A bloomer is someone who believes AI is the next great revolution, bringing innovation, endless possibilities, and will make our lives as we know it, better. A gloomer on the other hand, is someone who believes the opposite, that AI could if not approached carefully, will eventually destroy life as we know it in a doomsday-esque fiery explosion. 

Finding a balance

Naturally, as marketers, we’re expected to jump onto the AI trend, pushing innovation, creativity, and always staying ahead of the curve. Yet, amid the ongoing “Bloomer vs. Gloomer” debate surrounding AI, where should marketing stand? Is it a sprint to rapidly adopt AI and explore every possibility, or should we be cautious, implementing AI only as necessary?

The ultimate question is, how can we as marketers use AI to our advantage? 

As we step into uncharted territory with AI, navigating this landscape requires a strategic approach. To effectively leverage AI’s advantages for marketing success, four critical questions emerge: 

How can marketers use AI in practice today?

Marketers can effectively leverage the power of AI in their daily operations by adopting a strategic and targeted approach. Start by identifying specific areas where AI application aligns with your marketing objectives. AI adoption can begin on a smaller scale, then gradually expand across multiple areas of marketing.  

Here are a few strategies that marketers can start putting into practice today: 

Stay informed

One of the easiest ways marketers can begin to use AI in practice is by optimizing their existing tech stacks by staying informed on AI innovations in the roadmap of existing platforms. One way to do this is by attending conferences and briefings related to marketing tools in use. For example, at Foundry we use for social media management. Recently the platform came out with , an AI tool that helps generate AI captions and winning post ideas in seconds. Once our team knew that tool was available, we were able to integrate and implement it into our existing strategy.  

Enhance buyer experiences 

The rise of AI has made it easier than ever for businesses to create personalized content at scale, allowing you to connect with your audience on a more individualized and meaningful level. addressing unique concerns and aspirations of different stakeholders. Whether it’s the CFO concerned about ROI, the CTO focused on implementation challenges, or the CEO envisioning long-term business impact, the GenAI narrative must speak directly to their priorities. Additionally, experiment with AI image and video tools. These tools, like , allow users to create customized snippets and visuals, creating a more engaging and tailored experience for your audience. 

Elevate employee experiences 

Train employees to use AI effectively, helping to automate repetitive tasks to make work more efficient. AI can help cut down time in various marketing activities like content editing, creating images for blogs, or automating certain tasks. Encourage teamwork for more creativity and efficiency. Numerous programs are available for employees to explore the benefits of AI, one example being Google Cloud’s Introduction to which you can enroll in for free now. 

What AI tools are available to marketers right now? 

Given that close to two-thirds (61%) expect their spending towards AI projects to increase in 2024, marketers but be ready to explore AI tools available and what will integrate best into their existing martech stack. 

AI tools available to marketers right now include: 

• – ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI, designed for natural language understanding and generation, capable of performing various language-related tasks through API interactions. 
• – Jasper AI is an AI writing tool that helps you easily create content. You only need to provide simple inputs, and Jasper will generate original, high-quality content. 
• – Writer makes it easy to create custom apps to support any use case, including digital assistants, content generation, summarization, or data analysis. 
• – Typeface is the generative AI application to supercharge personalized content creation for businesses. 
• – Adobe Firefly is being built into Creative Cloud to give people the tools to both generate results quickly and customize them to fit their unique vision. 
• – Avoma is an AI meeting assistant and revenue Intelligence solution for customer-facing teams for startups and scaleups. 

It’s important to note that the choice of tools may depend on specific marketing needs. Additionally, Generative AI tools are not going to solve all our problems. Additionally, businesses must have the capacity to implement any technology that they are bringing on. 

What are the risks associated with AI?

AI presents significant risks for marketers (ask any gloomer). In fact, only 36% agree that their organization has a policy in place to monitor the use of Gen AI.  
 
This lack of governance can lead to various concerns, including: 

• Security and privacy – As Gen AI evolves and becomes more sophisticated, the risks of cybersecurity threats amplify. Security and privacy concerns are the most pressing ethical implications when implementing Gen AI.  
• Quality – Over-using AI to write content, posts, etc. you risk not matching brand voice, losing your perspective/POV, etc. 
• Trust – Marketers may exploit AI capabilities, leading to manipulative practices, data breaches, and overreliance on automation. This could result in the erosion of trust and long-term brand damage. 
• Channel performance – Certain traditional channels, such as cold outreach and cold outbound, may become less effective as AI-driven personalization increases. 
• Job displacement – As AI automates certain SEO tasks, there is a risk of job displacement for professionals specializing in routine optimization.  

 
To mitigate these risks, organizations may need to develop policies addressing the specific challenges of Gen AI. This could involve establishing ethical guidelines or implementing required training. 

Who should own AI within an organization? 

The ultimate question when it comes to leveraging AI in any organization, “What department or role owns AI?” The answer may look different for every company, determining who owns AI depends on factors like its structure and goals.  

While this is a highly debated topic, here are three possibilities on who could own AI within an organization: 

1. Department leaders – Each department leader is given a mandate to leverage AI technology within their own departments. Assigning AI ownership to department leaders could empower each division to leverage AI tailored to their specific needs and goals. In this case CMO’s would become the driving force behind integrating AI solutions to meet the unique needs and objectives of the marketing department. 

2. Cross-functional teams – Establish cross-functional teams that cut across departments, bringing together individuals with diverse skills, expertise, and perspectives to collectively drive AI innovation across the organization. 

3. Centralized ownership – Centralized ownership of AI involves appointing a dedicated team or individual responsible for overseeing and driving AI innovation across the entire organization. In this model, a centralized AI unit assumes the role of a strategic hub, coordinating efforts, setting standards, and ensuring a cohesive and aligned approach to AI implementation.  

Additionally, organizations should consider implementing some sort of AI ethics, to ensure ethical considerations are prioritized and integrated into AI applications. 

Conclusion

As we move forward into the unknown of AI, it’s not just about the speed of adoption but the mindfulness and strategy we bring to the table. Between Bloomers and Gloomers, the middle ground becomes an opportunity of advantage for marketers. 

Want to hear more about marketers AI advantage? Tune into Inspire to Connect to watch Matt Egan, Editorial Director at Foundry, Katie Berg, VP Marketing at Klue, and Aditya Kothadiya, Founder & CEO of Avoma, share their thoughts on how marketers can better leverage AI.  

Not to worry! Plug a prompt into the AI chatbot of your choice and badabing badaboom, you’ve got content. But after you trim the fat, the forced synonyms for ‘engaging’, and everything extrapolated beyond your prompt, you have… something that sounds pretty generic. Wasn’t AI supposed to make this effortless and innovative? 

The AI disconnect

When it comes to content creation and copy writing, it’s hard not to depend on the seemingly productive use of Generative AI. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to use it myself for this very blog. But instead, I pried into whether the benefits of using Gen AI as a tech marketer do outweigh the often-overlooked negatives.  

According to Foundry’s latest AI Priorities Study, content generation is the second most popular use case for Gen AI and yet nearly 1/4 of IT decision-makers are concerned that their organization is moving too fast to adopt this new tech, creating a glaring disconnect between the 54% of ITDMs using AI to boost productivity, and the looming concern about its implications.  

