There’s an implied myth that governs B2B marketers, one so big it’s right there in the title. The myth is that one business (advertiser) is able to identify and reach an individual decision maker (buyer) when they run a B2B digital campaign. Every agency and advertiser demand this outcome (of course) and most audience providers believe they are selling just that. Too bad human behavior and physics aren’t cooperating.
The problem starts with the data. Unfortunately, B2B marketers don’t actually know much about their target audiences beyond a handful of basic data points – the name of the business, a generic industry code, approximate revenue and an estimate of the company’s size. That information is nowhere near enough data to pinpoint a decision-maker inside a larger, complex organization and serve them just the right ad, at just the right moment in the buyer’s journey.
Given these obstacles, B2B marketers are embracing mobile, according to a recent eMarketer survey. But it would be a mistake for B2B marketers to think of mobile as a means of circumventing other channels where the data is sparse. The real value of mobile isn’t as a data-rich channel, it’s the fact that mobile can shed light on all other channels because it answers the most important question – “Who is my customer?”
Human behavior isn’t cooperating
As consumers, we behave in predictable patterns – for example, we search auto reviews, visit a couple of carmaker websites, followed by selecting a local dealer and the automotive marketer has identified you as in the market for a new car. When the marketer layers in additional data, they can segment that audience and draw inferences about budget, type of car and where you fall in the customer funnel. Suddenly, the right messages are informed enough to hit the right person at the right moment – and it all happens in real time.
Unfortunately, business people aren’t so accommodating. Proactive lead generation is tough. Your target prospect looking at new widgets is probably a mid-level employee tasked with researching options and then passing that information along to their boss, or worse, a committee. Even if you wanted to reach that mid-level employee, they are probably tucked safely behind the firewall – anonymous among the cloud of a hundred or more other employees.
If you manage to get a cookie dropped on the browser of the right user, it happens so infrequently there’s no scale, which means when you need it most, there simply aren’t enough widget people to create a useful data segment, much less move the needle to create leads.
Meanwhile, the potential widget customers you do know continue to behave in idiosyncratic ways. One buyer might be in the market this quarter, while another potential buyer is actually just looking for a price quote they can plug into the preliminary five-year budget plan. Then a third target goes dark, at the same time as the company’s IT manager sends out an email reminding everyone to delete the last remaining cookie on the network. Timing is everything in B2B lead generation, but perfect timing is more luck than design.
Mobile is your B2B ID
When was the last time you lent someone your phone? For most people, the idea of handing over their smartphone to another person – even a family member – feels like an unthinkable violation of our personal space. This isn’t true of computers, which can be configured for multiple users. Likewise, our networks are designed to run multiple machines off the same IP address. Smart Phones are special because they can be correlated to a single person and location with a much higher degree of certainty. That’s why the smartphone may be the key to understanding digital B2B marketing.
Consider the widget marketer’s dilemma again. Only this time, instead of focusing on the cookie that was set during the search, ask yourself what would happen if you keyed off of the device IDs associated with that IP address? In that scenario, it’s not hard to find the buyer inside the target organization. The device ID that travels from the office to the nicest zip code in town is more likely to be the CEO than the mid-level employee tasked with research. But the device ID of the employee that showed up to the same trade show last year as you did – is most likely to be the person responsible for widgets within their company.
If you systematically served impressions to smartphones at that trade show and then could cross-reference it to the target company location – you have a qualified lead. Cross-reference it with the email list you bought from the event’s organizer, or use an IP to address lead generation tool, and you can now reach your prospects by name and title. Repeat this same process with the 3000 mobile devices that were served ads at the trade show and you have a mailing list.
Attribution understood
Attribution is an incredibly difficult challenge for B2B marketers because organizations are complex and unique. Marketing dollars spent on a whitepaper may have enormous ROI – but they happen too infrequently. Meanwhile, the open rates on your email campaigns seem consistently strong, but the face-to-face leads your sales team generates as a result are incredibly weak. We are able to collect data about a single tactic or event quite easily – we just struggle to stitch those results into a useful answer.
The reason we struggle is that there is no common key able to link these events across channels, planned spend and most importantly acts of engagement.
B2B marketers need to know what they’re doing is working, how their tactics connect and more importantly, who they connect with. Using mobile to connect the dots is the only way to illuminate the buyer’s journey and produce a level of attribution that allows you to hold your marketing budget accountable.
