In this process, agile marketing methodologies can help B2B marketers measure outcomes, coordinate better with other teams and departments and have more structured reporting tactics; all essentials to future marketing and sales success.

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First, what is Agile Marketing?

Agile marketing is one of many approaches to marketing that uses principles from agile concepts and methodologies to create a more iterative process for marketing teams. It is known to drive organizational efficiencies and helps teams focus on driving growth with a customer centric mindset.

Some of the more common agile marketing frameworks include Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban.

As an agile marketing framework, Scrum creates a culture of transparency and adaptation in real-time. It usually involves having a daily scrum (stand up or huddle) with the team, to align on current tasks and previous matters, to adjust campaigns in real-time based on recent metrics and discuss challenge areas. The onus lies on the scrum master or marketing leader to manage scrum processes, task backlogs and discuss matters to align in real-time appropriately.

As a lean-agile framework, Kanban was introduced as a method of process management for knowledge work. Kanban requires marketing teams to visualize the stages of the marketing plan and then work on managing workflows and create feedback loops.

Kanban typically involves: visualize work flows and the stages of the marketing plan, manage that workflow, build feedback loops among roles and teams and fix issues in real-time.

Kanban allows marketing teams to prioritize tasks in unison creating better outcomes for the company.

Scrumban is a popular hybrid approach to agile marketing and is a combination of best practices from both scrum and kanban. Marketers who already use some sort of agile methodology usually pivot to Scrumban to have the best of all agile processes.

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How Can B2B Marketers Benefit With Agile Marketing?

Boosts Alignment and Outcomes

One of the major challenges is modern B2B marketing and B2B sales is lack of alignment between marketing and sales teams. This is where, daily agile practices (like scrum), if held between the  marketing and sales team or its relevant members can enable a more seamless internal process and B2B buying journey for the audience.

Larger teams may benefit by having weekly scrums in which every campaigns, target prospect list, outreach practice and results of each are discussed cohesively with aligned points on handovers of accounts between marketing and sales.

Creates a Sense of Transparency that Leads to Better Prospect Journeys

Any kind of silo in an organization is detrimental to the future growth of the company. Agile marketing methodologies can boost trust between marketing and sales if the framework is used to align on target accounts and outreach practices with a clear indicator of which brands the marketing team is going after and which the sales.

When marketing and sales leaders drive this from the higher levels, there is a more unified brand messaging and prospecting or purchase experience that is built for the end user.

Drives a Data Driven Marketing and Sales Experience

Agile methodologies are meant to drive discussions between the relevant team members and to enable regular catch-ups that help these members measure what they are doing. Using data to jointly breakdown outcomes and evaluate what’s working and not, sharing these insights between teams is crucial to fix problems areas in the buying cycle and prospecting journey.

Agile marketing can help B2B technology marketers and their sales counterparts focus on providing a more unified brand story in a market that is strife with competition. The constant exchange of insights, analytics and real-time measurement can help build that well-oiled internal marketing-sales system that churns better output for the brand as a whole.

Also Catch: Episode 195 of The Sales Star Podcast: Data Best Practices for Modern Marketing and Sales with Ana Mourao, CRM Sr. Manager at Stanley Black and Decker Inc.

Futuri, a leading provider of AI-driven broadcast solutions, today announced the integration of SpotOn Spec Spots into its sales intelligence platform, TopLine. This new integration accelerates the sales cycle and makes each encounter with a prospect or client more meaningful. SpotOn is available as an add-on for TopLine subscribers looking to further enhance their sales capabilities.

Account executives can use SpotOn and TopLine to instantly create custom spec spots and audio. Now, with TopLine and SpotOn integrated, account executives are supported by technology all the way through the sales process – from prospecting and getting the first appointment to developing the right message for the client’s campaign. Now, with a few clicks and a few seconds, account executives can instantly impress buyers with fully produced and high-customized spec spots for any business category.

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“Picture an account executive collaborating with a prospect or client, transforming ideas into reality in real-time,” said Daniel Anstandig, CEO of Futuri. “Account executives can create custom, insight-driven advertising content on the spot, offering a level of speed and customization that changes the very nature of client interactions in our industry. This also eases the burden on production teams by providing a creative starting-point for spots.”