I fear that our growing dependency on Gen AI is leading to a decline in originality, linguistic style and humour in marketing efforts. Yes, you can input tonal suggestions into prompts (my go-to is Spartan), but its amalgamating algorithm strips copy of authentic personality. It could be argued that this is for the best – that B2B techmarketing should steer away from the individualism of ‘human’ linguistic style to focus on communicating success and trust with clarity. We expect B2B tech content to provide facts and insight, not puns on intent data creating a surge of interest. I’ve experienced firsthand when A/B testing that more risky/cheeky/original subject lines don’t necessarily get higher open rates than straightforward subject lines, usually including a fact or stat. Is this indicative of our expectations or stringent guidelines for tech marketing copy? Does B2B tech marketing have to be devoid of personality for the sake of trustworthiness and communicating credibility?  

Finding a balance: B2C copy vs. B2B  

B2C copy seems to always be having more fun than B2B, striving to sound as human as possible. Ads on the London Underground are essentially an extended joke reel, written by marketers trying to convince commuters that their brands are relatable and not profit-driven. I find that most of these campaigns are trying too hard to evoke an emotional response, to the point they turn into Uncanny Valley caricatures of their target audience.  

What’s interesting is the growing presence of B2B brands following suit, for multiple reasons. Some may be trying to stand out from their corporate competitors and position themselves as young, hip, innovative organizations that are in on the trends. Or, it may be to intentionally target younger people, now that Gen Z and Millennial IT decision-makers are important gatekeepers in the buying team. B2B campaigns could also be trying to humanize their voice in the social media space, to contribute their own dose of dopamine to feeds intended for entertainment and individual consumption. It may be a combination of these factors, but if this trend persists, B2B copy could take a turn (for better or for worse) very quickly.  

All organizations have values that inform their corporate tone, from language choices to design elements and beyond. But when their marketers are trying to take up space across channels, especially on social which is inherently individualistic, it’s important to show your audience that the organization is not an individual but made up of individuals. Well-executed leadership blogs, podcasts, interviews, and expert takeaways from research hit the right balance of personable and credible. These content types show how your organization is made up of experts who want to share their insights with peers and prospects to better the field. Recently we launched our first ‘Stories Inspire. Data Connects.’ campaign to champion the expertise within our organization to educate and inspire tech marketers. The content is created by humans in their own authentic voice, rather than editing away the personality that we, and our audience love about them. At the end of the day, how can a brand convey who they are without the people they’re made up of? Or build trust and familiarity by trying to ‘sound human’ while simultaneously stripping away the quirks, emotions, that help audiences really connect and resonate with them.  

So, how should we be using Gen AI in content creation? 

Firstly, content should prioritize giving your prospects what they want, and not just what you want prospects to know about you. Substance over style, in other words. What I find most useful about Gen AI is not the ease of content creation, but how it can make content more clear and concise. By using chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard to cut down copy to a certain word count and summarise key points, you can check if its takeaways align with your intentions. Using Gen AI to optimize rather than create will ultimately preserve creative autonomy as marketers. There’s no need to be afraid that ChatGPT will be replacing marketers when we are best informed to tailor our content to tech buyers and what they’d find most useful in their buyer’s journey.    

This blog was 100% written by a human, for better or for worse. I urge you to reconsider your use of Gen AI in the name of productivity. This doesn’t mean throwing this super powerful tool to the wayside, but question if it’s really more efficient to use it for content, or if it might be more helpful for idea generation or editing, for example. After all, isn’t it an oxymoron to use a robot to make you (a person) sound more human?   

I also urge you to use ‘Spartan tone’ in your next prompt.  

More specifically, it’s been the year of AI. Whether it be building AI/machine learning models in-house or using AI-enabled technologies that already exist, IT decision-makers have been tasked with researching how to incorporate aspects of AI into their organizations. With all the various types, use cases, and ethical implications associated with implementing AI, this is no easy feat.  

To recommend and provide appropriate solutions to their organization, IT decision-makers consistently need relevant resources, and technology marketers need to understand what these relied upon resources are. To help tech marketers gain clarity into what to create and how to connect with tech buyers during this process and ensure the content they provide is of value, Foundry recently surveyed over 800 global tech decision-makers in the 10^th annual . This research provides insight into the various types of content ITDMs consume throughout the purchase process, and their engagement preferences when it comes to vendor follow-up, advertising, and maintaining relationships.   

Key takeaways:

• Relevant and consistent content is essential – 73% are more likely to consider an IT vendor who educates them through each stage of the decision process. 

• IT decision-makers are still challenged to find high-quality content, with the main reasons being too much marketing hype/buzzwords and lack of truly independent, unbiased information. Uncertainty if content is produced by a product expert or if it is AI generated does not top the list, likely because ITDMs are familiar with what AI is capable of doing.  

• Product testing/reviews/opinions, product demos/product literature, and technology news continue to be the top relied upon content types throughout the tech purchase process. Presentation of content is also important, as 74% of ITDMs say that they are more likely to engage with a variety of content if it is presented in an organized experience.  

• Have a higher chance of gaining customers or receiving a response to outreach by understanding who their peers are. Close to ¾ of ITDMs say that they are more likely to respond to outreach from a tech vendor if they know their technology is already being used by a colleague or peer.  

• The number one rule in tech advertising – provide value. The majority (90%) of ITDMs have engaged with online advertisements, with addressing current challenges or business objectives, or promoting something they have recently searched for, increasing the likelihood of engagement.  

• Don’t miss the window – the average amount of time ITDMs think is an acceptable timeframe to receive sales follow-up after requesting information has expedited – 17.5 hours on average. This decreases to 11 hours for Gen Z and is 19 hours for Gen X. 

The findings and trends in this report solidify the need that tech buyers have for consistent, valuable and trustworthy content. These individuals are tasked with researching, evaluating, and implementing new technologies while shifting organizational processes and require the appropriate educational resources and relationships to do so. 

View the sample slides below for additional insight and to better understand and engage with tech buyers.

Additional buyer’s journey resources

Research infographic

About the research

Foundry’s 10th annual was conducted among the audience of 843 IT and business decision-makers. Foundry conducted this survey online throughout November 2023 to better understand the various types and volume of content consumed throughout the purchase process for major technology products and services. It also looks to gain insight into the preferences of IT decision-makers regarding IT vendor contact and follow-up during the purchase process. All respondents had IT or management titles, with 41% based in North America, 42% in Asia/Pacific (APAC) regions, and 14% from Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA). 

Contact us to explore the results by company size, region, generation, and more differences.  

But storytelling is timeless. From the age-old tales in Homer’s Iliad to the classic themes of hero, villain, and someone (or something) that needs rescuing, it’s part of our culture. Time and time again, surveys show that stories resonate; they stay with us, they influence us, they connect us.

But as authors and movie producers know, a story is most effective when it’s told to the right audience. And grabbing the attention of tech buyers can be difficult. They’re surrounded by messages from competitors on multiple channels, from cell phones to social media to websites.

As marketers, you face a variety of challenges in reaching those tech buyers:

• Resources shortage: On average, tech decision-makers rely on 7 information sources during the purchase process. Your message may get drowned out.

• Engagement difficulty: 65% of tech buyers say that they typically spend more time consuming content from known and trusted brands because they’re confident their time will be well spent. Do they trust your brand?

• Storytelling: 91% of tech decision-makers say it is challenging to find high-quality content. Can you measure content effectiveness with confidence?

• Competitive differentiation: 72% of ITDMs report that if a vendor does not supply educational content during research, it negatively impacts their impression. Simply put, mid-funnel sales brochures and solution briefs alone won’t work.

