Mixing the Right Recipe of Data for Your Go-to-Market Strategy

Data is the fuel that drives today’s marketing and sales engine. Data helps you better understand your prospects, target them with relevant messaging, and convert engagement into revenues.

While the availability and potential uses of data has never been greater, the old saying remains true: “garbage in, garbage out.” The quality of your data matters, as does the type of data you use and how you mix it all together to obtain actionable insights. But when it comes to developing your recipe for data, one ingredient (i.e., data source) isn’t enough — you need multiple ingredients (think peanut butter, jelly, and two slices of bread).

In this post, we'll guide you through the most relevant data sources available today, and how to ensure they work together to deliver a holistic, actionable picture of your buyer’s journey. 

The ingredients: Types of data and their benefits

You don’t have to be a data scientist to know that data can be complex and multifaceted. Good data enables you to separate the signals you need from the noise you don’t, helping drive relevant conversations in a noisy, crowded marketplace. Let’s define different types of data and explore how each type might be blended together in a well-formed go-to-market recipe strategy.

Firmographic data

Demographic data is all about people – their age, gender, profession, income, marital status, etc. Such demographics are typically used to segment people into target audiences. Firmographics are about companies – how many employees, type of industry, annual revenue generated, location, length of sales cycles, and more.

[Learn more: Firmographic data examples]

Technographic data

Technographic data is information about the specific technologies that a given company has adopted. This type of data goes beyond firmographics to help sales professionals understand what technology currently powers a given business.

Technographic data enables sales professionals to identify and scope out gaps in a target account’s tech stack, uncovering opportunities for a vendor’s products or services. 

Intent data

Intent data is information collected about a person or an account’s digital content consumption that can provide insights into their interests and purchasing intent. Generally, it's more dynamic than firmographics and technographics because it provides moment-to-moment insight on customers in real time, making it easier to personalize interactions because you can see precisely where a prospect is situated in their buying journey. 

Cloud product adoption, usage, and spend data (contextual)

Consider rounding out your go-to-market strategy with cloud product adoption, usage, and spend data from Intricately. Our data powers your account-based marketing efforts by helping you identify, tier and score target accounts based on usage and spend potential.

With Intricately, cloud go-to-market teams can optimize their ICP, create the ultimate list of target accounts, and much more.

Developing a data-backed go-to-market strategy

When creating a go-to-market strategy, keep in mind who your potential customers are and what they need. Each step further solidifies the relationship between market demand, customer pain points, and your company's product or service. 

Now that we've covered the main types of data available today, here's how you can begin to leverage them in your account-based marketing program.

Understanding your ideal customer profile (ICP)

All successful ABM efforts begin with an intimate understanding of your ICP. Examine your current customer base: Are they all in the same industry? Located in the same area? Have a certain number of employees?

This is where data comes in.

• Cloud adoption, usage, and spend data. With Intricately, you and your team can uncover who would benefit from your products or services – based on an organization's current adoption, usage, and spend on digital infrastructure.
• Current customer data. Consolidate existing customer data from all channels, including CRM, billing systems and databases. Then, use this data to analyze your current top customers and what they have in common. This is the foundation of your ICP.
• Firmographic data. Firmographics provide deeper insights about the operational details of your ideal customers. With this data, you can find out the number of branches a company has opened or closed in the last year, estimated revenue, and even details about its employees.
• Technographic data. Technographics allows you to go deeper into the weeds of your ideal customer. Curious about what CRM software they're using? Would help to know how much money they're already investing in marketing automation? Technographic data helps you position your solution in a way that resonates with your target customer’s current pain point(s).
• Contextual data. Beyond the basics of knowing which technology a company is using, contextual data allows you to know how it’s using these tools and, more importantly, how much it’s currently spending on its technology stack. This allows you to find hidden gems like “If a company is spending on CDN networks, it’s likely to need an OVP platform.”

Creating your target account list

The more you know about your accounts, the easier it becomes to curate your target account list. 

Examine different "dimensions" of your target accounts, like solutions purchased and annual revenue. To ensure you’re finding a healthy number of target accounts, as well as contact information, implement these three types of data:

• Contact data. This is the most basic type of data available, but don’t overlook it. Ideally, you'll want to acquire direct phone numbers and email addresses to improve your chances of reaching the stakeholders and decision-makers.
• Intent data: Intent data allows you to glean insights about a user’s observed behavior so you can see which accounts are searching for information regarding your solution. Intent data is best used in conjunction with technographic, contextual and behavioral data.
• Contextual data. With Intricately, you can be confident you're targeting the right prospects by examining: spend on a specific product, category, or use case; product type, segment, region, or vertical; and deployment location, type, and more.

Scoring and prioritizing target accounts

• Intent data. Lead scoring based on behavioral data has been gaining traction over the years. Whether it's purchase intent data or buyer intent data (from a sales perspective) – intent signals from a potential B2B buyer help you prioritize the right leads and optimize marketing and sales resources. 
• Contextual data. However, as we all know, this is more than having a list of thousands of companies who might purchase your product. It's about prioritizing the best revenue opportunities. Intricately data allows you to sort your accounts based on spend potential, existing use cases, and cloud infrastructure maturity.

Creating sales and marketing playbooks

Using the right data can help you customize your content and playbooks so you have an easier time reaching and engaging with your target accounts.

When reviewing all your data sources, look for information related to your targets’ specific pain points, behaviors, interests and business priorities as well as which stage they’re at in the buyer’s journey.

• Technographic data. Technographic data enables sales professionals to identify gaps in a target account’s tech stack – uncovering opportunities to introduce products or services. 
• Intent data. Because intent data is behavioral, it's fairly easy to pinpoint interest, and therefore propensity to buy. You can use this information to craft the messaging that acts as the foundation for your content.
• Contextual data. Contextual data allows you to investigate things like how a company is using the technology it deploys – and how much money is being spent.

• Which companies use Amazon Web Services to host their online presence?
• How much are these companies spending, and how has that changed over time?
• Where are Facebook’s data centers located? And who operates them?

Intricately helps sales and marketing teams at cloud companies identify new target accounts, based on usage and spend data.

Schedule a demo with us to align your sales and marketing team with the right target accounts for your next go-to-market launch.