchmarks. Cognism's dedication to safeguarding Personally Identifiable Information (PII) underscores its commitment to ensuring robust security measures.
2. Integrations
Cognism's integration library may not be as extensive as some competitors, but it still offers a solid selection of compatible apps. This is understandable considering Cognism's smaller user base. Despite its smaller customer pool, Cognism provides integration options with popular platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics, Outreach, Zapier, Wufoo, Salesloft, Vidyard, G Suite, Yahoo, Office365, Gmail, Insightly, Slack, Zoho CRM, Copper, and Close.
3. Chrome Extension
The Cognism browser extension gives you quick access to company employees and your prospects' coworkers. It not only enhances LinkedIn profiles and Sales Nav prospect lists with actionable contact data but allows you to access company website information on target firms and their employees.
The Cognism Chrome extension integrates seamlessly with Outreach and Salesforce to enrich records within your CRM or Sales Engagement tool- making it easier for sales teams to perform tasks without switching back and forth between multiple tabs or windows.
Cognism Pricing
Although Cognism refrains from providing detailed pricing information on its website, the factors influencing pricing can aid prospective clients in understanding the associated costs. Here are the three factors that help determine the pricing for Cognism’s clientele:
1. Core Platform Fee
Central to Cognism's pricing model is a fixed platform fee, granting users access to its web application and Chrome extension. Moreover, Cognism seamlessly integrates with popular sales tools like Salesforce and HubSpot. This fee ensures users can harness the platform's robust functionalities and integrations to optimize their sales and marketing endeavors.
2. Unrestricted Data Access
Cognism's platform offers an extensive repository of data to assist businesses in identifying and engaging potential leads. Under the pricing structure, users benefit from unrestricted access to this data, including the ability to export information for utilization in other applications or tools. This access empowers users to fully leverage the platform's potent data capabilities for lead identification and targeted marketing initiatives.
3. Adaptable Workflows
One of the main reasons why Cognism's pricing structure is tailor-made is because of its custom workflows. This feature enables users to customize the platform to suit their specific requirements, crafting workflows that enhance lead qualification and streamline the sales process, and are charged accordingly.
These factors determine the final cost in their pay-as-you-go subscription model. However, the ambiguity may be a cause of concern for businesses of all sizes. Apart from this, Cognism does not provide a free trial. Uncertainty with Cognism pricing? Here are a few alternatives for your consideration:
Cognism Alternatives
Here are some of the most popular Cognism alternatives for B2B businesses:
1. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo offers a robust platform beyond traditional B2B contact directories, catering specifically to sales, marketing, and recruitment professionals. In addition to its expansive database of detailed profiles, ZoomInfo provides unique features such as intent signals, which indicate companies actively exploring specific topics. Another one of its notable features is Scoops, offering valuable insights into potential business opportunities. For those seeking to optimize their outreach strategies, ZoomInfo is a standout choice.
Why pick Zoominfo over Cognism: While Zoominfo and Cognism pricing arent transparent and can prove to be costly for smaller teams, features like Scoop and advanced analytics are bonus features that make Zoominfo a better choice for teams looking for added capabilities in their sales intelligence software.
2. Clearbit
Clearbit stands out by seamlessly integrating data into existing workflows rather than focusing solely on data provision. Engineered to seamlessly merge with sales and marketing tools, Clearbit delivers real-time insights about prospects.
Notably, its Enrichment feature transforms basic email addresses or domains into comprehensive person or company profiles. Moreover, Clearbit's Reveal function assists in identifying anonymous website visitors, effectively converting them into actionable leads.
Why pick Clearbit over Cognism: Cognism has an extensive and unparalleled database for the European market, but it cannot compete with the accuracy of Clearbit’s global database. For companies that are targeting US-based clients, Clearbit is the better choice between the two.
3. Lusha
Lusha, a Sales Intelligence Software, empowers business professionals in building trustworthy connections with leads, contacts, and candidates. With streamlined tools, it facilitates the enrichment and verification of business profiles, aiding sales, recruitment, and marketing efforts.
Lusha simplifies the process by retrieving emails and phone numbers with just one click, enhancing business profiles across social networks, Gmail, and Salesforce. Its clientele spans from small and medium businesses to industry giants like Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and Apple.
Why pick Lusha over Cognism:
Lusha claims to update its database weekly and provides proactive job change alerts to keep the sales team well-informed. Cognism falls short in this aspect as users report receiving outdated information on the platform.