The answer to your challenges

Our newest marketing solution, BrandPage, weaves together the reality of our animated, digital world and the art of storytelling in a highly visual and interactive environment. A solution that shares your story with Foundry’s award-winning editorial brands to reach the IT and business executives, managers, and teams who influence technology investment.

Think of BrandPage like a blank canvas for telling your brand’s story with compelling interactive custom content and a full portfolio of dynamic formats: quizzes, assessments tools, research facts, videos, podcasts, graphics, images, and more, all presented with cutting-edge visual design.

Many influencers quoted in the agree with the need for this format. These quotes stand out to me:

• “We need to make our content pages as robust as possible.”
• “Customers are demanding a more relevant, ‘human’ experience.”
• “Use the crown jewel of marketing – great creative �ɴǰ���.”
• “With a tightening economy, marketers need to be prepared to tell impactful stories with data.”

On top of this, B2B buyers want a blend of in-person interactions, remote contact, and self-service (aka BrandPage) across the purchasing journey, according to .

And technology sites are the #1 source for keeping up to date with new technologies and enhancing knowledge across all audiences, from baby boomers to Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z, according to Foundry’s own research.

Data-driven storytelling

In this busy, complex marketing environment, it’s not all about leads. Lead generation programs only work if your prospects are aware of your brand. If you’ve educated key buyers and influencers about how your solution solves their challenges – or opens up new opportunities for innovation and competitive advantage – you’ve got a leg up on your competitors.

Foundry’s unique quantitative research and topic data ensures your story is driven by facts, from what CIOs and CSOs care about to what they consume, how long they stay on pages, their level of engagement with your assets, and more. 

What’s more, we build your visual story – and then we take it to the market. Remember the adage from Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come?” It doesn’t work in tech marketing. Sorry, Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner).

We use our custom branded promotions across Foundry’s editorial brand ecosystem to spread your story. We use our proprietary remarketing tactics to encourage deeper engagement with any visitors and accounts who visit your BrandPage. We promote and nurture with expertise.

And then we measure the results so you can show ROI on your investment. In a single snapshot, you can learn which accounts are showing interest in your content and deliver that intelligence to your sales team or use the CTAs to drive traffic back to your site.

BrandPage is a turnkey solution, with a dedicated production team with established process and track record for seamless execution. It has multiple uses, from global or local campaigns to partner, multiple product groups, and more.

The bottom line

Making an impact in today’s crowded tech market requires stories that connect, presented to the right audiences, using the right promotional tactics, with trusted measurement of your KPIs. Foundry covers all the bases.

is Senior Director of Content Strategy, Atlantic Region, for Foundry, where she manages a team of expert, highly creative content strategists and storytellers.

As B2B sellers, we have taken a long time to get here. And many continue to fight the change and struggle to create a workable and positive relationship between Sales and Marketing that can feed the bottom line by adapting to what today’s buyers want.

Marketing and Sales teams face the persistent challenge of reaching and influencing buyers who are well and truly rooted in the digital ecosystem. And as this new B2B landscape continues to evolve (which it will), it’s crucial to adopt a new approach that enables organizations to create a more personal and, more importantly, useful and educational path to nurture a new cohort of very diverse buying committee members.

Taking the leap with a new approach can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. New research from IDC provides B2B vendors with critical data and insights into this evolving landscape. Let’s start with what we know about these new buyers.

B2B buyers aren’t any different from B2C or DTC buyers

Four key points surfaced in our sister company IDC’s research:

1. Digital first, always: Today’s buyers are fully plugged into the digital world. They browse, chat, research, and shop across multiple online channels, making eCommerce their preferred style for all purchases – now including B2B. To win over these buyers, we have to embrace the digital realm and speak their language, not ours.
   
2. Customer experience rules: Consumers now call the shots. Leave downloadable PDF white papers behind and focus more on interactive and immersive content like videos, webinars, and infographics that will differentiate you from your competition. It doesn’t matter if the customers are GenZ or Boomers, win them over with what they all crave – memorable interactions.
   
3. Personalization is table stakes: One size does not fit all and never did. B2B buyers expect content tailored to their needs in real time. Whether digital natives or digital immigrants, personalized engagement matters – a lot.
   
4. The current funnel model falls short: In today’s B2B buying age, a diverse committee calls the shots, not just the executive responsible for cutting the check. To succeed, marketing and sales must be agile, adaptable, and utterly customer centric. It’s their journey, their way – with vital information delivered with a human, personal touch.

For B2B marketing and selling teams, this all adds up to a new way of approaching and engaging the buyer – one that abandons the generic messaging and linear nurture track that we’ve perfected and instead puts the buyer in control. It also means that, to truly be effective in the B2B marketing space, we need to break way out of our comfort zone.

Enter ACE: a new model for a new kind of B2B buyer

IDC knew a change in B2B sales approach was needed and undertook a research effort that has resulted in what they have coined: the ACE model.

, or ACE, was designed to meet the needs of modern B2B buyers and, if done with consideration, will make the buying experience across all aspects of the consumer journey more personal and definitely more in tune with what B2B buyers need – not just what we, as sellers, think they need. ACE is a framework that helps brands identify and accelerate growth opportunities in a continual fashion and aligned to how today’s B2B buying committees actually buy.

ACE is a continuous B2B marketing and customer outreach model, forgoing the classic funnel schema – a virtuous cycle of engagement no matter what stage of the buying journey is active. Data points and insights feed content choices and marketing automations that help marketing drive more personal, one-to-one experiences in the digital realm. And it doesn’t stop with a purchase, nor should it. The relationships built are just as important post-sale as they are prior.

B2B buyers expect B2C experiences and desire true interactions with your brand, interactions that have a direct connection to their unique business challenges. It can’t just be about your product offerings in a vacuum.

If you are looking for a checklist or definitive process, the ACE model is not that. It is a process that’s agile at its core and is unique to each brand and product. Adaptability is paramount because B2B buyers move in many directions at once, all on their own terms. It is the job of B2B Marketing and Sales to think strategically together to identify individual buyer needs to deliver the best resources (digital, traditional, human-to-human) at each need state, which creates a more educational, informative, and effortless experience.

Making it actionable

Obviously, there is no magic bullet to move you forward, but here are some things to ponder and some actions that you can take now to start preparing for and making a change.

• Build customer intelligence, not data lakes: Map the data, understand the gaps, and create a layer of consumer insights. It can’t only be about the numbers. It’s necessary to infuse those stats with human, behavioral queues and triggers.
• Revive the CMO-CIO partnership: ACE requires a tech-enabled marketing team, meaning CMOs and CIOs need to bridge the gap between them in the interest of the business. Consider investing in automation and enterprise level capabilities, all tracking toward a more omnichannel experience that is underpinned by strong governance and digital security.
• Form a team-of-teams partnership with Sales: To put the customer at the heart of all you do, forget the funnel model. Embrace collaboration with teams working together, with common goals, tactics, and KPIs as your framework.
• Modernize your content playbook: Digital-first buyers thirst for immersive content. Stop leaning on PDF case studies and download CTA forms, and instead revise your content marketing approach. Tell stories that weave through the many buyer journeys that happen simultaneously and create narratives that engage each stakeholder on the buying committee personally.
• Bring the right people on board: Hire talent and close skills gaps to be more in tune with the modern marketing/sales landscape. You need digital experience producers, content strategists, data scientists, and tech-savvy minds all working in concert while embracing emerging technologies like AI and augmented reality.
• A sale isn’t the end of marketing: The circular nature of ACE removes the finality that currently exists in the sales cycle by redepositing the sale’s success back into the process. Your customers are an extension of your marketing plan, and who better than the current customer base to help educate and enlighten those embarking on a similar buyer journey? Remember, marketing never sleeps.
• Focus on outcomes, not outputs: Shift your focus from counting leads to tracking real outcomes and revenue growth. Use connected data and analytics to uncover insights, giving you the knowledge to engage your buyers throughout their journey and decision-making process.

