As a marketer, there are lessons to be learned by thinking about your business as a booth in an IRL marketplace. Since the product or service you offer isn’t for everyone (few are), some strategy must be at play as you interact with potential customers who pass your way. Your sales strategy would change on the fly based on the behavior of your prospect. If a shopper passed by carrying an inferior version of the product you sell, you’d talk to them about the differences in the two, and the problems that your product helps to eliminate. If someone lingered at your booth and looked intently at your product, you’d ask some leading questions about their need for your product (or you’d astutely offer them answers to questions your customers frequently ask). So many factors would influence your next moves, from the amount of eye contact you get to the speed at which shoppers were walking by your stand.
Marketers, whether at a bazaar or out in the digital world, find greater success when they shape their marketing strategies using customer data. Rather than looking at eye contact and products being carried underarm, the modern marketer looks at things like resource engagement and purchase intent.
So how can you leverage the data you’ve been collecting to drive better pipeline and increase revenue? The right solution will aggregate, enrich, and operationalize your first-party customer data. Ours is called the Customer Data Platform (CDP), and it’s worth knowing about.
The Rise of First-Party Data
The cookie and third-party data was an unintended crutch. While we as marketers get a little sweaty thinking about it going away, we all as consumers breathe a collective (albeit quiet) sigh of relief. It was an impersonal, overreaching tactic used by ineffective and unscrupulous marketers to sell more. What was originally meant to keep items straight in your online shopping cart was bought and sold and packaged and re-sold to be used to blast marketing campaigns to anyone and everyone who MIGHT have a chance of becoming your customer. We invite you to bid the cookie a fond farewell. We’re not wringing our hands at its demise. We’re looking to the future. We agree with the likes of Salesforce; first-party data is the next move, and it is the right move.
How the Terminus CDP Puts Data To Work
If you have customers, you have customer data. How strong your dataset is depends on many factors. If you have a CRM, chances are that you have what you need to put customer data to work for you. And no, Terminus doesn’t replace your CRM; it simply makes the data you’ve collected and curated infinitely more useful.
If you’ve ever sat looking at a spreadsheet of tens of thousands of customer and prospect records, you know that it’s not as simple as just pulling a list together. The Terminus CDP works by doing the following:
1. Primary reliance on first-party data.
First-party data has a lot going for it. For consumers, it follows privacy guidelines/regulations and offers an opportunity for opt-out. Because the vast majority of this data is collected on your website, you can have confidence that every prospect in your database has a baseline of knowledge regarding who you are and what you offer. It’s a self-selected group of potential customers. This will help you hone your messaging and drive at what really matters to your buyers.
2. Aggregation and organization of data.
The Terminus CDP pulls data from your CRM, LinkedIn, and select third-party sources to become your definitive source of truth for your customers and prospects. Keeping tidy records will become a critical piece of your success, which is why our new customers start with an audit and rigorous cleansing of your first-party data.
3. Enriching first-party data with select third-party data.
Our CDP allows you to filter prospects based on any number of criteria. Better yet, the Terminus CDP pulls in intent data from select third-party sources. By applying this “filter” of third-party intent data, you can cross reference intent signals that your customers are making out in the marketplace. Think back to your booth at the IRL market; there, intent data looks like the booths someone has visited, the purchases they’ve recently made, and what you overhear about their plans for future purchases. The digital version is essentially the same. We collect the data with things other than our eyes and ears, but by arming ourselves with that type of data, account-based marketers can serve content that is relevant and valuable. And that’s how you create advocates of your brand – by helping them in a time of need.
4. Automation and operationalization for smart campaigns.
“Hey can you pull a list for me?”
Any list you manually build using your CRM data expires has a shelf life of approximately 10 seconds. Digital buyers are a moving target. The Terminus CDP uses analytics, machine learning, and other bleeding-edge technologies to make your lists continually dynamic. When a prospect’s buying signals disappear, they disappear from your segments. When a new shopper strolls through your market showing high levels of intent, they rise to the top of the list. And all happens at speeds and levels of accuracy once thought to be impossible. Dynamic lists mean you can run dynamic campaigns across multiple channels all from a single platform.
You Have The Help You Need
The Terminus CDP gives you access to a level of information and capabilities that are really exciting. But how do you get as much good out of these tools as possible? When you work with Terminus, you get guidance at every turn. We even offer professional services packages that give you a dedicated team. We can help you get learn the ropes and launch your first few campaigns. Once you’re up and running, we show you how to go deeper. And as you grow in comfort and confidence, we’re there to celebrate wins and to help you adapt to changes and challenges.
We live and breathe ABM, and we can help you do the same. If you’re ready to learn more, you can check out our ebook on customer data platforms. Or, to take a step back and learn more about how Terminus can bring your ABM goals to life, schedule a demo today.
