It’s not easy finding B2B prospects, much less those you know are interested in your product or service. There’s shows, but so much of the research is now begun online. There’s cold calling, but millennial don’t use the phone to talk.. Everyone is on their mobile devices, but how do you connect with them?   

Think about how the research process works.. Someone goes to Google, or LinkedIn or Quora, or Twitter or Facebook, and asks – in this case, ‘what’s the best marketing automation for enterprise tech?’ They then click on links or posts about that content.  

Imagine if you had an anonymous prospect record that included the same kind of data as an ABM record: content they had engaged with, the topic, the channel, their OS, the kind of device they are on – and their their Internet Protocol address. In other words, behavioral IP.    

Let’s say you saw a post on Facebook for a market research report in your industry, and clicked on that report. IP targeting wouldn’t know who you are, but they would know that you were active on a report on market research on Facebook, that you clicked on it from an Apple iPhone running iOS X and your general (or specific) location at the time of the click.

Behavioral IP is not considered personally identifiable information so it is exempt from GDPR (unless combined with PIA, personally identifiable information).  It in B2B, demographics are pretty irrelevant. Context and behavioural insights, gleaned from behaviour on content, is king.  

By adding contextual data about time, city, and the content they’ve engaged with, a rich anonymous behavioural profile can be formed. With behaviorial IP, having the address means a marketer can target communications to them directly. 

Why has ABM been so successful? It’s not mass, it is laser focused. It gives the power of context and truly understanding each prospect – which in B2B can be worth millions to the marketer.

Now your prospecting can be, too. Behavioral IP in B2B targeting takes the precision and focus of ABM and applies it to anonymous prospecting.  

Who’s most likely to be interested in your offering? Someone who has engaged on related content recently. 

So it’s less appropriate for large brand campaigns (though those are few and far between in B2B anyway). And the segments can get even more targeted 

The reality is: organic is nearly dead. Paid conversion rates are so much higher, now that algorithms rule social.. And this type of contextual, behavioural targeting, long possible in B2C is finally here for B2B. The results are powerful: between 5-27% CTRs.   

There are caveats. A provider needs to prepare for high record change volume and a large database will be required since IP addresses change so often. Targeting is less precise geographically than geofencing, which is another way of IP targeting based on geography. The holy grail is a dataset that combines both, although we haven’t seen that yet. 

So if you’re looking for an effective new alternative to trade shows, cold calling and a path to building your database that goes beyond Google, behavioral IP maybe a new marketing option you should consider.