Predictive Marketing: Buyer s Guide

Transcription

1 Predictive Marketing: Buyer s Guide

2 Index Introduction 2 About This ebook 2 The Benefits of Using a Predictive Marketing Solution 2 Recommended Steps to Making an Informed Purchase 2 Step #1: How do you set your company s predictive marketing goals? 3 Step #2: How do we select use cases? 3 Step #3: 5 Things To Do When Selecting A Predictive Marketing Vendor 4 Step #4: Deconstructing the Predictive Marketing POC Process 5 Section #5: What Questions to Ask the Vendor? 7 Conclusion

3 Introduction Welcome to the world of predictive marketing. In this ebook you will find out why more and more marketers are turning to predictive marketing methods to super-charge 'traditional' marketing techniques. However, since we are still in the early days of predictive marketing, how to choose the best predictive marketing techlogy can be unclear at best and totally confusing at worst. About This ebook Predictive marketing can be technically complex. This ebook discusses the questions that any marketer may face when dealing with choosing a predictive marketing solution. The Benefits of Using a Predictive Marketing Solution Modern marketers realize the challenges of making the most of their data. Whether updating their database, discovering more about customers, targeting leads, or driving segmentation, today s challenges abound. With hundreds of thousands, and even millions of leads flowing through marketing automation platforms, many marketers kw they need to score leads. However, traditional lead scoring isn t eugh anymore, because it remains based on a series of assumptions and limited information. Predictive marketing addresses challenges by offering unique benefits including: Insight-driven marketing: predictive marketing is used by advanced B2C marketers such as Amazon and Netflix to build highly tailored offerings. The big data behind predictive marketing enables B2B marketers to gain deep insights into their buyer profiles and make personalized real-time, data-driven segmentation decisions. Better prioritization of activities: with predictive scores you can decide how much to nurture each lead, which leads are ready to be sent directly to sales, and which don t really qualify for your company at all. Better and more relevant data: which means better messaging and higher engagement probability. By kwing more of the interesting information about your prospects you can create better content and engage your leads more effectively. Better alignment of sales and marketing: Leading analyst firm SiriusDecisions points to lack of alignment between Sales and Marketing as one of the key business process gaps. Predictive marketing solutions can help to align sales and marketing efforts to better define and identify sales-ready leads. By working cooperatively to set scoring parameters and define qualified lead criteria, sales and marketing become one team. Recommended Steps to Making an Informed Purchase Because there are a number of different offerings in the market, marketers should compare different solutions in order to decide the best fit for their specific needs. Understanding your current marketing processes, kwing how to measure success, and being able to identify where you are looking for improvements, are all critical pieces of the predictive marketing solution decision-making process. The next sections contain an outline to help you compare, test, and select a predictive marketing vendor: How do you set your company s predictive marketing goals? How do we select use cases? 5 things to do when selecting a predictive marketing vendor Deconstructing the predictive marketing POC process Questions to ask vendors Predictive Marketing: Buyer s Guide 2

