In the modern B2B lifecycle, it takes a vast array of different touches to win a deal. These touches can vary depending on where you are in the buying cycle, but the rule is usually the same: More touches, means a better chance at closing the deal.
This becomes more apparent when, according to Harvard Business Review, the number of people in the purchase of a B2B solution has grown from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today — and these stakeholders come from a lengthening roster of roles, functions, and geographies.
But what do these marketing and sales touches look like? You can break the world of touches down into 2 top buckets: the major actions that involve human-to-human interaction, such as meetings, demos, events and webinars; and the minor touches, which are those activities that lead people to major touches. One of the more prevalent forms of minor touches is digital advertising.
According to Forrester, today’s business buyers are increasingly self-directed:
- 60% prefer not to interact with a sales rep as the primary source of information
- 68% prefer to research on their own online
- 62% say they can now develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list based solely on digital content.
- To make matters worse, the same Forrester report mentions that 62% of technology companies do not map their buyers’ journey.
So when it comes to the increasingly complex B2B buyer’s journey, much of the process takes place online, before a sales rep is even involved.
How Ads Can Make or Break a Deal
In the digital age, advertising is everywhere. While some of it may be very annoying, when done the right way, a well-placed ad can drive new people to your brand, nurture existing prospects and even expand into existing accounts. It may even help re-engage churned customers.
Good advertising can make or break a deal, helping to engage the right buyer at the right time with the right message to drive that next major action. This is because digital advertising isn’t just a top-of-the-funnel approach to drive new leads; it is an important way to ensure the entire buying committee is engaged with your organization as you progress through the funnel, even accelerating stalled deals. And for any company that has multiple product lines, advertising can help start a conversation for more cross-sell opportunities. This means advertising can truly help sales through the entire opportunity lifecycle.
Get Deeper Engagement With Targeted Ads
RollWorks enables companies to do just that by identifying the right accounts to go after, engaging those accounts throughout the funnel and, of course, measuring the impact. What often feels most important to your sales team? Making sure your marketing team is running campaigns in parallel with your efforts to help close deals faster.
RollWorks can help a company place personalized ads and then track which accounts engage with your campaigns, as well as increase the effectiveness of retargeting using machine learning. And more importantly, with RollWorks you can identify not just the company but also the individual person who engaged with your ad. Beyond that, Rollworks enables you to move past campaign-focused metrics so you can begin to measure the impact these campaigns have on opportunity and revenue.
Let’s run through an example. Say you had a great first meeting with one person at Sprocket Corp, and in the next meeting you will engage with the decision-maker and other three other influencers. Working with your marketing team, you can strategically advertise middle-of-the-funnel content to these new personas to raise awareness and subconsciously prep them for a positive next meeting.
After you crush that meeting and several more, you are in the final stages of the deal. Again, strategic advertising can place bottom-of-the-funnel content — such as an ROI calculator or customer testimonials — in front of the right member of the buying committee, ultimately helping to influence their decision-making process.
These touches may not win the deal alone, but they help keep the conversation moving in the right direction by aligning marketing and sales efforts.
The integration between RollWorks and Clari will help your revenue operations team in a variety of ways.
1. Identify Prospect Fit. The Clari CRM Score is a great way to measure the health of any opportunity. With the addition of Fit Scores from RollWorks, you can ensure that the accounts you are targeting fit your ICP. The better the fit, the better chance you have not only to win the deal, but have long term customer success
2. See ads engagement. Our new integration brings account level advertising engagement from RollWorks alongside myriad sales activity and customer engagement data (email, meetings, files sent, etc…). This gives your entire revenue operations team access to deeper insights on the engagement that the prospect is having with your advertising and content during their buyers journey. Armed with this data, they can be more prepared for every interaction, knowing what advertisements drove more engagement, or time their outreach based on activity.
We are very excited that this partnership will enable revenue teams to have greater visibility into the ways that accounts are engaging during the sales process. Come visit Clari and RollWorks at the President's Club Bash on November 19th in San Francisco to chat with us further.