4 ways data analytics can kick your annual B2B marketing planning into shape

Steps for 2021 success
4 ways data analytics
can kick your annual
planning into shape

With 2021 planning already underway
for many B2B sales and marketing
teams, here are four ways that
analytics can help you target the right
accounts, set the right targets, and
build the right plan for next year.

© The Marketing Practice 2020
1
3
Get your
house in
order
Existing clients don’t always get the attention given to
prospects when it comes to segmentation and targeting.
But putting resources behind this activity can really pay
off.
The probability of selling
to an existing customer is
60to
whereas new prospects
are only around
5to
70% 20%*
*Marketing Metrics by Paul Farris, Neil Bendle, Phillip Pfeifer, David Reibstein

1
4
Get your
house in
order
Start by building a single view of the customer using a
combination of 1st and 3rd party data sources, including
firmographics, billing data, intent data, and incident data.
Here’s an example of one we pulled together for a
financial software company.

Set realistic migration and
retention targets, aligned
to the accounts showing
high propensity/intent
1
5
Get your
house in
order
By analyzing the trends highlighted in the data,
we were able to:

Segment each product line to show:
• Accounts at risk of leaving
• Accounts with a high
propensity/intent to migrate
to a bigger product
1
6
Get your
house in
order
we were able to:

Calculate the potential
lifetime value of customers
1
7
Get your
house in
order
we were able to:

Break down opportunities per sector
to investigate if there was
a compelling reason to target
specific verticals differently
1
8
Get your
house in
order
we were able to:

1
9
Get your
house in
order
Using this information, customer marketing
plans were then built out for the year.
Value
Prospect
Signup
New customer
Loyal customer
Red alert
Former customer
Re-prospect
Campaign aims
Attract Convert Growth Maintain Defend Re-activate Re-prospect
Net-new acquisitions Cross-sell/upsell Retention

2
10
Show your
segmentation
model who’s
boss
Many B2B firms will automatically segment their
market by industry sector.
Why?
Companies within those sector groupings will vary
wildly in their attributes, behavior, and challenges,
so it doesn’t necessarily make sense to treat them
all the same.
We worked with a cloud services
provider to help them segment and
target more intelligently.

2
11
Show your
segmentation
model who’s
boss
First, we built a propensity model to help them
prioritize market sectors and adapt their plans based
on where they could see the most opportunity.
ITspend
Overall propensity score
6.75 7.25 7.75 8.25 8.75
£30m
£25m
£20m
£15m
£10m
£5m
average
average

2
12
Show your
segmentation
model who’s
boss
We then segmented the account universe into seven
clusters, based on the technologies they consumed
and their propensity to acquire certain solutions.
Cloud Computing
Network Services
Network Infrastructure
Security
Server Computing
Storage
Software
Infrastructure
App Development
and Deployment
Cloud Services
Enterprise
Applications
Infrastructure-led
Outsourcing
Other

2
13
Show your
segmentation
model who’s
boss
This provided better targeting across
our client’s campaigns.
They could sub-segment verticals,
allowing them to target accounts
based on both their industry’s
business challenges and the way
they consumed technology.
+

3
14
Make a
case for
more
budget
The most compelling way to argue for
more marketing budget is to prove the
value of previous years’ spend.
But often, the way leads and
opportunities are recorded in CRMs
doesn’t give credit where credit’s due.

3
15
Make a
case for
more
budget
One of our clients had noticed that
while their sales colleagues were using
marketing as a route into accounts,
they weren’t acknowledging that input
when it came to reporting.

3
16
Make a
case for
more
budget
We interrogated the data in the CRM to understand
the true value of marketing’s contribution.
Leading Healthcare Provider
Marketing
opportunity added 20 days
later and closed-won on
11/01/2018 for $468k
opportunity generated on
07/26/2016 and closed
as ‘no opportunity’
Sales

3
17
Make a
case for
more
budget
We interrogated the data in the CRM to understand
the true value of marketing’s contribution.
International Retail Group
Marketing
opportunities added over the
next 458 days, of which two
have closed won for $607k
generated opportunity
on 05/05/2017 and
won for $528k
Four further

3
18
Make a
case for
more
budget
Based on the findings of our analysis,
the marketing team put a more robust
methodology in place in order to ensure
recognition of their input, and better
qualify their pipeline contribution so as
to ensure healthy budget renewal for
the upcoming financial year.

3
19
Make a
case for
more
budget
Direct Lifetime Subsequent
Often, a certain percentage of marketing opportunities will be closed and
reopened, meaning that Marketing does not achieve proper attribution.
In this instance, we’ve seen this account for 25% of the total Direct
volume.
Additional pipeline
which is attributable to
Marketing, but often
goes overlooked.
Opportunityvalue ?
2016
2017
2018

4
20
Build
yourself
a bigger
pond to
fish in
You know the feeling.
You’ve got a great proposition,
your messaging kicks ass,
your demand generation team
are fired up and ready to go…
but you’re running out of prospects.

4
21
Build
yourself
a bigger
pond to
fish in
Traditionally, they selected their
target account universe from the
FTSE350, but this group wasn’t
generating enough pipeline.
What’s more, there was no
account-level insight available
to inform marketing decisions.
A client of ours found themselves
in exactly that situation and
wanted to check that they really
had exhausted all avenues.

4
22
Build
yourself
a bigger
pond to
fish in
We built a bespoke data universe, selecting accounts
that fell into the client’s targeting criteria and removing
non-operational and duplicate accounts.
Analytics
Total universe – 41,000

4
23
Build
yourself
a bigger
pond to
fish in
The refined data was then enriched with additional
account-level firmographics and scored against an
‘ideal customer profile’.
Analytics
Refined universe – 4,500
Defining a predictive profile
Profiling
• Current
customer
profile
• Triblio profile
Firmographics
• Industry
• Revenue
• YoY growth
• Profit
• Company age

4
24
Build
yourself
a bigger
pond to
fish in
Combined with the use of an intent data platform, the right
accounts at the right time were selected to support demand
generation efforts.
Analytics
Refined universe – 4,500
Defining a predictive profile
Enriched universe
Firmographic
intent
Intent
Profile
Profiling
• Current
customer
profile
• Triblio profile
Firmographics
• Industry
• Revenue
• YoY growth
• Profit
• Company age
176 52 31
1,360 282 123
2,079 315 100
1
2
3
⍺βγ

4
25
Build
yourself
a bigger
pond to
fish in
The result?
in YoY Sales Accepted
Lead rate
active
pipeline
3x uplift
$2.5m
total

Get started
So there you have it, four data-based ideas to
make your 2021 planning more focused and cost-
effective – as well as make your marketing peers
green with envy.
For help getting started, get in touch.
Oxford
Units 1-2, Old Estate Yard,
East Hendred, Oxfordshire OX12 8JY
+44 (0) 1235 833 233
info@themarketingpractice.com
Munich
Liebherrstraße 18,
80538 München
+49 (89) 26209832
munich@themarketingpractice.com
Seattle
2231 1st Avenue,
Seattle, 98121
+1 (206) 792 5544
infoUS@themarketingpractice.com
themarketingpractice.com

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