I didn’t say this would be easy, but the need is real. Make no mistake, this change in tack will require executive management buy-in to drive the effort and willing sales and marketing teams to play nice in the race-to-revenue sandbox. Remember, this is not an individual competition between organizational departments, it has to be a team sport. That’s a lot of coordination, but the upshot could be massive, for consumers as well as brands.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

B2B marketing has a data problem. 

And no, I am not talking about scarcity of data (in fact there’s an abundance of it). I’m talking about the gap that exists when it comes to connecting data for B2B go-to-market motions. 

The problem is as B2B data continues to explode, this gap continues to grow. What’s happening is vast reservoirs of data are getting wasted as they remain hidden and unused in unstructured, disconnected, and siloed states across the organization.  

Basically, our data is getting unused, resulting in a less than pleasant buyer’s experience. And things aren’t getting better. 61% of tech marketers in Foundry’s agree that the purchase process is becoming increasingly complex. 

Connected data in marketing

Anytime we hear “connected data” for B2B marketing; we normally hear it in the context of attribution and ROI measurement.  

While that is certainly true; there are several other use-cases where we need connected data, such as:  

• Customer experience 
• Audience targeting 
• Campaign optimization 
• Personalization 
• Attribution (no doubt) 
• Pipeline Forecasting 

In B2B marketing, “connected data” refers to the integration and utilization of data from various sources and touchpoints to create a unified and comprehensive view of a company’s target audience or customer base. It involves gathering, analyzing, and leveraging data from multiple channels and platforms to gain insights, make informed decisions, and optimize marketing efforts. 

In contrast to B2B, B2C has been quick to adopt connected data infrastructures by leveraging CDPs and building a 360-degree view of the customers. In fact, most major B2C brands have a unified customer profile. This single view of the customer results in a highly personalized consumer experience through personalized digital campaigns. For example: you buy a T-shirt at GAP, almost instantly you find your inbox filled with emails showcasing their upcoming promotions. Or, when you step into a shopping mall, you might receive push notifications via SMS or in-app alerts, perfectly tailored to your preferences. Even a visit to their website yields personalized content and recommendations, all thanks to this connected data ecosystem. 

B2B certainly doesn’t have that level of sophistication… However, there are valid reasons for that.  

With , 25 people making a decision, and more revenue at stake, the B2B buying journey is complex. And to add a layer of obfuscation, data is coming in from dozens of channels and an average of . The problem is, as helpful as these tools are, they often don’t do a great job of talking to each other, or even speaking the same language. 

Challenges in B2B data integration

Instead of connected data, B2B companies typically rely on their as the single source of truth for all customer-related things.  

Even with connectors from , ABM tools, and sales engagement platforms don’t have the robustness of a CDP. One of the key issues being that most activation and buyer engagement happen outside of the CRM and are almost impossible to store and . This disjointed data landscape poses significant challenges for B2B enterprises, especially those striving for integrated marketing. 

Integrated marketing has been flavor of the day for a lot of B2B enterprise marketers for a while now. A quick search with and this is the definition we get: “Integrated Marketing is a holistic approach to marketing communication. It ensures that all forms of communications and messages are carefully linked together. At its core, it’s about aligning all communication channels, from advertising and PR to direct marketing and digital, to work in unison.”  

This leaves us with one large issue as marketers… 

You simply cannot run a properly integrated marketing campaign without a connected data infrastructure.  

Building a connected data infrastructure

Consider the following scenario: you’re a B2B cyber security company running an integrated campaign targeting the top 500 Financial Services companies globally. Let’s say you’ve crafted a whitepaper and intend to promote it through a multi-channel strategy, encompassing display ads, paid social, content syndication, and webinar series. 

The first challenge you’ll face is how to create audience segments for each of these channels. Do you use a list of URLs or IP addresses? What about the buying teams within these orgs, how do you target them? And once you build an audience, how do the different channels talk to each other and optimize targeting based on engagements on other channels? 

Here is where you run into the data problem. When dealing with fragmented and outdated data, it becomes nearly impossible to pinpoint the precise individuals to target within various buying teams. Additionally, it’s challenging to discern which channels are resonating with your audience and igniting meaningful engagements. 

Instead, connected data might look something like this…  

The CIO at Big Bank has seen your ad five times in the past week. Because of this, an automated response sends her an email invitation for your upcoming webinar. However, if she already registered for the webinar, the system would intelligently exclude her from the content syndication program to avoid redundancy. This is exactly what B2B companies should be doing. It’s a perfect example of what a truly connected data infrastructure might look like. 

Companies, like SAP, have taken substantial strides through initiatives like the . They’ve assembled teams of data scientists to build extremely sophisticated models by ingesting both 1^st and 3^rd party data across multiple sources. The outcomes include a 300% increase in deal size and a 2-3X increase in conversion rate from pipeline to revenue.  

But let’s be realistic… not every B2B marketing organization can build a data science team. However, there are still actionable steps you can take towards creating a connected data system.  

Account and contact level data

Connected data systems mean account and contact level data must be connected. 

Account level data encompasses information about the organizations or companies you are targeting. But without contact data, it’s impossible to truly understand the context behind your accounts and who key decision makers are. 

Contact-level data focuses on the individuals within your target organizations. However, when it comes to contact-level intent, it’s not just about knowing that “Jane,” a marketing manager, downloaded a piece of content. It’s about understanding Jane’s place in the buying team for a martech solution. Is Jane a decision maker, an influencer, or an individual contributor in the buying process? What’s important is having a deep understanding of a contact’s role, seniority, and function within their organization.  

Imagine you’re a marketer for a B2B company, and you’ve identified that “Jane” holds a high-ranking position that gives her decision-making authority. Knowing this, you can tailor your engagement accordingly. Since she’s the decision maker, focus on presenting in-depth product information and value propositions.  

This deep understanding of contact-level data, tied to accounts, enhances your overall context of an organization’s dynamics. This not only empowers you to engage individuals more effectively but also enables you to grasp how their role aligns with the overarching objectives of their organization, allowing you to map contacts to specific buying teams. 

Data unification 

Your data must be set up in a way that allows you to monitor all the account and contact behaviors within your sphere, connecting where data is coming from to how it moves through your system. This means that from the moment you receive data, such as a form submission, you can pinpoint its source, and track lead progression as they interact with various touchpoints. This thorough monitoring continues until you hand it over to your sales team, who, in turn, can follow the lead’s interconnected path. 

For example, you’re a B2B software company receiving a form submission on your website. To ensure a streamlined data flow, you set up a direct data pathway: 

• Instant data capture: when a contact submits their info, your system grabs details like company name, industry, and how they found you. 
• Tagging and integration: leads get unique tags (e.g., “LI2023” for LinkedIn) in your CRM. 
• Progress tracking: your system tracks their interactions, like downloading e-books or attending webinars. 
• Sales alert: high-intent leads trigger sales notifications with comprehensive profiles. 
• Personalized engagement: sales tailors their approach based on lead engagement, boosting conversion chances. 
• Data analysis: after conversion, you analyze the journey to pinpoint top-performing channels. 

