Last year’s Hootsuite Social Trends report threw up some interesting stats. None more so than this: 5% fewer marketers felt LinkedIn was effective in helping them reach their business goals.
While this may not be the biggest change, it’s indicative of a trend that continues in B2B today: MQLs as we know them are getting harder to find using traditional techniques. This is asking fundamental questions about where leads are coming from and what we consider leads to be.
The ultimate MQL used to be form-fill. We’d put our highest value content behind a ‘contact wall’, wait for sign-up and ‘hey presto’ we’ve got a strong lead. The problem with this – and I believe the chief reason behind the drop in ‘LinkedIn effectiveness’ – is two-fold.
First, the person signing up may be intrigued by the topic but have no interest in your brand or buying the solution. Second, people now understand sponsored content and know they’ll go into a nurture stream. So fewer people are exchanging details.
I’m not advocating we get rid of forms. They serve a vital role. But there’s a considerably more sophisticated and efficient way to generate leads – by capturing and harvesting intent data.
If you’re unfamiliar with intent, there’s a raft of articles online to pore over. Essentially though, it’s simply a collection of behavioural data that signals whether targets are showing intent to buy. In the marketing context that means engagements with social media and campaign assets. The data is gathered anonymously through IP targeting using martech tools, like 6sense and Demandbase or LinkedIn.
The beauty of intent is that it helps marketers identify prospects who are actively looking for a solution and can pinpoint where they are on the buying journey. And because you’re not asking for any details, campaign engagement goes through the roof – giving you more intent opportunity than traditional lead gen.
For example, if you have had 15 intent signals with brand ‘a’ alongside a form-fill and only one from brand ‘b’, it’s pretty clear where to aim your sales team’s focus.
There’s a considerably more
sophisticated and efficient way
to generate leads – by capturing
and harvesting intent data
Better still, within LinkedIn you can harvest and load campaign demographics (intent data) back into Sales Navigator and get even more sophisticated – to the point of knowing, with a good degree of accuracy, the individuals likely to be engaging with your campaigns in the prospect business.
If this was more widely known, perhaps the drop in 5% would be reversed.
This kind of insight-led demand generation is hugely valuable when market conditions are good. It’s absolutely vital when things are tough.
I’m a huge advocate of ABM, and it is right to focus marketing spend on growing existing accounts through ABM programmes. However, there’s also a need to grow your audiences – whether from existing accounts (ABM) or new logos. This is where demand generation comes in. And, by leading with intent, you’ll have the data you need to do it more successfully than ever before.