4. Factors.ai
Factors is an account intelligence tool with robust partnerships with 6sense and Clearbit. This is reflected in our database of over 50M companies & 4.7B IP addresses. Factors delivers industry-leading enrichment rates of up to 64% and helps qualify and target the right accounts based on website engagement, intent signals, and firmographic information.
Compare User Ratings for Cognism Alternatives
Cognism FAQs
What is Cognism and what is it used for?
Cognism is a B2B sales intelligence software that helps sales and marketing teams to build lead lists and supercharge their outbound efforts.
How does Cognism collect data?
Cognism has created its database for email generation apart from relying on third-party vendors for data collection.
Marketing Team Structure - Building The Perfect Marketing Team
Constructing an impactful marketing team takes more than throwing darts at the board and hoping they stick. Without the right vision, alignment, and capabilities; budgets are burned, time is wasted, and business opportunities slip through the cracks
We’ve all been there—the messy marketing scramble, the “spray and pray” campaigns doomed to flop, yielding more frustration than conversions.
What if there was a better way? A framework for a marketing team structure that delights your audiences and activates a torrent of new deals for your business.
In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to structure a marketing team that seamlessly blends strategy, creativity, and analytics.
So leave behind the chaos, misalignment, and waste — and step into a new era of marketing where data, trust, and talent intersect to create magic.
Marketing team structure: 9 foundational roles
Effective marketing departments run like well-oiled machines, with moving parts working together for optimal performance. At its core, every world-class marketing team requires a combination of visionary, creative, analytical, and execution horsepower — specialized experts to help activate growth.
Here are 9 foundational marketing roles that set organizations up for success — starting with the head of the operation: the CMO.
1. Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
As the marketing visionary-in-chief, the CMO oversees all strategy and teams. They ensure alignment between marketing objectives and larger business objectives.
Key responsibilities of the CMO include:
- Developing integrated strategies and yearly marketing plans
- Leading market and customer research initiatives
- Establishing brand messaging, positioning, and standards
- Approving campaigns across different channels and segments
- Managing budgets and determining resource allocation
- Hiring and developing leadership for sub-teams
- Overseeing campaign performance analytics and reporting
“Attending professional events, networking, and joining communities of like-minded professionals will greatly help stay up-to-date on the latest trends and innovations.” — Margaux R. International Marketing Officer, Puig
2. Marketing Manager
Marketing managers execute (or manage) strategies outlined by the CMO. They coordinate campaigns across channels such as content, social media, advertising, and events. Marketing managers also supervise teams of writers, designers, and other functions within the marketing department
Key responsibilities of marketing managers include:
- Leading launch planning for product and brand campaigns
- Maintaining content calendars and asset libraries
- Directing creative brainstorms to flesh out big ideas
- Monitoring performance analytics across web, social, and advertising
- Identifying optimization opportunities based on data signals
- Managing budget tradeoffs and agency relationships
✅ With so many balls in motion, you want marketing managers with exceptional focus, communication, and analytical skills.
3. Content Strategist
Content strategists plan and oversee the creation of optimized content tailored to buyer personas across the sales funnel. This role works closely with writers, designers, and more to execute content campaigns.
Key responsibilities of content managers are:
- Conducting keyword research to inform content
- Mapping out content pillars, funnels, and assets
- Establishing production workflows and approval processes
- Setting content style guidelines and brand standards
- Training others on brand voice and best practices
- Commissioning content from freelancers or agencies
4. Graphic Designer
Images aid memory. This is why using visuals (images, animations, videos, etc) can separate forgettable brands from memorable ones. Graphic designers turn creative concepts into aesthetically pleasing and purposeful art.
Key responsibilities of graphic designers include:
- Bringing campaign narratives alive through social/web graphics
- Building immersive microsites and landing pages
- Curating and maintaining asset libraries and style guides
- Ensuring visual consistency across regions and languages
- Mocking up creative concepts quickly based on briefs
- Incorporating the latest visual trends seamlessly
✅ Gradually train your designer to understand conversion rate optimization—this can be done by watching Hotjar recordings, heatmaps, and overall analytics. You want your designer not just to be someone who creates behind the scenes. Make them a part of the marketing team, giving them the exposure required to understand the entire customer journey.
5. Copywriters
Writers are the voice and narrative-weavers for a brand, using strategic, relevant words to captivate and convert. As master wordsmiths, writers intertwine vocabulary with emotion to spur action across mediums like blogs, emails, ad copies, and more.