Another way to ensure this is by having all contacts and accounts that come in follow standardized procedures, so data integration flows seamlessly.  

Without a proper process for normalizing and collecting data, achieving connected data is considerably more challenging. For instance, say you encounter because of the way your Salesforce communicates with HubSpot, HubSpot now has approximately 40 distinct Adobe accounts. This hinders your ability to measure Adobe’s performance as a unified entity. Rather than analyze one Adobe account, you’re forced to analyze 40 separate instances of Adobe. 

A well-structured process ensures that all Adobe accounts and contacts are accurately categorized and connected within your database. This provides a unified view of Adobe’s engagement and behavior, allowing you to easily access a single, consolidated Adobe account profile.  

Adaptable infrastructure 

You need to be adaptable. What I mean by that is having the ability to optimize your strategies in real time based on what’s happening. 

Say you’re a B2B cyber security company running an ad campaign. During the campaign, you start noticing significant interest in data encryption content. This suggests that your audience is particularly interested in data encryption, and they’re responding positively to ads shown alongside such articles.  

With a flexible, connected data infrastructure, you would react to this in real time by contextually optimizing for placements within data encryption related articles. You might even adjust the ad copy and imagery to further align with the audience’s interests.  

Or say you spot an account displaying significant intent visiting your booth at an event. And at the event, your sales team logged information saying “Hey, we spoke to Jane at Pfizer during SaaStr.” A connected data infrastructure seamlessly funnels this data point into your system. From here, instead of having Jane in the audiences she started in, she is targeted with ads built specifically for her heightened interest level. 

This level of adaptability and granular targeting is precisely what a connected data system provides, allowing you to respond dynamically to the ever-evolving landscape, even drilling down to specific geographic regions as your strategy and audience demands. 

Conclusion

We’ve all heard the phrase “data is the new oil.” While this certainly is true, as B2B marketers we run the risk of misusing this precious commodity without a connective tissue tying the pieces together. The foundation of every marketing campaign should be built upon a connected data layer that ties firmographic, behavioral, and campaign engagement data together into one consolidated view. If done right a connected data layer should enable precise targeting, personalized engagement, and measurably better campaign outcomes.

So, as we continue to refine our marketing strategies and adopt new tools, let’s prioritize building a connected data infrastructure as the cornerstone of our marketing excellence.

If you aren’t familiar, FOMO stands for “fear of missing out”. It’s the feeling that whatever you are doing, you are missing out on something even bigger and better. 

Maybe you were scrolling on social media and saw friends having fun without you. Or, you haven’t gotten around to seeing the Barbie Movie that everyone can’t stop talking about. Whatever it is, FOMO can manifest differently for everyone, especially B2B marketers who are constantly tasked with staying ahead of industry trends and competition. 

However, it’s not about if we have FOMO (we all do), it’s about whether or not we choose to embrace that FOMO and use it to get ahead in our marketing strategies. 

FOMO in B2B marketing

Quite a few businesses are sticking with old-school methods for capturing leads and generating demand. But here’s the thing – they’re missing out on a whole bunch of potential customers who are super interested, and just haven’t raised their hand yet. In fact, 57% of the purchase journey remains anonymous, meaning marketers lack visibility into a huge repertoire of purchase-related activities and are most definitely missing out on opportunities. 

That stat should give any B2B marketer major FOMO.  

But what if that FOMO isn’t necessarily a bad thing? What if FOMO in marketing is actually a good thing, and something we should all be embracing? Well, I’m here to argue that it’s time to embrace this fear of missing out. Because when we do, we unlock incredible opportunities that were previously hidden from view. 

Embracing FOMO begins with intent data

How can we start embracing the FOMO in B2B marketing?  

Perhaps the most obvious way to tackle FOMO in B2B marketing is starting with intent data. Intent data is a goldmine of information about potential customers’ interests and activities. It includes both first-party data (collected from your own platforms) and third-party data (gathered from external sources).  

As mentioned earlier, a significant portion (57%) of the purchase journey remains anonymous. This is where intent data becomes invaluable. It allows you to identify and engage with potential customers who are actively researching solutions, even if they haven’t filled out a form or subscribed to your newsletter. This data reveals what your previously invisible target audience is researching and where they are in their buying journey. 

Embracing FOMO ends with actions

While intent data is a great start, it doesn’t come without challenges – the principal one being the difficulty of efficiently converting data to actionable insights. 67% of marketers say their number one challenge with intent data investments is making intent data actionable.

To avoid this problem, it’s best to have a in place for using intent data effectively and achieving your goals. For example, say your objective is to identify potential opportunities for your sales team. In that case, you might want to consider implementing an orchestration process that automatically identifies accounts showing intent and guides them through various strategies at each stage. For instance, if an account clicks on a display ad and then engages with a website call-to-action (CTA), you can set up a system that triggers a targeted sales campaign for timely outreach. This way, you’re not just collecting data; you’re actively using it to drive your marketing efforts and convert potential leads into valuable customers. 

Conclusion

While yes, FOMO sucks when you’re the one who got sick and can’t go to your best friend’s birthday party. As a marketer, FOMO is something to embrace. We should be afraid of those missed opportunities and should take proactive steps. The first step is with the help of intent data, to identify opportunities and act on those before we’ve already missed out. 

One challenge for global organizations is how to forge deeper connections with buyers across different geographies. Storytelling that attracts and engages IT buyers in the U.S. won’t necessarily resonate with audiences in Latin American, European, or Asia-Pacific markets. There’s a reason why “lost in translation” is a thing. Nuances in culture, communication styles, and even the IT purchase process require a market-specific approach to storytelling, beyond standard language translations.  

Localized storytelling doesn’t require unlimited budget and bespoke content for every market you’re targeting. To effectively scale your localization efforts, the key is repurposing core assets for individual markets. This approach also helps to ensure that localized content is consistent with your overall brand principles, because the overall narrative doesn’t change.   

Here are three ways to localize your storytelling to have more impact with target audiences in specific geographies.  

Local data

Citing research studies and other data sources in brand content adds credibility and authority to your messaging. This type of data-driven storytelling becomes more impactful with localized data. Third-party data that’s specific to the country or region you’re serving adds a local flavor that is more relatable to the audience. Analyst firms like IDC (Foundry’s sister company) offer a variety of that provide a trove of useful data and insights.  

Conducting or commissioning your own global research is another option, allowing you to “own” the data and segment the results for specific markets. This lets you create multiple versions of an asset with localized callouts or charts. In addition, when you analyze crosstabs across different regions, you can often find interesting insights about each segment’s interests and buying behaviors – which brings me to my next tip…  

Local audience insights

Insights about the local audiences you’re targeting can help you make better decisions about tailoring your content for individual markets, in terms of both topics and formats.  

For example, Foundry’s 2023 Role & Influence of the Technology Decision-Maker Survey found that the average buying committee among U.S.-based organizations contains 22 people, split evenly between IT (11) and LOB (11). But in EMEA and APAC, the buying committees have many more stakeholders, with organizations in each averaging 29 people who influence technology purchases. Knowing the differences in the size and makeup of IT decision-making teams can inform localized content strategy.  

Differences in buyer behaviors can influence your approach as well. For example, The Role & Influence study found that 76% of U.S.-based ITDMs registered for a work-related webcast in the past 12 months, compared with 56% of respondents in EMEA and just over half (51%) in APAC. That’s an important nugget to consider when determining the right mix of assets for a campaign.  

