B2B Marketing More Insight and Analysis

With the continuing rise of web 2.0 and the evolution of marketing automation, target marketing has become more refined – moving beyond demographics to enable B2B marketers to use behaviours to engage prospects more strongly than ever. This brand of marketing is called behavioural targeting, and it uses prospects' behaviours to help determine their buying intentions and how best to market to them.

Consider, for example, if you wanted to find the 10,000 business buyers most likely to respond to a sale on printer cartridges. Would you rather know their age and post code, or which recently clicked on your newsletter looking for more information on ink cartridges? behavioural information is an essential component to lead-scoring and lead-nurturing programmes that allows you to deliver qualified leads to sales.

Here are the three key components of behavioural information, plus actionable advice for incorporating them into your lead-management process:

1. Actions

What specific actions has a prospect taken? Perhaps the person has requested a demo, visited a trade show stand or downloaded a white paper. When developing your lead-scoring model, you'll want to assign a score to activities based on how strongly the action indicates that a person is highly engaged with you. For example, if someone visits your homepage, it might not tell you much, but if that person drills four levels into your website to a specific product page, that action might imply a keen interest – one that warrants a higher score.

Actions can also be used to trigger responses within your lead-nurturing system or directly from your sales team. For example, if a prospect downloads a white paper on a certain topic, the smart move would be to send the person a nurturing email with an invite to a webinar covering related subject matter that indicates you're responding to the prospect's specific interests. These 'moments of engagement' can be very indicative of a lead's interest level and can provide the salesperson with key insights into a buyer's intentions.

2. Recency

Top-notch lead-scoring models factor in how recently a person took action. If a prospect appears red-hot after a burst of activity, but then goes silent for two months, you'll want to have a lead-scoring system in place that adjusts for the inactivity or re-classifies the prospect as lukewarm. Failing to do so can lead to a high number of unqualified prospects being routed to sales before they're ready.

Including recency metrics in lead scoring is powerful because they better reflect where a lead currently is in the buying process. If a person doesn't repeat an action within a certain amount of time, points should drop off. For example, consider a scenario in which you give prospects that take a product demo a lead score of 50 points. Without a recency component, a prospect that took a demo six months ago would have the same score as a person who took the demo yesterday. But the person who recently took the demo is more likely to be in a more active phase of the buying cycle.

Furthermore, factoring in recency can enable you to create a stronger lead-nurturing program. As a sample scenario, you might send a follow-up email if a certain amount of time has elapsed since a prospect's last action. Or you might design a system in which all prospects who are inactive for six months get placed in a special nurturing program designed to reconnect through a strong call to action.

3. Frequency

How often did a prospect take an action? Without a frequency component to your lead-scoring model, a prospect who has been exploring your website a lot this month will receive the same score as another who landed on your site just once. Neglecting to include this variable in your lead-score calculations could lead to missed sales opportunities as engaged prospects that should have racked up more points on account of repeat actions go unrecognised.

Likewise, factoring frequency into your lead-nurturing model is a smart way to keep prospects moving through the pipeline. For example, you can use frequency as a trigger for additional communications. If a lead visits your site a certain number of times within a given period, then it's probably time for a sales rep to call.

How to apply it

behavioural information is essential to a good lead-management program. Combining actions, recency and frequency gives you a solid base from which to gain a three-dimensional view of a prospect's level of engagement.

How you weigh the elements will depend on your unique business situation. And the manner in which you weigh various attributes of prospect data can change over time as your lead-scoring and lead-nurturing programmes provide insights into the characteristics of a hot lead and the best ways to move prospects through the pipeline. Further incorporating information, such as demographics and firmographics, will allow you to create an even more sophisticated, powerful lead-management methodology.

In a web 2.0 world in which top-tier B2B marketing requires connecting more strongly with prospects than ever, you can use behavioural targeting to better engage with prospects. Use the information you gather to influence the information you provide and the future conversations you initiate. By using your knowledge of what makes prospects tick, you'll generate a substantial ROI from your marketing spend.