Key responsibilities for this role include:
- Crafting pillar content and blogs to attract and educate
- Scripting nurture emails and sales outreach templates
- Testing value prop messaging through ad iterations
- Producing authentic stories using research and interviews
- Ensuring brand consistency across regions and campaigns
- Delivering punchy, error-free copy aligned with guidelines
✅ SaaS businesses like HubSpot have been spending significant resources to create valuable marketing content. This has made them one of the top publishers in this space.
6. Paid Media Specialist
Paid media specialists are masters of precision — using platforms like Google, Meta, and LinkedIn to reach buyers actively searching for solutions. As channel experts, they balance science and art to gain a share of voice and mind.
Key responsibilities for this role include:
- Managing PPC/social budgets across funnels
- Creating and optimizing high-converting ads
- A/B testing creatives, landing pages and audiences
- Providing performance reports and optimization ideas
- Developing attribution models that shape decisions
- Identifying emerging media opportunities to exploit
✅ Exceptional paid specialists level up results using their analytical abilities, creativity, and strategic vision. They stay on top of platform algorithm shifts, new ad formats, privacy changes, and inventory trends—filling testing pipelines with big ideas.
7. SEO Specialist
SEO specialists focus on improving organic search visibility and rankings. They analyze performance data to execute optimization strategies.
Some of the key responsibilities for this role include:
- Conducting keyword research to reveal user questions
- Mapping site architectures to user journeys
- Optimizing page speed and metadata for findability
- Securing reputable backlinks and citations
- Monitoring organic KPIs like rankings, traffic, and goals
- Identifying gaps and incremental optimization opportunities
✅ Beyond technical abilities, stellar SEO specialists use analytics to tell compelling stories. They consult across marketing and product teams—highlighting barriers and solutions to rank higher.
8. Social Media Manager
Social leaders architect communities rooted in relationships and value. They set a north star strategy and then empower teams to nurture advocate and influencer connections through engagement.
Some of the key responsibilities for this role include:
- Setting social media goals and yearly activation calendars
- Creating and overseeing engaging social content
- Identifying key influencers for paid partnerships
- Analyzing platform algorithms and adjust content accordingly
- Managing a community coordinator and related agencies
- Reporting on engagement growth and campaign performance
9. Marketing Analyst
Marketing analysts collect campaign data and identify actionable insights. They partner closely with strategists and media buyers to optimize marketing performance..
Some of the key responsibilities for this role include:
- Setting up analytics and tag management platforms
- Building campaign reports and dashboards
- Conducting multi-touch attribution analysis
- Identifying quick wins for improved performance
- Modeling scenarios for budget allocation decisions
- Communicating insights through presentations and visualization
✅ This covers the core marketing roles most companies need. As teams scale, specialized coordinators can provide further support. For example, dedicated email marketing coordinators, product marketing managers, regional leads, and more.
Now, let’s explore how to grow teams sustainably over time.
How to scale your marketing team
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to structuring marketing teams. Every business requires a different mix of skill sets—something that the founders of the company need to identify accounting for their product, the condition of the existing market, and multiple other factors.
Here is an overview of common team structures matched to business size and scale:
Early Stage Startups (1-20 Employees)
In the beginning, founders and early hires wear multiple hats. Budgets are tight, so by necessity, the team structure is lean.
Marketing roles may include:
- Founder setting strategy and managing campaigns
- Freelance designer and writer supporting content
- Entry-level coordinator supporting social media
- Outsourced web development help
The focus is on testing ideas quickly through campaigns and measuring results. Data informs where to double down on traction.
Let’s consider Zenkit, a startup selling project management software, as an example. As a Founding Marketer at Zenkit, Eva shapes strategy, creates content, analyzes web data and allocates ad budget herself. She taps freelance designers and outsources lead generation assistance, testing channel ideas and driving conversions.
Mid-size Business (20-200 Employees)
As mid-size companies mature, dedicated marketing roles take shape. With multiple product lines, regional expansion, and enterprise deals in motion - specialized experts coordinate growth initiatives.
Marketing roles grow to include:
- CMO setting vision and leading managers
- Content and social media managers executing campaigns
- Expanded content team inclusive of writers and designers
- Formal paid media roles emerging
- Email marketing coordinator driving engagement
- Outsourced PR agency to support earned media
The focus expands to brand building, audience nurturing and sales conversions.