Local customer examples

Peers are an important source of information and insight for IT decision-makers. If you’re creating case studies, quoting customers in whitepapers and blog posts, or featuring customers as guests on webcasts, it’s better to localize those testimonials for each market you’re serving.  

This tactic can be as simple as creating different versions of a whitepaper featuring different customer quotes, while the overall narrative remains the same. Identifying local customers to provide insights or endorsements can add some complexity to the process, but the extra work can pay off by making the examples more relatable to your target audience.  

Two other things to keep in mind:  

It’s important to have local teams review localized content. This “boots on the ground” approach can provide a reality check on any cultural nuances in the content you’re creating to make sure phrases that are translated from other languages are not insensitive or otherwise off the mark.  

If you’re running into issues with scaling your content globally – and who isn’t – help may be on the way in the form of Generative AI. We’re already seeing content localization vendors add GenAI capabilities to their platforms to automate or augment localization workflows.  

At Foundry, we’ve been doing our own experimenting with the much-hyped technology as a way to quickly produce multiple, customized versions of whitepapers and similar assets, tuned for different geographies, personas, industries, and company sizes. The results to date are promising, though we’re still in the pilot phase.  

Two key takeaways when considering GenAI for content localization: 

You need to start with a core, human-created asset as source material for the derivative content. And you still need a human involved to edit and fact-check the customized versions that your GenAI tool generates.  

These simple localization tactics will help you scale your content marketing efforts globally without busting your budget. Localization is another tool in your storytelling toolbox to help you forge deeper relationships with your customers and prospects, wherever they live and work.  

What marketing channels should you be focusing on, and what tools are available within each of those channels to make the most out of them?  

Understanding a CMO’s metrics

CMOs pay close attention to the key metrics that reflect progress towards overarching goals to ensure they’re getting the most out of their investments. When evaluating channels, each metric is broken out into finer, diagnostic details. 

Being specific and realistic about your metrics and benchmarks will help you implement and evaluate an effective marketing strategy.  

Brand awareness and brand equity

Brand awareness comes before the first stage of customer acquisition. Your prospects need to not just know you exist but trust you as a reliable and valuable partner so that they remember you when a pain point does arise.  

At the surface level, your logo, tagline, and personality need to be consistent across all channels and should help give your prospects a clear feeling of what it would be like to work with you. But it takes more than a cohesive visual style, brand storytelling plays a key role in building audience connections.  

Position yourself as a trusted resource for content, blogs, and webinars and develop a relationship with potential clients. That way, they’ll know they can turn to you to help them uncover solutions to their challenges.  

Measure your brand equity through: 

• Web traffic: Are people consistently visiting and revisiting your website, and spending time there exploring your content?  
• High-quality social shares: When you promote content on social media, do people share it with their networks or engage in dialogue? Are they referencing your resources? 
• Conversions: When someone comes upon your content and brand, do they convert to social media follower or newsletter subscriber? Do they exchange their contact information to access your resources?  

Return on investment (ROI) 

How is each channel living up to the price tag of its investment? As a CMO, you have to prove to the rest of your team that your budget is paying dividends. This metric applies to individual channels, technology investments, and the overall marketing team resources. Careful record keeping, connected data, and activity analysis are key here.  

Measure your ROI though: 

• ROI = (Sales Growth – Organic Sales Growth – Marketing Cost)/ Marketing Cost 
• Set time-constrained goals for each channel to help determine ROI. Since customer journeys can be long, include steps along the way in your goals for more precise tracking. For example, how many MQLs, SQLs, meetings, or customers do you need to earn for a channel or tactic to pay for itself?  

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) 

CMOs need to know the cost of closing a deal. Ideally, you want your CAC to be lower than your average deal size. If your CAC is significantly higher than your average deal size, it might indicate that your marketing efforts are not generating enough value to cover the cost of acquiring customers. While there’s no universal benchmark multiplier for CAC it’s important to understand what’s considered a reasonable CAC for your industry. Benchmarking can give you a rough idea of where your CAC should ideally fall relative to your average deal size. Assess the CAC across various marketing channels and maintain regular monitoring of each channel’s performance. 

Measure your CAC through: 

• CAC = Sales + Marketing expense/Number of customers 
• Online conversion rates

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

This is the loyalty stage. CLV is the total revenue you can expect from a single client account over the lifetime of that account. The longer you retain a client, the larger the CLV. Use this metric to identify which customer segments provide the most ROI and that you should be spending most of your focus on.  

Measure your CLV through: 

• CLV= (Average purchase value X Average purchase frequency rate) X Average customer lifespan  
• You can also consider CLV in relation to CAC. CLV represents the total value a customer generates for your business over their entire relationship with you, while CAC measures the cost of acquiring a customer. Comparing CLV and CAC is crucial for making informed decisions about your marketing and business strategies. Ideally, you want your CLV to be significantly higher than your CAC, ensuring that you’re not only covering your customer acquisition costs but also generating sustainable profits over the long term. 

Marketing channels

With an understanding of the key metrics, it’s time to look at a few of the marketing channels marketing teams invest time, energy and budgets into. Each of these channels presents distinct advantages, specific performance indicators, requisite tools, and optimization costs. So, how do you choose your marketing mix, get set up for success, and optimize accordingly?  

Organic search

Increasing the number of people seeing and visiting your website organically should be one of your top priorities. Your website is where your high-quality content lives, and where you have the best opportunity to connect with prospects and evaluate their behavior.  

A strong organic search channel is based on setting up content and website elements to attract organic (non-paid) web traffic to help you land at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). The tactic to get you there is search engine optimization (SEO), driven by elements like keywords, backlinks, on-site topics, relevance, and even local and international components. 

Why might marketers consider investing in organic search? Organic search is a great way to: 

• Increase your website traffic 
• Improve brand visibility 
• Boost conversions and engagement 
• Gain long-term benefits 

Organic search is considered a relatively inexpensive way to boost marketing efforts without direct advertising costs. But it still requires a strategic approach. Organic search performance involves investment in time, effort, and potentially some tools or expertise. The long-term benefits of organic search optimization make it an attractive option for many businesses looking to boost their marketing efforts on a budget. 

Benchmarking and measuring organic search

These metrics provide quantitative data that allow you to understand, benchmark, and measure how your website is performing in search engine results and how users are interacting with your content.  

• Organic traffic
• Keyword rankings 
• Click-through rates (CTR) 
• Conversion rates 
• Average time spent on page 
• Average pages per visit 
• Organic page rank 

Organic search tools 

Here are a few common organic search tools that marketers can invest in to optimize their organic search efforts and performance:  

Keyword research tools: These tools help identify relevant keywords and search terms that users are entering into search engines. 

SEO analytics and tracking tools: These tools provide insights into your website’s performance and how it’s ranking in search results. They often offer data on traffic, keyword rankings, and more. 

Competitor analysis tools: These tools help you understand your competitors’ online strategies, including keywords they are targeting, backlinks they have, and more. This information can guide your own organic search efforts. 

Paid search

While organic SEO can take time to build, paid search results help guarantee your business appears at the top of the organic results right away – but only for as long as you pay for the ad. Paid search is paid placements that appear alongside and/or above organic search results. These campaigns are based on keywords you bid on so your business or content can appear higher within search results. However, SEO still influences the visibility of your paid ads through quality scores that evaluate factors such as relevance and keywords. 

