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What do Successful Marketing Practitioners Have in Common? Lessons Learned from TechTarget APAC Archer Award Winners

Each year TechTarget partners with hundreds of B2B tech companies across APAC to execute their marketing strategies. We recognize our top performing partners with our annual Archer Awards. So, what separates the seven 2021 winners from the rest of the pack? Below we break down a few common elements across these successful regional programs.

Define your target market but don’t overlook all potential buyers

It’s obviously important to begin a campaign with a clear understanding of the exact audience that you want to reach. Many of our clients leverage ABM or named account lists to target and influence those accounts their companies have identified as most critical to business growth. However, it is important to make sure that you are not ignoring real signals that can lead to opportunities from sellable accounts that may not yet be on your list. One of our Archer winners applied this hybrid approach to her ABM program, complementing the target account approach with a broader set of prospect accounts who would be a good fit for their solutions.

Violet Seah and her team at EnterpriseDB took home the award for Best ABM Program in APAC in 2021. She described the key to their success was implementing a ‘three prong strategy’ for ABM, including three lists of target accounts, lookalike accounts and further white space accounts. This allowed EnterpriseDB to penetrate their most important accounts while tapping into TechTarget intent insights to identify other organizations who are in market for their solutions. Follow-up strategies for each type of prospect were tailored to each bucket. Leveraging TechTarget’s Priority Engine, the sales team was able to see valuable insights into each of these defined lists, including the key buying teams and the tech segments that they are researching the most. This is a long-term strategy for EnterpriseDB, measuring pipeline impact around the duration of their average sales cycle.

Take an integrated marketing approach

Another common element in these winning programs is an integrated full funnel strategy that targets tech buyers in all phases of the buying journey. This typically involves multiple tactics – aggregating intent insights, contextual brand placement, content syndication, downstream lead identification – to intercept prospects as they research their upcoming purchases. Dean Quek from VMware, who won the award for APAC Digital Marketer of the Year, described his strategy as “a three-tiered funnel approach that includes contact acquisition, content syndication and sales ready lead generation.”

Dean and his team worked closely with TechTarget to bring this idea to life by leveraging several different media options to hit all three tiers of the funnel. VMware uses Priority Engine™ as its primary means of contact acquisition, then ties this is in with content syndication and down funnel BANT+ leads to round out a complete marketing stack.

Work collaboratively with partners to measure progress and refine where needed

Several of our winners highlighted the fact that they leaned heavily on their TechTarget account management and customer success teams to optimize programs based on their industry and campaign experience. Dipika Dewan, head of the regional demand center at Red Hat which won Digital Team of the Year, pointed to the value in working with partners who approach the market with a common perspective. “The TechTarget team extends the Red Hat culture – valuing commitment, courage and collaboration.” Additionally, the Best Thought Leadership Program winner Intel Asia Pacific & Japan territory, pointed to the importance of tapping into TechTarget’s editorial expertise, audience knowledge, and BrightTALK webinar and virtual events platform to successfully launch the third-generation Xeon processor in APAC. “The TechTarget team and Intel team came together brilliantly, and I am super proud of the results that we delivered,” said Basia Borysewicz, Intel marketing director.

These are just a few examples of successfully engaging prospects across our network. While they share some common elements, at TechTarget we’re proud of the fact that all of our collaborations are bespoke, where we understand a client’s objectives and tailor a program to achieve those specific needs.