With Series A funding secured, Zenkit builds out its marketing team. New Marketing Manager Joanie spearheads content and social efforts. Two dedicated content marketers join, along with an email coordinator. Zenkit's CEO retains a digital agency that now aggressively runs its paid search and nurture campaigns.
Enterprise Businesses (500+ Employees)
At large enterprises, global scale and matrixed organizational structures necessitate further specialization. With regional segmentation, centralized leadership drives branding consistency and governance standards.
Marketing roles grow to include:
- Global CMO setting vision and leading VPs
- Regional marketing VPs localizing efforts
- Specialized department focus like digital, brand, campaign creative, and analytics
- Hub-and-spoke team structure with a corporate-leading strategy for regional execution
- Integrated martech stack enabling automation and workflow
- Dedicated sales enablement and product marketing teams
The focus turns to brand unity, operational excellence, and entering new markets.
After international expansion and ten years of rapid growth, Zenkit decides to go public. Their Global CMO realigns regional directors and constructs Centers of Excellence around analytics, creative, SEO, and tech integrations—consolidating previously disjointed efforts. Regional teams maintain flexibility to customize messaging and campaigns based on local personas and behaviors.
While every company’s journey is unique, these benchmarks provide a blueprint. As teams scale, maintain open roles that give structure and the flexibility to pivot.
Next, let’s explore how to keep teams aligned.
How to ensure marketing alignment
Great teams function as one—united by shared vision, seamless communication, and collaborative norms. But often, misalignment creeps in. Silos form, productivity drops, and innovation stalls.
If you want to prevent that from happening, here are a few ideas.
“Involve your people, listen to them, motivate them, reward them, and create unity in all interactions. My experience has always taught me that success follows when you have a passion for people’s success.”— Suneeta Motala, CMO of SBM Bank Mauritius
1. Encourage Open Communication
Improving team alignment starts by nurturing open flows of communication.
- Host regular meetings for status updates from each team
- Use Slack or Microsoft Teams for real-time collaboration
- Send out monthly newsletters highlighting big wins and key learnings
- Celebrate outstanding work publicly with rewards and recognition
2. Support Continual Learning
Leaders should also focus on cultivating continual learning.
- Create mentorship programs between senior and junior staff
- Encourage attendance at conferences and workshops
- Offer tuition reimbursement or learning stipends
- Accommodate stretch assignments and lateral moves for professional growth
3. Break Down Silos with Tools and Data
Take advantage of the many collaboration tools available to encourage people to join in conversations and share insights with other team members.
- Build custom dashboards with data visualization from multiple departments
- Automate repetitive tasks through marketing automation
- Set up alert channels through tools like Slack or Teams
- Share insights broadly by distributing annotated charts
It does take time to build these habits into the team, but the idea isn’t to change in a single day—but to implement a mindset of growth and sharing throughout the team.
Now, let’s look at how we can measure what we want to improve.
Measuring Marketing Team Performance with KPIs
They say you can’t grow what you don’t measure. Key performance indicators (KPIs) help focus teams on a singular goal and compel them to take action in the right direction.
Marketing leaders should track both quantitative and qualitative performance metrics.
Quantitative Marketing Metrics
From a bird’s eye view, these go
- Pipeline influenced: Directly attributed sales driven by marketing campaigns
- Cost per lead: Total sales generated divided by total leads
- Email engagement: Open, clickthrough, and conversion rates
- Social media engagement: Follower growth and interaction rate
- Web traffic: Total visits, unique visitors, and page views
Qualitative Marketing Metrics
- Brand awareness: aided and unaided recall—surveys, increased branded search volumes, etc.
- Brand sentiment: Positive and negative mentions via social listening
- Audience insights: Feedback, testimonials, reviews
- Campaign resonance: Recall, favorite asset types
Boost Your Marketing Team Performance with Factors
As modern marketing teams expand their technology stacks, data volume and complexity grow exponentially. Sitting unused in silos, these insights become missed optimization opportunities and wasted dollars.
Factors.ai changes all that.
Our intelligent dashboarding software centralizes cross-channel data into interactive visualizations that focus teams on what matters most—no more digging through disjointed reports to unearth insights.
With Factors, you can:
- Track engagement rates across web, email, social, and advertising
- Analyze multi-touch attribution to optimize spending
- Map user journeys across channels, on a single screen to reduce churn
- Automate data flows with 200+ integrations
- Annotate and share key findings and reports with stakeholders
And our unique account-based approach helps you connect the dots between anonymous accounts to identify the companies and industries visiting your website. Leading enterprise brands now optimize up to 30% faster powered by Factors’ revealing lenses.