TopLine sales research has become an indispensable sales system for broadcast media across America. From small rural stations to major markets, thousands of sales professionals rely on TopLine every day to optimize their service to advertisers by providing customized sales insights, presentations, and now audio.

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For sales and marketing professionals, keeping up with this pace of change while reaching in-market buyers can seem like a constantly moving target, especially in a down economy. With the right data and team in place though, there’s an opportunity for greater alignment to unlock revenue potential.

Identifying the 5% of in-market buyers with the right data

As a seasoned growth marketer, I know that a critical component to B2B marketing and sales success lies in knowing who your future customers are and when they want to be found. This level of intelligence derives from getting your hands on the right data.

Intent data – the signals that provide insights into prospects’ buying intentions – is most commonly used by companies that take an account-based marketing (ABM) approach to sales and marketing. While it’s helpful to have high-velocity sales outreach and a well-oiled marketing machine, intent data and ABM can be layered in with a traditional marketing qualified leads (MQL) waterfall model. Regardless of the MarTech stack in place, intent data can contribute to building a quality pipeline.

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Aligning sales & marketing teams for optimal execution

The right data is of course a key ingredient for sales and marketing effectiveness. Having the right team is another. With so many cooks in the kitchen, misalignment commonly occurs – leading to inefficiencies, delays, and even worse: missed opportunities.

When it comes to optimizing marketing and sales intelligence with intent data, there are a number of instrumental players.  Here are five crucial roles in this team effort and what they should be focused on:

• The Growth / Demand Gen Marketer is responsible for keeping the pipeline pumped with quality leads, connecting with a larger addressable market, and increasing marketing ROI. Insight into their prospects’ intent can help create meaningful content to help influence their purchase decisions. By identifying what stage of the sales funnel they’re in, growth/demand gen marketers can increase MQL to sales-qualified lead (SQL) conversion rates because they’ll be serving the right message at the right time, leading to faster sales cycles. Intent data can also help by focusing budgets on accounts that are most likely to buy.
• The Customer Marketer is responsible for reducing churn while maintaining a strong competitive advantage, and brand trust validated by customer success. Intent data helps the customer marketer better understand customers and create programs that deepen their engagement with the company’s product. With some tools, signals are received in real time, indicating that a customer is researching a competitor. These insights can be leveraged to check in on accounts, reduce churn, and increase stickiness and value from the product.
• The Revenue Operations (RevOps) Leader is responsible for gaining reliable intelligence to drive optimal strategies and playbooks, mapping sales segment targets to market need. RevOps pros can access insights for account and territory mapping, informing playbooks. They can integrate intent signals with their CRM and other sales tools to help prioritize accounts. RevOps pros can also structure a tiering system of “best bet” accounts for sales and marketing to align on.
• The Sales Development Representative (SDR) is responsible for prioritizing higher quality leads, optimizing speed to lead, and consistently hitting SLAs. SDRs can leverage intent to improve the efficacy of their outreach and their team’s ability to source pipeline with in-market accounts. In the case of a large volume of inbound interest, knowing which accounts have high intent will change focus and help SDRs set meetings with more qualified accounts.
• The Business Development Manager (BDM) is responsible for onboarding new reps quickly while continually optimizing outreach and aligning with account executives (AEs). By leveraging intent signals, BDMs can identify in-market accounts, align with AEs, and pursue outreach with a customized, more meaningful approach. This results in a reduced sales cycle, a better experience for prospects, and ultimately, more wins for the revenue organization.

Despite the desire to end “spray and pray” prospecting once and for all, it still exists as a common practice. Marketers and sellers know better, but don’t always have time to slow down – and cutting through the clutter for precise targeting is often easier said than done. But if they want to effectively reach their 5% of in-market buyers, it’s pivotal for sales and marketing teams to take a step back, review their intent data, and define clear roles and responsibilities for executing on it.

At the end of the day, B2B teams have an opportunity to grow revenue by identifying and targeting prospects when they’re ready to buy – but only if their teams have the right plan in place to ensure constant alignment.

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• Field brings nearly two decades of sales and customer care experience to the board, supporting Dialpad as it leads the industry forward in the next generation of customer-agent experiences, powered by the company’s native and proprietary Ai.

• On the heels of the company’s announcement of DialpadGPT, Dialpad’s proprietary LLM, and recognition on Forbes’ 2023 Cloud 100 list, Field’s appointment brings unique insights to help support and advance Dialpad’s proven Ai platform for sales intelligence, customer engagement and collaboration.