4 { { Step #1: How do you set your company s predictive marketing goals? What are your goals? It is critical to kw your goals upfront for predictive marketing. Would you like to create a data driven marketing strategy and increase marketing s contribution to revenue generation? Do you want to identify micro-segmentation to improve customer understanding and engagement? Would you like to leverage fresh data for precise targeting of prospects with relevant content and nurturing campaigns? Would you like to significantly increase your marketing ROI? Do you want to improve the quality of leads handed off from marketing to sales? Choose your goals and prioritize them. Have you gained organizational buy-in? Every marketer should have an executive sponsor to secure support. Gaining buy-in takes some work. Present a compelling case that the benefits of a new solution vastly outweigh the costs. Always back your case up with numbers. The benefits include higher conversion rates, more effective sales, and improved campaign ROI. Be the champion of a successful solution and become a leader in your marketing organization. How will we measure success? This is one of the toughest questions, and ties directly to why you are adopting a predictive marketing platform. If your goal is to increase conversions, you ll need to kw what your current conversion rate is in order to measure its impact. Have we realistically assessed the total cost of ownership of the potential solution? Make sure you are taking every aspect of the solution into account. Some predictive marketing platforms are all inclusive, while others feature add-ons, charge per model, or charge per additional data field. Services can also significantly increase costs. In addition to the cost of the predictive marketing platform itself, you should consider the cost of maintaining data and model freshness. You will likely need anywhere between 5-20 different models and data fields appended to your marketing leads to make the best use of this new capability. Once you are convinced of the benefits of applying predictive marketing, the next logical question is, how do I implement it? The most important step in implementing a predictive marketing solution is defining the business goals you re trying to achieve. Step #2: How do we select use cases? Creating funnel efficiency: If you place a machine between marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and business development reps (BDRs), marketers can select the best fitting leads and create more opportunities for sales without wasting marketing dollars. This machine is a predictive marketing solution. Increases lead velocity: Every 12 weeks, 10%-15% of the leads in your funnel become invalid people change titles, s, positions, or companies. That is why you need higher velocity to get more value from the same marketing database. You need to get the best leads through the funnel quickly, giving them higher priority at every step. Officiates data cleansing and filtering: Are there really 12 million qualified buyers for your products or services? Probably t. You should be able predict which 30% of your database contains 95% of your eventual wins. Discard the 70% of leads which are much less relevant and focus on leads that really matter. Smarter segmentation (based on data): You should use a data-driven approach that offers to run smarter marketing campaigns by segmenting the buyers, matching each lead to a distinct persona, and adding the needed information to each lead (in your marketing automation or CRM). 3

5 { { Aggregates data for effective cross-sell and up-sell: With predictive marketing you can build models for different upsell and cross-sell activities, each with its unique characteristics based t only on behavioral data, but interests and strong, refined company data that your predictive model was able to aggregate. This will also let your sales team kw to whom they ll cross-sell and up-sell. Predictive marketing provides context during greenfield discovery: In these cases you don t have an abundance of past information and need to quickly get the best buyers in this new space. Bootstrapping a marketing campaign is ather important use-case for predictive marketing. Automated decision-making on leads: With predictive marketing, you will be able to make automated decisions on funneling your leads to the right place based on score and data. High priority leads can go to sales immediately. In addition, funnel leads to the right nurture track based on data-driven rules. Most important is to define your use-case in detail and to articulate what problem you are trying to solve. Then go into detail on how that activity is done today, and what you expect to change by adopting a predictive marketing solution. The more granular you get, the better you will visualize your new approach to marketing, and the higher the likelihood you will achieve your goal. Investing effort in defining your goals is time well spent. Step #3: 5 Things To Do When Selecting A Predictive Marketing Vendor Once you have decided you need predictive marketing and have set your goals, start looking for a solution. Evaluating vendors is your next step. Here are the actions, tests, and checks recommended before you make a decision. View vendor websites: Open the contending vendor websites side by side, tab to tab. Read through the product pages and success stories to see if they can help you accomplish your goals. Find out what kind of problems the vendor solves and what kind of results they are achieving with their current customers. Talk to colleagues: Your early adopter marketing friends have probably looked at some of these solutions. Ask them what they learned and their assessment of the vendors they have heard about or used services from. Review analyst reports: Get a good idea of the capabilities of the vendors in your distinctive space. In many cases the analysts have already done your homework for you. Some of the recently published analyst reports on predictive lead scoring and predictive marketing are: SiriusDecisions Predictive Lead Scoring 2014 Field Guide (subscription required) Gartner s Tech Go-to-Market: Using Big Data to Focus on the Right Prospects Can Improve Sales and Marketing Effectiveness (subscription required) Gartner s Market Guide for Advanced Marketing Analytics Platforms (subscription required) Forrester s B2B Marketing s Big Data Destiny (subscription required) Make discovery calls: Speak with the vendors you are considering. Describe your problems and objectives. Ask about their capabilities and how they would help you achieve Predictive Marketing: Buyer s Guide 4