“Factors stands out from other alternatives. We saw a 34% improvement in conversation rates within the first year.” — Gowthami, Performance marketer, Klenty
{{CTA_BANNER}}
Stop flying blind and start seeing the big picture. Schedule a demo today to experience Factors’ analytics precision first-hand.
B2B Sales Process, Explained In 5-Steps
With limited resources and increasing pressures to deliver ROI, early-stage startups are increasingly feeling the squeeze. Many find themselves juggling multiple roles and facing tighter budgets. It doesn’t help that running ads is seemingly becoming increasingly expensive.
In times like these, showing tangible success becomes paramount. And amidst the hustle, it's easy to get caught up in chasing superficial metrics — email open rates, social media engagement, etc. You don’t want to miss the bigger picture: bottom-line pipeline and revenue.
To break this cycle, it's crucial to reassess your B2B sales process.
The 5-Step B2B Sales Process
1. Lead Generation & Prospecting
Lead Generation
The first step in the B2B sales process involves employing various marketing methods to pique the interest of potential prospects. In this step, strategies and tactics such as Account-based marketing (ABM), LinkedIn retargeting, content marketing, and events play important roles. With the right messaging and multi-channel marketing approach, teams can generate quality leads for their B2B sales process.
Prospecting
Unlike lead generation, prospecting focuses on immediate replenishment of the pipeline through outbound efforts such as cold calling and email outreach. However, it's important to acknowledge that prospecting can be challenging- “we’ve all heard the word “No!” more than we’d like to admit. Which is why it's always advised to rely equally on lead generation and prospecting in your B2B sales process.
At this stage, a deep understanding of the Ideal Customer Profile or ICP becomes imperative to optimize the sales process for B2B.
2. Qualifying
After generating leads and prospects, the next step is to qualify them. This involves assessing whether they are a good fit for your offering. While traditional methods help qualify targets based on firmographic and demographic data, it's crucial to capture intent along with other buying signals. This can be achieved with a modern ABM solution (*ahem* Factors.ai) that offer robust account intelligence, scoring, and activation. This allows teams to determine intent and act on sales opportunities much faster.
Here’s a simplified checklist highlighting the questions to ask when you are qualifying a lead:
- Does the lead match the characteristics of your ideal customer profile, including industry, company size, geography, and demographics?
- Does the lead have a specific need, problem, or pain point that your product or service can address?
- Does the lead have the financial resources and budget allocation to invest in your offering?
- Is the lead a decision-maker or influencer within their organization who has the authority to make purchasing decisions?
- Is the lead actively seeking a solution, and is there a defined timeline for making a purchasing decision?
- Has the lead demonstrated interest and engagement with your brand, such as attending webinars, downloading resources, or interacting with your sales team?
- Has the lead interacted with your company before, such as requesting information, submitting inquiries, or participating in discussions?
- Does the lead align with your B2B sales process and criteria for progression through the sales pipeline?
- Have you asked qualifying questions to assess the lead's needs, challenges, goals, and fit with your solution?
Once you’ve answered these questions, assign a score based on predefined criteria, such as firmographics and engagement to prioritize sales-ready buyers for further follow-up.
Most companies Review data in their customer relationship management (CRM) system to track lead interactions, history, and status. However, CRM data forms a small part of the qualification method and should be treated as such.
In fact, 65% of companies start using a CRM within their first five years in business, yet 66% of businesses switch to a new CRM because their current platform lacks the features they need. CRMs are the most oversubscribed and underutilized software solution as the company scales.
The reason is simple. A CRM can only help you make sense of fit data. What you need to tie your B2B sales process together is a system that encourages you to factor in intent and behavioral data as well. This creates a disconnect in the B2B sales process. It tends to make the buying journey more tedious.. and more expensive!
Factors.ai makes it possible to get a holistic view of your buyer’s journey. It allows you to gather intent and behavioral data by tracking the frequency, and nuance of their interactions with the brand. It adds some clarity and context to every interaction making it easier for sales representatives to approach.
