Marketing Analytics

Buyer personas have been a staple of B2B marketing for a number of years. But many B2B marketers lack a formal process for developing personas, and they are still relying on hunches about their target customers rather than data.

As a result, a vast majority (83%) of B2B marketers say that their buyer personas are only "somewhat" effective, according to a study from the ITSMA. While 80% of respondents expected to see higher conversion rates with buyer personas, only 39% saw their conversion rates increase.

With 70% of the buyer's journey being directed by the customer, progressive B2B marketers are using data to help drive prospects through the funnel more efficiently once they do engage. This was just one of the many topics discussed in a recent webinar hosted by Marketo and Demand Gen Report.

"[Traditionally], marketing was only responsible for making prospects aware of their brand," said Mike Tomita, Senior Marketing Manager at Marketo, during the presentation. "Now, marketing has the responsibility to direct that customer's journey and build that relationship up to a point where the prospect can be handed off to sales."

Leadspace has partnered with Madison Logic Data, a move intended to provide Leadspace customers with access to Madison Logic Data’s database of key indicators of B2B buying intent.

The partnership is positioned to provide Leadspace customers with visibility into the topics that target companies and individuals are researching and help them score and prioritize leads.

Altocloud launched its predictive communications platform designed to enhance customer sales and engagement with machine learning and real-time communications. The SaaS solution positions users to identify online visitors and offer personalized chat, voice, video and content.

The company also announced it received $2 million in seed funding. The funding, led by Delta Partners, Digicel Group and ACT Venture Capital, brings the company's total funding to $3 million.

While it has been a successful tool for top-of-funnel demand generation, predictive marketing is becoming more widely used by B2B marketers to improve engagement at all stages of the buying cycle. Companies such as Salesforce have launched new predictive marketing capabilities within their offerings, aiming to enhance the customer experience throughout the entire customer journey by embedding predictive capabilities within the marketing cloud.

Industry experts noted that the expansion of predictive beyond lead scoring and early-stage demand generation is a growing trend.

"Leaders, especially in marketing, need to be able to extract insights and make predictions based on existing and external data," said Meagan Eisenberg, CMO of MongoDB and former VP of Customer Acquisition and Marketing at DocuSign, in Demand Gen Report's 2015 Marketing Automation Outlook Guide. "Marketers also need to create efficiencies in the follow up of leads using predictive analytics and modeling to create a better scoring methodology to focus on opportunities most likely to turn into customers."