6 your goals. Ask the hard questions you will get a better understanding of the abilities and limitations of each vendor. A list of recommended questions appears at the end of this document. Talk to customers of the vendor: See if the vendor will set you up with a reference customer with a similar use-case so you can pick their brain about their greatest marketing challenges and how the vendor is helping them solve their pain points. Ask what vendors they have evaluated and how they have worked on making their decisions. Pro-Tip: Get Proof You will w move into a proof phase. You will want to pull your list of goals out again to make sure you are on track and see if anything new should be added. Assess each vendor against your goals in order of priority. Implementing a predictive marketing solution may require new strategic thinking. If your company has a distinctive conceptual framework, you should consider piloting the techlogy with a proof of concept. This will help you understand the techlogy, get a feeling for how you work with the team, and what you can expect when you implement the solution. Step #4: Deconstructing the Predictive Marketing POC Process Kick-off your fresh evaluation by understanding the basics of what kind of test you can run to make sure the predictive marketing solutions you are looking at will actually solve your problem. Why run a POC? Proof of concept (aka: POC) is a method to run an effective, thorough validation test of the potential vendor solution. This will help you validate the techlogy and find out how the different vendors stack up in relevant capabilities for your use case. How does a POC work? In a POC, your vendor will use your data as well as their own data to create predictions and insights about your customers and segments. You will usually prove out one or two use-cases at this stage. You will then measure the predictions against your actual results to check for accuracy. How long will a POC take? A POC can be run in about two to four weeks, depending on the complexity of your use-case and the quality of the data used to build predictive models. What will I need to begin a POC? You will need your customer and pipeline data. You will need a Positive population (a sample of your Universe of Prospects ), and a Test Population. Each of these sets of data are defined below: Positives: Typically, several hundred positives or wins will suffice. You will use different Positive Sets depending on your use-case. For example, a lead-based model requires leads which have converted to opportunities or have closed. For an account-based model, you will use accounts that have purchased from you. For an up-sell model, you will use accounts that have purchased more from you than their original deal amount. Universe of prospects: This will be a sample of the leads or accounts in which you are trying to locate the Positives (the good leads or accounts.) For example, if you were trying to find a great lead from your ongoing inbound lead generation, you would use a sample of your inbound leads to compare against. Test population: This will be a sample of leads resembling your Universe of Prospects with Positives mixed in. Here, you must already have found the needle in the haystack you must already kw which prospects were actually Positives. This will serve as your 5

7 test of accuracy for the vendors. Exceptional models should be able to predict against a test file with a very high level of accuracy. Data freshness: The length of your sales cycle is critical to deciding on how big and how fresh your samples should be. For instance, if it takes one quarter for a prospect to become a Positive, your Test Population should be at least one quarter old and should t be in your Positive Set of your Universe of Prospects. Which vendor has performed the best? This is where the Test Population comes into play. Each vendor should be able to offer you a sample of the prediction. Comparing the accuracy of the prediction at the threshold which is most relevant for your use-case will give you the answer as to which is the best model. Set goals and timelines: Right from the start you should pay attention to your POC kickoff process. In the kickoff you should: Review your own goals for predictive marketing: Ask for the vendor s insights and recommendations. Validate their expertise by finding out what experience they have had success with in the area of your specific goals. Provide the vendor with your data: Your vendor should ask for several sets of data; a set of Positives, a set to represent your Universe of Prospects, and a test set. Allow the vendor to ask questions about the data and about your marketing and sales processes. Your vendor should be a partner with you in this project. Outline the expected timeline: Make sure you and your vendor are on the same page about how long the POC should take. Have a shared course the various steps will take, and the timeframe in which those steps will take place. Review model results and insights: After the vendors have done their magic, matched their data with your data, produced predictive models, and found insights, they should share these with you. The vendor should present the following results from the POC: The data that went into the model: Your vendor should reveal what part of your data was used in modeling and why. You should also receive information about validations and statistics that have been run on your data to enhance it for the model building process. The strongest insights and indicators in the model: Your vendor should reveal what data they have added to the equation and what is most relevant to your model and business case. This provides a window into the models validity and granularity. The model s performance: Vendors tend to measure performance differently, so it is hard to compare performance if you don t have a statistics expert. To make things simple, you should insist on a specific metric of your choice which you alone determine to provide feedback to the vendor on what you ve seen. Measuring and comparing results: The key to this step is deciding what to measure. This should be your decision, t the vendor s. Choose the metrics, which are significant to your business case. Below is a guide to consider how to measure results. Use a good metric: A good metric would be the percent of wins in the top 20% of my leads. All vendors will provide numbers that can easily be compared since we are talking about groups of the same size. The top 20% is a large eugh set to let you measure accurately the number of wins (or positives.) That 20% can w be compared directly between vendors. Have a scorecard of important features: Measuring model performance is important, however, so are all the additional features and data you should receive from your vendor. Perhaps the quality of certain marketing automation and CRM integrations is Predictive Marketing: Buyer s Guide 6

