Marketing teams are often preoccupied with obtaining more realistic prediction of a lead’s likelihood of converting into customers. Rightfully so – this is essential for running targeted campaigns that have high conversion rates. The question is what is the best way of doing this?
Traditional marketing approaches are largely based on identifying “interest” or “intent” on the part of a potential client. However, this results in both an incomplete picture of a customer’s actual needs and current status, generating a large yet poor quality leads.
What’s missing is the “need” element, which may not be provided by the potential customer but can be abstracted from data sets relating to the business that are available online. If this data is properly analyzed in real time, we can formulate a “need” element that qualifies a lead as “ready to buy”.
Time wasted = money lost twice: not only does your team waste resources on a weak lead that doesn’t pan out, but in the meantime your competition may have used more accurate dynamic data and have identified businesses that have an actual need.
Simply put, in today’s heavily digitized world, you can’t rely on an incomplete outdated partial data. To win you should aim to get to potential customers before competition, identifying such businesses that have a “need” for your services before they start shopping around.
That is why its necessary to use a more comprehensive approach collecting and analyzing data from multiple diversified sources that in turn are analyzed to create real-time insights that are used to execute effective targeted “need” based campaigns.
“Interest” and “Intent” Aren’t Good Enough
Marketing and sales teams track the behavior of potential leads on their websites to gain an indication of their level of interest, with most companies focusing on two key parameters:
- Interest is most commonly observed through basic interactions such as browsing the website, returning visits, viewing multiple pages, clicking through, etc.
- Intent is usually associated with visits to a pricing or contact page, downloading content, or spending long periods of time reading blogs or product information.
Once a potential client’s “buying intent” has been determined, the lead is handed over to the SDR or sales team; however, in many cases the sales teams discover that the so-called “intent” does not necessarily mean the potential client is seriously ready to engage.
Even more frustrating sometimes they discover that they are too late in the game and that the potential customer has already closed with a competitor and was “browsing” to gain negotiating power.
This is often due to the fact that “intent” and “interest” data provides only a one-dimensional layer of information (such as which actions the lead performed while visiting your website) without knowing if there is a real-time or near future “need” for your service.
Treating all visitors solely based on their online activity is like trying to sell diapers to all women within the ages of 25-35, its based on assumptions without having any relatable data that is current and indicative of an actual need.
Current, Data based Needs Methodology Adds the all crucial timing Dimension
Needs-based targeting focuses on identifying potential clients’ actual needs and pain points, not only their supposed level of interest or intent.
Understanding the needs of a potential client provides a more complete profile and – much more importantly – gives your team a very clear reason for why they are contacting them at this particular moment in time.
Identifying a need and being able to offer the right service or product to address that need, at the exact time in which a client requires it, significantly increases conversions.
Having to manage all aspects of the business on their own, and having little time to spare, SMBs and business owners are much more likely to appreciate an unsolicited call if you offer a product or service that answers their actual needs. You’ve essentially providing an additional service by saving them the time and money of conducting costly and time-consuming independent market research before making a buying decision.
The end result is optimization of marketing and sales resources and a significantly higher conversion rate, achieved by engaging with businesses who truly need your company’s services, as opposed to those who have merely shown an interest in them.
Continuous Intelligence Provides a High-Resolution Profile identifying a need in real-time
Having a multi-dimensional view of the business you are targeting requires continuously collecting, analyzing and comparing data sets from multiple sources to arrive at a current and granular profile of a business and its current needs.
By Identifying indicative changes and lifecycle events in small and mid-size businesses – teams can act upon real-time triggers that are indicative “need alerts”.
Tarci CI platform identifies industry specific “need triggers” tailored to identify a need for each of our customers services, that provide an alert for your team to act on just before the potential client is likely to enter a buying window.
Using need triggers to identify an opportunity before it starts “shopping around” gives teams a meaningful competitive advantage
For example, detecting in real-time the announcement of a new branch, location or clinic “coming soon” indicates an expansion that is indicative of a need for related services such as financing, insurance and communication
Much the same, the addition of global shipping by an online retailer, indicates a need for FX services, global shipping and insurance coverage.
The Tarci holistic approach is more than simply flagging a company domain who happens to be searching for a provider. Our comprehensive and continuous approach to collecting and analyzing data allows our customers to decide not only which information is indicative of a real-time need for their sales and marketing team, but also when that information is insightful in order to strike while the iron is hot.
The Tarci Advantage in Action | |
The Client | A payments company that offers multi-currency and international payments services for eCommerce. |
The Goal | The client seeks to increase its customer LTV by focusing on eCommerce enterprises that are expanding into international sales and establishing a starting point for mutual growth as they continue to expand globally. |
The Strategy | Working together, we defined the following criteria to compile actionable, real-time data for our client’s targeted, needs-based marketing campaign:
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The Result | Based on these predefined tags and triggers, our customer receives a weekly list of new eCommerce enterprises that meet their selected criteria. Based on early indication of the need for an international payments solution, clients have the data they need to reach out on an “identified need” basis. |
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