Digital marketing is difficult. And with ever-more sophisticated MarTech stacks, multitudes of new data sources and challenging management expectations, it’s getting more complex every year. The good news is there’s plenty of best-practices learning out there you can leverage to get ahead. TechTarget works with 1000’s of customers every year to help drive marketing ROI improvements using advanced integrated digital campaign activity. With every program run, we learn more about the best practices that can turn good technology marketing organizations into great ones. The SAS team in APAC is a case in point.
With SAS, we identified five key digital marketing steps all B2B marketing teams can take to further accelerate pipeline and boost sales. Highly-focused SAS marketers in Asia Pacific are leveraging this exact approach in partnership with us to drive 13:1 overall ROI from their digital investments, including 7:1 outcomes in net-new pipeline opportunities.
#1 – Start with quality data
We all want quality leads. And getting there absolutely requires starting with quality data. TechTarget has built its huge B2B enterprise tech lead generation business with data at its core. By capturing millions of data points on all the accounts and individuals in the TechTarget network, we know exactly what our users are researching and planning to invest in. This gives our clients a leg up right at the start.
This is exclusive first-party data. It forms the lifeblood of TechTarget’s next-generation lead delivery and nurturing system. It’s why our leads are recognized by clients as the highest quality in the industry. Before any customer receives a TechTarget lead, this “active prospect” has not only downloaded content from the client, but has already been extremely active on the topics relevant to their offerings. It’s this intersection of focused topical interest, very recent activity and specific vendor engagement that makes TechTarget leads unique. It’s exactly what makes our leads out-perform questionably-sourced alternatives.
SAS recognized that the leads they received from TechTarget very closely align with their ideal customer profile. This has been critical to their APAC team’s ability to drive superb outcomes from their campaigns. In fact, after incorporation into SAS marketing workflow, a remarkable one-in-three (33%) engaged with a SAS marketing nurturing activity – converting in the mid-part of their funnel. You can find out more about how TechTarget’s data-driven approach to lead generation works in this foundational white paper.
#2 – Align content to targeted personas
The savviest digital marketers spend the time necessary to create, map and organize content that’s specifically tailored to their target buyer personas and journeys. To help with this, our most successful customers leverage TechTarget client consulting and success professionals to access industry-proven asset recommendations and “content-maps”. Clients work with us to identify content gaps and better address the needs of personas journeys they may be missing or misunderstanding.
In APAC, SAS worked closely with TechTarget to organize content around core buying stages and create additional content in critical areas that were under provisioned. By adopting TechTarget’s content mapping recommendations, SAS saw up to 20% initial new demand engagement rates across all content types. This is demand they were simply unable to capture before partnering more strategically with TechTarget.
#3 – Run consistent, continuously improvable programs
Most buyers don’t follow a regular schedule – they’re in market when they want to be. And yet, many marketing departments still go dark for significant periods, choosing to let their processes take them out of play while the market continues without them. To a certain extent, the concept of on again/off again “campaigns” has become a quaint hold-over that’s holding many companies back. Today’s reality of on-demand everything dictates that marketers do everything they can to be “always on”. Successful customers like SAS understand that being always-on gives you your best chance of successfully influencing the customer throughout their ever-lengthening buyer’s journey — now typically 9-12 months or more for enterprise technology purchases.
SAS has studied their customers and now carefully invests in an always-on integrated demand and branding approach that marries demand capture and brand consideration efforts across their Asia-Pacific market space. They do this to ensure they can consistently influence active accounts and avoid losing access to deals in their markets. Their consistent presence across targeted, relevant properties within the TechTarget network helps SAS reinforce their position with known customers and efficiently engage and convert new prospects. SAS has recently been able to deliver 13:1 overall ROI and convert 74% of their leads. Critically, they have been able to generate $7 of net new pipeline opportunities for every $1 spent via their TechTarget engagement.
#4 – Seek out partners with whom you can scale globally
Today’s technology economy is global. To take advantage of that, the best marketing organizations are naturally building the capabilities necessary to plan and execute their marketing programs globally. With offices in 8 markets worldwide, TechTarget can easily help you scale your marketing capabilities so that you can make faster progress in the countries critical to your growth objectives.
SAS runs several programs in Asia-Pacific across multiple languages (English, Chinese and Japanese). They chose to partner with TechTarget because with us they could better target SAS prospects and buyers in these geographies while being flexibility supported by a single team for all countries.
“Our TechTarget partnership is global, and they’ve been working with our team in Asia Pacific for several years. It’s a real partnership, which I don’t say lightly, where both sides are heavily invested in the outcome and work together to make it happen.” Marnie Davey, Regional Digital Marketing Manager, Asia-Pacific, SAS.
#5 – Stay (tightly) aligned with Sales
Aligning sales and marketing comes down to two very important factors – better transparency and shared data inputs. Transparency in programs as they run, tracking that requirements are continuously monitored and that issues are solved, ensures that both constituencies stay committed and aligned to overall success. Certainly this helps streamline internal processes. Most importantly, we find, it helps accelerate pipeline impact. Furthermore, results from many clients already show that the combination of shared data and jointly understood insights not only helps marketing deliver better, it also aids sales in its follow-up as demand is captured into the pipeline.
At SAS, the APAC marketing team has found that meeting regularly with sales keep them apprised of programs before they launch and while they run has been key to achieving better outcomes. They share pre-pipeline and pipeline information to make sure they maximize successful lead passing and conversion going forward. Likewise, they share input that TechTarget makes available to them to help keep all the players in the process better informed on necessary next steps at all times.
SAS describes it like this:
“Sales uses all the cumulative activity marketing shares to shape the conversation far more effectively and turn it into an opportunity to progress to the next stage. We think it’s about sales enablement and making sure sales is equipped with the right information to engage more effectively.”
No matter where you are in your own journey, these 5 principles will help
With hundreds of programs in-market every day, we at TechTarget are constantly learning in partnership with our clients. While the pressures coming at marketers today from every angle can seem overwhelming, time and time again, we see the best companies maintaining a strong focus on a set of core fundamentals. This foundation allows them to achieve continuous improvement in both their program outcomes and their efforts to evolve their marketing capabilities over time.
To get a complete look into how SAS put these 5 principles to work within their TechTarget partnership, make some time to view this webcast. In it, SAS Asia-Pacific’s Marnie Davey and Gregory Wood provide a comprehensive walk-through of how they use data solutions and more from TechTarget to drive successful campaign outcomes and influence sales pipeline including how they measure overall success of their digital investments along the entire customer journey.
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