2. Maximize engagement and reduce campaign audience conflicts with Content to Audience Match rules
By: Marketingoptimized, William Lum
Tags: B2B, Audience Engagement, Marketing Operations, Demand Unit Waterfall, Content Strategy

Match Content to Audiences

Step 2: Match Content to Contact Roles

This deep dive into the second step of the Marketing Optimized Framework posted previously.

Why

Ultimately we want the prospect to become a fan (believe in us and our vision) and buy from us vs all the others

It’s intuitive that people are more receptive when you are giving them what they are looking for. We want to build more assets that are the ones that resonate (and help progress them towards a purchase)

It’s a push/pull relationship… we want to give them what they are looking for at that moment but also are trying to move them toward a purchase (even if some else shiny catches their attention)

Use data to optimize where and how we use marketing resources (budget and people) to make communications more effective

What

This step will prioritize Segments of companies and group contacts by role, then match content recommendations to them

How

From Step 1, we have insights on how our audiences are grouped and what they consume on the way to a purchase. Now we operationalize those insights into automated rules.

Segmenting

The previous exercise gave us a prioritized list of Companies

Score based on categorization model of customers or some sort of rules-based score (comment below if you would like to see how to do this with a categorization model or simple rules)

This can be used in planning to determine which segments are eligible for which campaigns

For true ABM activities, only a small group of the highest segment of companies should be eligible as those tactics are resource-intensive

For general marketing, you will need to compare and decide on a viable number of Companies to focus marketing on in this cycle (i.e. quarter) decide if there is a theme or is it just based on fit

An Industrial theme is worth consideration as you can build industry-specific content (if you don’t have it vs trying to find content across many industries) and build knowledge in that vertical across the teams (Product, Marketing, Sales)

Based on historical conversion rates to see if you are targeting enough companies to meet goals

Compare lists with Sales team and negotiate difference (Marketing should have a superset of companies)

Segment by Score

Targeting

Using the Company Segment and the Buying Teams from the previous exercise we build focus lists (definitions), the companies and the associated contacts marketing will be focusing effort on

Buying Teams will vary based on your industry and the size of companies you are targeting but here are some general roles you might consider including in your Buying team definition

Sometimes the same person can own more than one of these roles (especially at smaller companies)

Often the roles are defined by the contact’s title but can also be determined by their content consumption

Champion — manages the review/purchase process with your company as a whole

— manages the review/purchase process with your company as a whole Influencer — these could be both technical and business advisors that can veto the process

— these could be both technical and business advisors that can veto the process Decision Maker — the actual person whose neck is on the line

— the actual person whose neck is on the line Budget Holde r — the person whose budget this is coming out of

r — the person whose budget this is coming out of User — end users of your product or service

— end users of your product or service Certifier — this is a procurement person whose role is to ensure all the financial and legal checks are in place

Buying Team (Demand Unit)

Next Best Asset (Content)

Let’s review what we have:

Segments of companies that are eligible for different types of campaigns

Target contacts that are part of the Buying team at those companies

Now we marry the contacts with the content that works best for the roles of each contact for each stage of the buying process

We have the ideal sequence of effective content (by buying role and stage) from our analysis in

Often the value presented in the asset very by buying role vs the type of asset

The stages may vary based on your industry and maturity of the category

This is stored in a central systems from which all campaign execution systems will reference

Thw systems should be updated with time content has been presented and if it was consumed for rules to decide if we move on to the next Asset

Tip: as a further touch of 1:1 marketing, use the data you know about the company and contact (used in step 1) in your message to help them see why your product is perfect for them (use with discretion… depending on the culture of your industry this may be seen as jarring)

Next Best Asset (Content)

Tools

Key features include:

Customizable tables to house and synch data at Company, Buying Team, Contact, and Deal, and Next Best Asset levels (allowing for aggregation and update on one record with links to related tables)

For example, you could place a company field on the Contact but if there is a change to a field (let’s say you track aggregated activity over 6 months as something simple like a count) then you only need to up the one company record vs search all contacts for that company and trying to update each and also knowing to grab those values as new contact record for that company enter the process

Integration with fast and appropriate access to these tables to be updated by downstream systems (i.e. Campaign Execution systems like email to query what asset should be sent and update counts of how often it was presented and if the asset was consumed)

Should have an interface for retrieving lists of predefined Target contacts and the ability to refine further based on criteria on Company, Buying Team, Contact, and Deal (i.e. only C-level contacts and the decision maker on the buying team at Biotech firms with deals in pipeline of over $10M) for more specialized marketing (Executive event, Training, high-cost direct mail, etc.)

Segment and Tealium have compelling sales demos but I’ve not had the opportunity to use them and can’t speak to configuration, scalability and change management

See the original post on Marketing Optimized for the list of tools and notes for each.