8 important to you. Perhaps there are certain actionable data points you want to have from the insights and analytics in order to provide an air-traffic control for your leads, to guide them down nurture tracks. Make sure to include this in your evaluation. What will change the day after you implement predictive marketing: Understand how processes and campaigns will change after you start implementing predictive marketing. In addition, figure out what is the time to value or "quick wins" for your company. Section #5: What Questions to Ask the Vendor? After you ve done the preliminary research, it s time to sign up for some product demos to learn about the features and capabilities of each predictive marketing vendor. Here are some of the important questions that you should ask: General Questions vendor 1 vendor 2 vendor 3 Does the vendor offer an intuitive user interface? Does the vendor understand our business? Does the vendor understand our marketing needs? Does the vendor offer all of our musthave features? Does the vendor offer dedicated support? Can the vendor help me maximize adoption in my organization? 7

9 Modeling vendor 1 vendor 2 vendor 3 Does the vendor have the ability to score leads and contacts including prospects and existing contacts? Does the vendor score leads based on exclusive data that I don t have? Is there an extra fee or charge for data or marketing indicators? Does the vendor work in an all-inclusive business model? Can the vendor support 5-20 different models for different product lines? Is there an extra fee or charge for buyer personas or different models for different product lines? Does the vendor solution require data scientists to build our models? Can I interpret the model s results myself? Can the vendor provide an average new model turnaround time of 24 hours? Integration vendor 1 vendor 2 vendor 3 Does the vendor offer capabilities to provide scoring and enrichment directly on the Lead and Account objects in our marketing systems? Can the vendor integrate my data into his model s data? Can the vendor refresh my data and scoring on a quarterly basis to reflect changes in the market? Predictive Marketing: Buyer s Guide 8

10 Data Your goal is to understand where the vendor is bringing the data from and whether it fits your process. vendor 1 vendor 2 vendor 3 Does the vendor cover international data outside of North America? Can the vendor support data in languages other than English? Can the vendor create custom data points based my unique business needs? Can the vendor enrich more than 80% of the leads in my database? Does the vendor cleanse my data of errors and invalid data points? Does the vendor provide intent data? Does the vendor share any of my data with other parties or his database? How many companies does the vendor have and how many data points on each company? 9

11 Conclusion Predictive marketing platforms are proving their value to B2B marketers, who are facing a more complex customer lifecycle, a wider array of digital marketing channels, and an unprecedented volume of prospect and customer data. To be effective, marketers must be creative, targeted, aligned with sales goals, and have greater visibility into buyer attributes and behaviors. Predictive marketing solutions can help you become a better, more effective marketer. Set a goal, and find the techlogy that will best help you and your company accomplish that goal. Predictive Marketing: Buyer s Guide 10

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