A bid is the maximum amount of money you’re willing to pay for a specific keyword. Placement is based on these bids and reflects your visibility in search results. Paid search is unique compared to other marketing channels because it is pretty much all text, with very little to no imagery, and is based on user actions (searching for terms), so it has higher relevance to users by design. 

Why might marketers consider investing in paid search? Paid search is a great way to:  

• Gain immediate visibility
• Target your audience reach 
• Improve your brand awareness and visibility 
• Reach a high-intent audience 

Unlike organic search, paid search requires a direct advertising cost and budget allocation. Despite the cost, paid search can is a great way to earn immediate visibility and yield positive results through increased traffic and conversions.  

It’s essential to carefully plan, set budgets, monitor performance, and optimize campaigns to ensure you’re getting a solid return on your investment. 

Benchmarking and measuring paid search 

Measuring and benchmarking paid search effectively is crucial to understanding the performance of your campaigns and making informed decisions for optimization.  

A few metrics essential to track when investing in paid search are: 

• Click-through rates (CTR) 
• Conversion rates 
• Cost per click (CPC) 
• Ad position
• Cost per conversion

The metrics and benchmarks are relatively the same with paid search as they are with organic search. However, with paid search, you’re often targeting people who are further along in the journey with high purchase intent, which means that paid search should provide a quicker ROI. You also have the option to categorize keywords and campaigns based on intent levels, driving prospects to specific content, conversations with sales, or branded keywords. 

Paid search tools

Here are a few common paid search tools that marketers can invest in to optimize their paid search efforts and performance: 

Bid management software: Bid management software is a tool that automates and optimizes the process of adjusting bids for paid search campaigns, helping achieve better results and cost efficiency. 

Competitor analysis tools: Allows you to research competitor keywords, ad copy, and ad spend on both Google Ads and Bing Ads. 

Ad campaign management platforms: Tools that assist advertisers in creating, organizing, and optimizing their paid search advertising campaigns across multiple search engines. Examples include Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. 

Email marketing

Email marketing allows organizations to put themselves in prospects’ and existing clients’ workdays with targeted messaging and special high-value offers. Email lets you experiment with subject lines, delivery times and days, and messaging, while segmenting your audience based on context, personas, and buying stages. 

Why might marketers consider investing in email as a marketing channel? Email marketing is a great way to: 

• Directly communicate with prospects and customers 
• Segment and personalize content 
• Nurture leads 
• Automate outreach 

Marketers mostly use their own websites, blogs, to distribute content, making it one of the more common channels. Email marketing shows one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) among digital marketing channels, in fact the average ROI through email marketing is . With a relatively low cost compared to other channels, the potential for generating revenue is substantial. While email marketing is cost-effective, there are still initial setup costs associated with choosing and setting up an email marketing platform, and other tools to help execute your strategy. 

Benchmarking and measuring email marketing 

With an effective email strategy, you can move people through the customer journey by providing them with content and resources they need. Evaluating email marketing as a marketing channel involves analyzing the performance of your email campaigns to determine their effectiveness in achieving your marketing goals.  

Here are a few of the metrics essential to tracking the success of email marketing channels: 

• Open rate 
• Click-through-rate 
• Conversion rate 
• Bounce rate
• Unsubscribe rate 

Email marketing tools

Here are a few common email tools that marketers can invest in to optimize their email marketing efforts and performance: 

Email marketing platforms: These are comprehensive tools that provide features for creating, sending, and tracking email campaigns. They often include customizable templates, list management, segmentation, automation, A/B testing, and analytics. Popular platforms include MailChimp, Constant Contact, and HubSpot. 

Marketing automation platforms: These platforms allow you to set up automated email workflows based on user behavior and triggers. They can send personalized emails at specific times, based on actions taken by subscribers. Popular platforms include HubSpot and Marketo. 

Organic social media 

75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-Level/VP Executives surveyed  

B2B buyers probably won’t click to purchase the first time they encounter your brand through a post or ad. But if you use it correctly, social media builds your brand equity and prospects will remember you when they are in search of a solution you provide. Channels within social media consist of Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, Reddit, and Instagram, although the most popular among B2B channels being LinkedIn. 

Why might marketers consider investing in organic social media as a marketing channel? Organic social media is a great way to: 

• Build brand awareness
• Interact and engage with your audiences 
• Open two-way communication 
• Emotionally connect through storytelling 
• Tune into social listening – monitor competitors, watch for trends in your market, and gain insight into what your ICP cares and talks about. 

Unlike paid advertising, organic social media doesn’t require a significant financial investment to get started. It’s a budget-friendly way to reach and interact with your audience, making it ideal for businesses with limited resources. However, seeing results with organic social media may take a longer time to yield successful results. Building a substantial organic following takes time, especially if you’re starting from scratch.  

Benchmarking and measuring organic social media 

Social media is your opportunity to humanize your brand and create an online presence that is personable and memorable. This is also where you can share your content marketing pieces that lead social media users to your website or to sign up for your email newsletter. Measuring success will follow two lines: how much people value your social media contributions and how often they’re converting.  

Here are a few of the metrics essential to tracking the success of marketing efforts on organic social media channels:  

• Engagement rate 
• Reach 
• Follower growth 
• Site traffic
• Conversion rates
• Audience alignment rate 

For attribution purposes, using tracking methods such as UTMs is important to measure any traffic that might be driven from organic social efforts. 

Organic social media tools

Here are a few common organic social media tools that marketers can invest in to optimize their organic social efforts and performance: 

• Content planning and scheduling tools: Streamlines the process of creating, organizing, and automating the distribution of social media posts across various platforms. 
• Content creation and design tools: Enables users to produce visually engaging and professional-quality graphics, images, videos, and other multimedia assets. 
• Social listening and monitoring tools: Track and analyze online conversations and mentions, allowing businesses to gain insights into audience sentiment, industry trends, and brand perception across social media platforms 

Paid social 

Use paid social to strengthen your social media presence. You can pay to display advertisements (PPC) or sponsored messages to target specific audiences. Paid social lets you segment audiences based on microtargeting and reach people beyond your followers and their friends.  

Paid social offers a range of benefits that make it an exciting investment for marketers such as: 

• Reinforcing messages that you’ve shared organically 
• Micro targeting based on self-identified interests, locations, and demographic information 
• Remarketing – promoting relevant content to people who have already visited your website 
• Quick results and ROI 
• Developing and promoting a LinkedIn influencer marketing strategy 

Paid social media compared to organic, can offer quick ROI and results. However, it is a more expensive investment due to advertising costs. The best and most cost-efficient approach depends on your business goals, target audience, industry, and available resources.  

Benchmarking and measuring paid social 

The metrics are the same as organic social media, but just like with paid search you expect a faster ROI. With microtargeting, you can reach prospects with higher intent to purchase and can expect to close deals faster.  

Paid social media tools

Tools used to invest in organic social media will be the same as tools used to invest in paid social media. The difference will be the cost of advertising spend. However, there are specific platforms that offer avenues for promoting your content to a targeted audience on social media. 

Intent data 

While not a channel, intent data is one of marketer’s biggest tools. Intent data can be used to optimize the performance of each of these channels covered. In fact, 95% of marketers use more than one source of intent data in their marketing efforts, and 93% report using intent across multiple channels. Intent data reinforces your existing marketing strategy to make every effort more effective. Connect with prospective clients who are already “in-market” for your solution and personalize your messaging to speak directly to individuals and specific ICPs.  