Dialpad, Inc. – the industry-leading Ai-Powered Customer Intelligence Platform – announced the appointment of Callie Field to Dialpad’s Board of Directors. Currently the president of T-Mobile’s Business Group, Field’s extensive background in sales and passion for an optimized customer experience will further support Dialpad’s mission of empowering enterprises of all sizes with the best-in-class, applied Ai-powered platform that brings together sales intelligence, customer engagement and collaboration.

“I’m thrilled to be joining a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen, Android co-founder Rich Miner, ICONIQ Capital co-founder Will Griffith, and all the prominent Dialpad board members as we guide the company to scale with enterprises of all sizes globally.”

“I’ve had the privilege to work closely with Dialpad for more than two years and have been impressed by their customer obsession and the incredible benefits their real time Ai-powered solutions are bringing to businesses across all industries,” said Field. “I’m thrilled to be joining a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen, Android co-founder Rich Miner, ICONIQ Capital co-founder Will Griffith, and all the prominent Dialpad board members as we guide the company to scale with enterprises of all sizes globally.”

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Field has been setting records since the beginning of her career as a T-Mobile sales representative and throughout her role as T-Mobile’s Chief Customer Experience officer – during which she was profiled by Harvard Business Review for completely reinventing the model for customer care and inspiring her teams to deliver legendary customer experiences. Now, as a visionary leader running T-Mobile’s fastest growing business segment, Field is a key contributor to the Un-carrier’s longstanding reputation as one of the most innovative companies in wireless industry. She previously served as a board member of ServiceMax.

“Callie is a powerhouse in the customer engagement space, having led sales and customer engagement teams to build industry-leading customer experiences, making her an exceptional addition to our board,” said Craig Walker, CEO and Founder of Dialpad. “We’re looking forward to collaborating with her as Dialpad continues to expand, release new products and improved experiences for our customers, and fuel more businesses with Dialpad’s real-time Ai.”

Callie joins Dialpad’s board at a pivotal time. The company recently launched DialpadGPT, a proprietary LLM for sales, service, and recruiting, built on over five years and five billion minutes of proprietary conversational data. It’s the first LLM designed specifically to cater to the evolving needs of today’s businesses and their employees. Additionally, the company is experiencing record financial growth and has landed on major industry lists including #25 on Forbes’ 2023 Cloud 100 and was an Inc. Best in Business 2022 recipient.

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Bombora, the leading provider of B2B Intent data solutions, announced that it has been recognized as a leader in five G2 reports for Winter 2023. Bombora maintained its “leader” status in the Grid Report for Buyer Intent Data Providers and the Grid Report for Marketing Account Intelligence for the 11th consecutive marking period, while also earning leadership status in the Grid Report for Sales Intelligence.

Bombora was also named a leader in two mid-market grids for the second consecutive quarter: the Mid-Market Grid® Report for Buyer Intent Data Providers and the Mid-Market Grid Report for Marketing Account Intelligence.

Additionally, the company was named a momentum leader in the Momentum Grid® Report for Buyer Intent Data Providers and a high performer in the Enterprise Grid Report for Buyer Intent Data Providers. Bombora was named in 56 reports total.

G2 reports are based on reviews from Bombora customers. Clients frequently mention how the Bombora Company Surge® product helps with prospecting and account prioritization.

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“Bombora has allowed us to revolutionize how we prospect.”

— Aleksandra H., the VP of Sales for a small business.

“Bombora has allowed us to revolutionize how we prospect,” said Aleksandra H., the VP of Sales for a small business. Her business was able to prioritize which accounts to pursue based on intent insights from Bombora. “In turn, our conversion rate has increased massively and we’re getting more sales with a shorter sales cycle,” she said.

Other customers have hailed Bombora’s wealth of insights. “The knowledge and details of what clients/prospects are interested in is invaluable,” said Lucas A., the regional sales executive of an enterprise company.

“We remain committed to providing the best possible product and service for our customers, and the G2 reviews show that this attention to detail is paying off,” said Bombora CEO and co-founder Erik Matlick. “It’s a big achievement to be called a leader in one category. To earn that distinction across five categories shows that we consistently deliver a best-in-class product that is helping businesses drive revenue and report on their efforts, even in uncertain economic conditions.”