3. Pitch
The pitch is where you present your product or service to the qualified prospect. It's essential to personalize your pitch to increase the chances of a purchase. A great B2B pitch encompasses several key elements and addresses the specific needs and challenges of your target audience. Here are the essential elements of a good sales pitch:
Understanding the Audience
Tailor your pitch to resonate with your target audience's needs, pain points, and priorities. Research your prospects thoroughly to understand their customer journey, triggers, motivation to buy, etc.
Clear Value Proposition
Clearly articulate the unique value proposition of your offering. Highlight how your product or service solves their problem, fulfills their needs, or delivers tangible benefits to the prospect's business.
Compelling Storytelling
Use storytelling techniques to engage your audience and convey your message effectively. Share relevant anecdotes, case studies, or success stories that demonstrate the real-world impact of your solution.
Solution Demonstration
If applicable, provide a live demonstration or walkthrough of your product or service to showcase its features, functionality, and ease of use. Allow prospects to experience firsthand how your solution can address their specific needs.
Benefits Over Features
Focus on the benefits of your offering rather than just listing its features. Explain how your solution can help the prospect save time, reduce costs, increase efficiency, improve productivity, or achieve their business objectives.
Customization and Personalization
Tailor your pitch to each prospect by customizing your messaging and solutions to align with their individual requirements, preferences, and pain points. Personalization demonstrates your commitment to understanding their unique needs.
ROI and Value Proposition
Quantify the return on investment (ROI) or value proposition of your solution by highlighting potential cost savings, revenue growth, or other measurable outcomes. Use data, statistics, and relevant metrics to support your claims.
Engagement and Interaction
Foster two-way communication and engagement during the pitch by actively listening to the prospect's feedback, answering their questions, and soliciting their input. Encourage dialogue to build rapport and trust.
4. Objection Handling
Inevitably, prospects will raise objections during the sales process. Whether it is pricing or data migration, it's crucial to anticipate and address these objections effectively.
Pro tip from Dave Gerhardt:
5. Closing
The closing stage is where the deal is finalized. This involves guiding the prospect through the final steps of the purchasing process, addressing any remaining concerns, and securing their commitment to move forward. Effective closing techniques can vary depending on the nature of the sale but typically involve setting up the next steps to complete the purchase (signing a contract etc).
Why your B2B business needs a standardized sales process:
The golden rule of any B2B operation is repeatability = profitability.
Think of it this way, your sales funnel has an irregular opening.
It’s shaped like this jigsaw piece-
Sure, you can try and reach out to different types of people, in hopes that they convert-
But none of them will.
It's because they aren’t the right fit for your funnel. And without a standardized process or a clear path, you’re inevitably going to spend time and money trying to jam them through.
However counterintuitive, it is much more profitable to target a smaller audience that is more likely to convert than to get lost in a sea of prospects– none of which will end up buying your product or service.
Identifying the “ideal customer” for your offerings helps narrow down what messaging, channels, and campaigns are working for you. This makes it easy to create repeatable processes and eliminate the guesswork from your marketing and sales operations.
In an ideal scenario, you have finely tuned teams that grasp precisely what your ICP desires. Quality leads flow in consistently, and the sales team keeps hearing a resounding "yes!" every time they pitch.
However, for the B2B sales process, the reality is quite different. It often involves navigating through multiple decision-makers on the buying committee and targeting various segments. This complexity can lead to jumbled processes and overwhelmed teams.
And it's not really your fault. For ages, B2B teams have been plagued by tunnel vision tactics and need more marketing and sales alignment.
We didn’t know any better!
As Brendan Hufford aptly points out: organizations employ marketers with hyper-focused channel expertise. But customer expertise gets lost in the process.
“Organizing by output/channel can be easy when you’re in early days. But as your user/buyer/ICP evolves and your audience branches out, things become… complicated.
In large organizations, it leads to a total breakdown of expertise, which is why SO many big organizations lose sight of their customers.”
Instead of concentrating on different channels and their outcomes, marketing and sales organizations should be defined by the different segments, audiences, and markets.
You may be tempted to shrug and say this only works for big organizations targeting multiple segments, but we beg to differ.
For smaller, cross-functional teams, a software solution with an ICP-centric approach might just be the key.
How do you expect a cross-functional team to perform well, without a technology stack that looks at the bigger picture as well!
Your software stack can help you facilitate a laser-focused approach. With marketing solutions like factors.ai, you can refine your cold outbound by identifying intent, optimizing your funnel, and fine-tuning your pitches to close deals.
Streamline your B2B sales process with Factors.ai
See Factors in action
Schedule a personalized demo or get started for free