Intent data reinforces existing marketing channels by giving marketers a clearer picture of where prospects are in the customer journey. Used correctly, intent signals will help you curate messaging to target audiences and move them from awareness to loyalty. In fact, Foundry found that campaigns using intent-based targeting were 2.5x more efficient than campaigns using standard targeting dimensions. Each of the channels covered above can uniquely benefit from intent data integration:  

• Organic social: Engage with prospects in a meaningful way. Build brand awareness. 
• Paid search and paid social: Target custom ad audiences with solutions they’re already searching for and put yourself into their consideration.   
• Organic traffic: Guide content strategy to build strong brand equity, guide user behavior, and help customers through the decision stage.  
• Email: Segment Audiences and offer personalized messaging and solutions to move them through the customer journey. 

Intent data tools

There are many intent data tools on the market to help marketers optimize their marketing channels. Here are a few crucial factors to keep in mind when evaluating data providers: 

• Data quality and accuracy 
• Data coverage and depth 
• Integration options 
• Data privacy and compliance (GDPR, CCPA) 

Bonus free tool:  

IntentBot is your real-time intent search engine. Enter a domain and a topic, then hit “see results” to see who’s showing intent towards you, your competitors, or companies you’re just curious about. The best part? It’s ungated and free, so you can try intent and find buyers on your own terms. 

Try IntentBot now 

The ultimate checklist for evaluating tools/vendors within various marketing channels

Your budget to spend, your choice of where to invest. You have the power as a buyer, use it to your advantage. 

Don’t be afraid to ask hard-hitting questions when evaluating tools or vendors within marketing channels. Because most likely, to get budget approved for any new tool or vendor, you’ll need to convince senior management of the value of the investment. 

To help you do so, we’ve included a checklist that covers essential questions and considerations you should be asking when selecting tools and vendors within different channels. 

Ever find yourself trying to convince people that B2B marketing is fun? Welcome to the club. But can we blame them when boring is the stereotype? People notoriously pin B2B marketing as bland infographics and eBooks. However, that doesn’t have to be the case, and shouldn’t be – especially for B2B social media.

As someone who works in B2B marketing and knows the truth… I’m here to break the stereotype that B2B social media is always boring – and in the process give you 5 tips on how to have fun with B2B social media.

1. Involve your employees

Social media is a place for people to interact with each other, so why should your company’s approach be any different? After all, your employees are your biggest advocates. Foundry found that IT decision-makers throughout the technology purchase process. Additionally, according to Inc.com research, employee advocacy results in a and 25% more leads. Before diving into what is on social media… I’ll dive into what it’s not. 

Before diving into what  is on social media… I’ll dive into what it’s not.

What employee advocacy is *NOT*

• Writing canned posts and asking employees to copy, paste, and share
• Asking employees to share company page posts with no context

A huge misconception when it comes to employee advocacy is to simply throw content at your employees and ask them to repost. The whole point of successful employee advocacy is to create a community where your employees feel empowered to share their ideas and thoughts, about – really anything.

What are some ways to create real employee advocacy?

Experiment with software

Various software programs help involve your employees on social media and allow for a cohesive strategy. Just to name a few:

•  – Uncover the best ways to connect with prospecting leads through your company’s combined network.
•  –  A tool to empower your team to share and create important marketing, recruiting, and sales content on social.  
•  – Access stats and analytics for your personal brand on LinkedIn. (I have used the Shield free trial myself and it’s an awesome way to understand the assets your brand can be to your company and yourself.)

Other ways to leverage software include using UTM codes for attribution credit. Having employees post links with UTM tracking allows them to see exactly who is engaging with their specific content. Or try out a self-attribution form field – for example, “Where did you hear about us?”, the ideal answer… “your employee on LinkedIn”. 

Make it a competition

Make social media a game! Select your winning metrics, whether that be impressions, engagements, or comments. The winner gets bragging rights – or you can offer up a gift card to heighten the stakes.

Make a Slack channel

Create a Slack channel for your team to collaborate. Employees can use Slack channels to give tips on what’s working or what’s not, encourage engagement, or even just lift each other up!

Encourage personal development

Encourage employees to not post just for the sake of your company, but also themselves. Posting on LinkedIn and social media is great for career development and positioning yourself as a thought leader in the B2B community. Whether your employees are posting on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Reddit, having them advocate for you is one of the best ways to have a successful B2B social strategy. And remember, it’s not just about posting – it’s about commenting, engaging, and truly building a community. 

2. Speak to your branding

Brand is important in B2B marketing, but often overlooked.
A strong brand can help you:

• Outshine your competition
• Build trust with potential buyers and current customers
• Renew and upsell deals
• Give decision-makers the confidence to advocate for you

Social media is one of the best channels to emphasize your brand voice, so have fun with it! Try out these branding tactics: 

Developing a brand style

Does your brand stick to the more formal serious voice, or lean toward creative and loud? Either way, it’s important to develop a consistent brand style across your social media channels. Developing a brand style unique to your company allows you to stand out against your competition. 

Be consistent with your hashtag use, and tone of voice. Another cool way I’ve seen brands distinguish themselves on LinkedIn is with imagery such as cover photos and profile picture backgrounds. For example, here at Foundry, we use LinkedIn banners.

Celebrate your employees

Employee spotlights are great ways to promote your brand. Take to social to showcase your employee’s hard work, hobbies, and appreciation for everything they do. Your employees are the backbone of your business, making them an essential part of your brand.

Showcase company culture

Company culture is huge in B2B brands. Post about your company outings, team dinners, parties, or even just being in the office together. People love seeing what fun things companies do to foster a positive work environment. A positive company culture = more trust in your brand.

Create excitement around new products and launches

You just worked so hard on a new product or launch. Now for the fun part, get people excited about it on social media! Your customers want to celebrate new features that they can leverage.

Brand gives you credibility, and builds trust with your prospects and current customers. What better way to showcase that than where they interact the most?

3. Collaborate

Get involved with other companies in your industry! Doing so is a great way to create buzz and boost your social media presence. Whether you are promoting a webinar together, a new integration, or a blog swap – make sure to tag the other company and interact with their content as well. Cross-promoting on social media allows you to tap into your partner’s audience, and for them to benefit from exposure to your audience as well.

4. Engage with your audience

Engaging with your audience on social channels is one of the best ways to spice things up. Encourage individuals to leave comments on your posts, respond to mentions, and even get involved with community discussions. LinkedIn polls are another great way to keep your audience interested and to learn more about their opinions/needs in the process. Pay attention to what posts your audience engages with, this will allow you to have a better idea moving forward on what content delivers value and is interesting.

5. Leverage video

Video is one of the most engaging things to post on social media. If you aren’t leveraging B2B video in your social strategy, you should consider the benefits: 

• Allows B2B companies to be more creative
• Relates to the personable side of buyers
• Captures interest and attention 

And how could this article be complete without a quick intent data plug? 

Interactions on social media = intent data. Build your brand on social media, keep it interesting, and pay attention to who interacts with your content. Oftentimes, social media engagements are great indicators of potential buyer interest. Use this information to better understand what your account’s needs and challenges are, and how you can reach them.

Conclusion

After reading – I hope you can better make your case that B2B marketing can be fun, and implement a few of these tips into your own social media strategy. Social media is a fantastic asset to your marketing strategy while allowing you to be creative and bold in the process.

Want to see Foundry’s B2B social media strategy in action? .