Bombora’s Company Surge® data tells marketing and sales leaders about which businesses are researching the products or services that they and their competitors sell. With this understanding, sales and marketing teams can be more relevant and consistent and improve performance across all activities. For more information on Bombora’s inclusion in the G2 fall 2022 reports and access to the reviews.

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MarTech Quote-of-the-Week!

CX begins with mapping the customer journey—from buyer to close, from onboarding to execution and growth. Understanding the entire lifecycle is critical to mapping a cohesive CX strategy.

–Jill Ransome, CMO at Jitterbit

Top MarTech News of The Week: 14^th November to 18^th November

• Amperity Strengthens Leadership Team By Welcoming New Chief Marketing Officer and Chief People Officer
• Omnichannel Messaging is Critical for a Positive Customer Experience, says two-thirds of SMBs
• WooCommerce and WordPress Go Passwordless with OwnID Free Plugin
• New Study: 92% of Surveyed Advertisers Say Gaining a Unified View of Converged TV is Important
• Optimove Integrates with TikTok and Snapchat to Expand Digital Advertising Stack
• WEKA Raises $135M to Fuel Hypergrowth and Global Expansion
• Opera Becomes the First Browser to Add Built-in TIKTOK
• Brand-Safe Advertising Gets a Boost with Seekr
• Zenlytic Raises $5.4m To Build Better Business Intelligence
• Brands Continue to Balance Rising Demand for Compelling Online Visual Experiences With the Need to Do More With Less – All at Lightning Speed, According to New Research
• HubSpot Announces General Availability of WhatsApp Integration to Help Customers Form Deep Connections
• Contentstack Raises $80 Million Series C Co-Led by Georgian and Insight Partners to Accelerate the Path to Composable for Enterprise
• Omneky Secures $10M Total Funding in Seed Round with Key Investors
• New Research from Smart Communications and OneSpan Details Key Trends in Embedded Lending and Customer Experience
• Alteryx Brings Scalability and Accessibility to Cloud Analytics with New SaaS Designer Experience
• Pixability Launches New Contextual Solution to Solve for Transparency and Brand Suitability on Connected TV
• ClickUp and HubSpot Announce Strategic Partnership Empowering Businesses to Increase Productivity and Retain Customers
• Freshpaint Announces $14.5 Million in Financing and Launches Free Tier to Unlock Customer Data Without Engineering Work
• DoubleVerify Expands Collaboration with LinkedIn to Reinforce Brand Safety Protections and Contextual Alignment
• Hotjar Acquires UX Research Platform PingPong to Help Businesses Empathize With Their Users
• Clearbit Enhances Pipeline Discovery and Capture With Integration of G2 Buyer Intent Data
• Globant Acquires Asia Pacific’s Leading Digital Commerce Specialist Ewave, and Expands Its Presence to Australia and Asia
• Shutterstock Joins Forces with LG AI Research to Advance AI Technology to Revolutionize the Creative Journey
• Cision Acquires Media Monitoring & Technology Leader Factmata
• Advocado Offers Access to Transparent, Turn-Key, Encompassing Data with New Integrated Data Platform, Guac
• Bloomreach Enables Merchandisers to Harness the Power of AI in Product Recommendations, Driving Revenue through More Tailored Recommendations

MarTech QnA with the Expert

Large organizations can lose millions of dollars in revenue by failing to address the most important part of the conversion: customer motivation.

– Assaf Baciu, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of Persado

MarTech Articles on Customer Loyalty, Driving Webinar ROI, Boosting Digital Marketing Growth

• Six Digital Marketing Tips For Small Business Owners
• How To Maximize The Return On Webinars
• Is Marketing The New Source Of Innovation In The Tech Industry?
• How Data-Driven Insights Can Fuel Your Customer Loyalty Strategy For 2023
• Building Brand Loyalty: Transparency in Marketing
• How to Build an Audio Visual Set up For Your Webinar
• Why Your Ecommerce Loyalty Program Needs a Data-Driven Overhaul
• The Evolution of Twitter…
• What Can B2B Tech Marketers Do In Times of a Recession?
• A Quick Dive into How Leading Brands are Using NFTs to Drive Market Impact
• AI in Content Marketing

Missed The Latest Episode of The SalesStar Podcast? Have a quick listen here!

