DemandBase used its ABM Innovation Summit on Thursday to launch a reporting tool called Cross-Campaign Analytics designed to harmonize the data around campaigns run with its customers on its own platform as well as with publishers, demand-side platforms and more.
In a keynote that was livestreamed from the ABM Innovation Summit in San Francisco, DemandBase CEO Chris Golec offered a personal example of why a tool like Cross-Campaign Analytics has become necessary in B2B marketing. His presentation included an e-mail from his own mother, who wrote, “Why the heck are you spending your money advertising to me on the Detroit News web site? I am never going to buy your software.”
According to Golec, there is a similar disconnect in the way many B2B marketers take an uncoordinated and scattershot approach to reaching potential decision-makers — or perhaps not reaching them.
“We’re advertising to people who won’t buy anything and we keep repeating it,” Golec told the crowd. “We can fix this.”
Cross-Campaign Analytics will offer a single view in the performance of ABM campaigns run on major sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, along with myriad other channels, Golec said, to see which ones are offering the highest volume of engagement at scale. The tool is also designed to help B2B marketers assess things like the portion of a campaign’s audiences fall within their target account list and on-site behaviors at the account level to identify the best sources of engagement.
Golec recommended the audience work harder to engage buyers during the research phase of the purchase cycle, looking for intent data that will allow a company to find them before they conduct a search. “People aren’t filling out forms as much,” he noted.
While ABM discussions are often focused on ways to connect digitally with customers, the DemandBase keynote session also included a talk from body language expert Mark Bowden, who suggested B2B firms should be equally careful about how they present themselves to target accounts in person.
Bowden, who runs a consultancy called Truthplane, said in-person audiences conduct near-instant “threat assessments,” for example, where they categorize the person speaking to them as “friend” or “foe.” Body language is one way to help get past the biases that may influence such judgements, he said, similar to the way strong ABM content can convert target accounts into loyal customers.
“There’s no bad body language; there’s just results that you want and didn’t want want,” he said.
Besides Cross-Campaign Analytics, DemandBase also announced the publication of The ABM PlayBook, co-authored by Golec, DemandBase CMO Peter Isaacson, and Jessica Fewless, the firm’s vice-president of ABM Strategy. While attendees of the ABM Innovation Summit this week will get a copy, and Wiley will made it widely available as of March 19, an except will be published this Saturday on B2B News Network.
Shane Schick