Episode 144: What Drives Better B2B Performance: with Rachel Clap Miller – VP of Marketing and Digital Engagement at Ascender by Force Management

Episode 143: Uncovering the Evolution in Retail Media with Mikey Paley, SVP of Business Development, Retailers at Aki Technologies

Episode 142: Go-To-Market Best Practices with Jeffrey Ha, Chief Go-to-Market Officer at Rev

DemandScience, a global B2B data company that partners with customers to upgrade their sales pipelines, announced that the company’s products earned a total of 24 awards in G2’s Fall 2022 Reports. Highlights include two awards each for Best Estimated ROI and Fastest Implementation, awards for Easiest Setup, Easiest To Do Business With, and Highest User Adoption, as well as 15 G2 Grid Report Awards as a Leader or High Performer.

“Rankings on G2 reports are based on data provided to us by real software buyers,” said Sara Rossio, Chief Product Officer at G2. “Potential buyers know they can trust these insights when researching and selecting software because they’re rooted in vetted, verified, and authentic reviews.” G2 is one of the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplaces.

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DemandScience Intelligence, the company’s solution that provides customers with recent, relevant, and actionable global B2B data won 14 awards:

DemandScience solutions, including content syndication and ABM products that engage buyers, won 10 awards:

“Our top priority is helping B2B marketing and sales professionals succeed by delivering effective and innovative solutions that are easy to deploy and deliver meaningful ROI,” said Peter Cannone, Chair and CEO of DemandScience. “Winning two dozen G2 Fall 2022 awards means a great deal to us, as the recognition is directly based on real reviews and validation from our user community. We’re honored by these achievements and will continue to work hard to help our customers meet and exceed their business goals.”

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Lusha’s Salesforce Data Enrichment solution enriches CRMs with Lusha’s extensive database of highly accurate customer data, transforming faulty and incomplete records into new business opportunities

Lusha, the B2B data community and sales intelligence platform, announced today the launch of Salesforce Data Enrichment (SFDE) – an automated enrichment solution enabling users to continuously enrich their Salesforce contact and company database’s with fresh and relevant data. SFDE enables sales professionals to bolster their Salesforce CRMs with Lusha’s extensive and accurate database and transform faulty and missing data into new business opportunities.

According to Salesforce’s own research, on average, 90% of the contacts in their customers’ CRM databases are incomplete, with 20% of records found to be useless. This includes 74% of records requiring updates and more than 25% found to be duplicates. Outdated, inaccurate, and irrelevant data translates into missed business opportunities.

Lusha’s sales intelligence platform provides sales professionals and teams easy access to its crowdsourced unique database of highly accurate and complete data, helping them to identify, engage, and close qualified prospects. The new SFDE solution enables enterprise organizations to integrate the Lusha sales intelligence platform into their Salesforce database, bridging the two platforms to enable automated and ongoing enrichment of existing contact data. By eliminating the need for manual data cleansing, and ensuring that their contacts are always up-to-date, Lusha’s SFDE solution saves Sales Operations Managers and their teams precious time, enables them to reach every prospect in their CRM, and discover their most relevant prospects.

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“Companies spend huge amounts of resources building CRMs of both current and prospective leads, but suffer from the speed the data becomes outdated and irrelevant,” said Yoni Tserruya, CEO & Co-Founder of Lusha. “B2B sales organizations rely on their CRM to identify the right prospects – so when this data is incomplete or inaccurate, their time is wasted and opportunities are lost. With our new SFDE solution, sales teams are given direct access to Lusha’s extensive database of accurate contact and company information to automatically enrich their existing data and gain new insights on their prospects to scale business results.”

Key features of the Salesforce Data Enrichment solution include:

• Auto-Enrichment: Automated data enrichment for future audience-based candidates.
• Custom Audiences:  Audience based rules and filters to define audience qualification criteria based on user-specific needs.
• Recommended Templates: Data-driven recommended enrichment templates based on users’ Salesforce and sales activity.
• High Quality Data: Gain full access to the leaders in B2B contact and company data, backed up by Lusha’s 7 Trust-Filters

Lusha’s crowdsourced data community and sales intelligence platform comprises an extensive database of highly accurate and complete prospect data, including over 100 million business profiles, 60 million email addresses, 50 million direct dials, and 15 million company profiles.

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