Demand Acceleration in the age of BIG Data and Analytics

White Paper

The world of B2B marketing has changed dramatically with the advent of internet and the increased connectivity in today's world. Traditional marketing methods are getting increasingly ineffective as buyers become more informed and highly aware of the products or solutions they need.

The sales force is today faced with a situation where the buyer has made 65% of the decision journey even before talking to them. This puts in tense pressure on marg ins , the las t differentiator in an increasingly commoditized and competitive market place.

The top 5 challenges in B2B marketing as identified by HubSpot are:

1. Awareness/traffic (22.5%)2. Lead generation (16.2%)3. Social media (6.3%)4. Targeting (5.4%)5. Branding/brand recognition (4.5%)

If we look closely enough all the challenges are about attracting and keeping customers. it boils

down to demand generation and sales in either the short term or the longer term.Demand management broadly and more specifically lead management is a key marketing priority and challenge as Sales organizations aregenerally wary of Marketing driven leads. Sales force is always spread thin and hence tend to focus on the top accounts they know intimately rather than obscure marketing leads which they don't believe in.

The challenge for marketing then is to bring quality leads and earn the respect of the sales organization, show a good ROI on marketing investments and demonstrate marketing's contribution to the Sales funnel. To do this, marketing organizations have invested heavily in marketing automation and CRM systems in the last decade. However generating quality leads is still a challenge and most marketing organizations are i l l equipped to meet that. This whitepaper demonstrates how marketers can use Analytics to rapidly enhance the Return on Investment (ROI) on their marketing infrastructure.

Typical Lead Management Framework

Most lead Management frameworks have distinct stages as shown in the schematic below.

Lead generation stage:

Here is where the Marketing and Sales teams drive campaigns to prospects as well as existing customers through a variety of media web, email, direct mail, social, events, tradeshows etc. The key here is to identify the right profile to target with the right content at the right time in the right channel.

Some key statistics:

With direct mail, trade shows, telemarketing, and traditional advertising, the bigger the company, the more likely they are to get leads from the aforementioned tactics.

Small companies are more than twice as likely to get leads from social media as compared to large companies (18% versus 7%).

Large companies are almost three times as likely to get leads from traditional advertising as small companies (11% versus 4%).

In the Banking/Insurance/Financial Services sphere, only 6% of leads come from PPC, but they are still allocating 9% of their lead generation budget toward this lead source

In the Technology (Hardware) space, 16% of leads come from email marketing, and 12% of their budget goes toward this source.

In the Technology (Software) industry, 13% of leads come from trade shows, and they are putting 17% of their budget toward this source.

B2B companies have a significantly higher cost per lead ($43) in comparison to B2C companies ($15). Medium companies have the lowest cost per lead ($19) in comparison to small ($31) and large ($38)

companies. Marketing agencies have the highest cost per lead ($58) whereas the Retail/Wholesale/Consumer

Goods industry has the lowest cost per lead ($6). U.S. companies have the highest cost per lead ($40); LATAM has the lowest cost per lead ($15).

Source: Prospectr Marketing. http://www.prospectrmarketing.com/where-do-marketers-get-leads#sthash.FMBcu9

Lead Scoring/ Nurturing stage:

In response to the marketing and sales campaigns, a lot of responses and inquiries come in, kick starting a complex process of Lead management that involves capturing the inquiries, qualifying them and passing on to sales teams. Both volume and quality are important here but controlling one impacts the other and hence marketing needs to do a very delicate balance of lead qualification and passing on the best leads to Sales. Marketing qualified lead which are not sales ready need to be carefully nurtured so as to be passed on to sales when they are Sales ready.

Key Statistics

A whopping 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel. Just 56% of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to Sales. 57% of B2B organizations identify 'converting qualified leads into paying customers' as a top funnel

priority. BUT...65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing. AND...79% of B2B marketers have not established lead scoring.

50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. (Source: MarketingSherpa)

Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Source: Gleanster Research)

35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. (Source: InsideSales.com)

Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Source: Forrester Research)

46% of marketers with mature lead management processes have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads.

Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)

Lead Pursuit

Lead pursuit is the final stage when a lead is either won or lost. Lead routing, scoring and prioritization are critical for accelerated conversion rates. The typical consideration that go into lead routing rules are:

a. Pursue with direct sales force or through Channel partnerb. Geography (i.e., country, state, etc.)c. Product Vs Solution Selld. Opportunity Sizee. Lead Sourcef. Sales force strengths / weaknesses.g. Overall sales pipeline backlog.

The rules could either be really simple or sophisticated based on the maturity of the lead management process in an organization.

Key Statistics: 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.

(Source: MarketingSherpa)

The average sales cycle has increased 22% over the past 5 years due to more decision makers involved in the buying process. That means more intricate lead nurturing towards more stakeholders. (Source: Sirius Decisions)

Typical Lead Conversion and Waterfall rates in B2B space are shown in th graphic below:

The BRIDGEi2i Analytics Solution

BRIDGEi2i's technology agnostic Demand Acceleration framework can help Marketers accelerate their lead quality significantly and rapidly. We understand that higher quality and quantity of lead generation is a key priority of the Marketing team who invest heavily in marketing automation systems to accelerate leads. But though these systems provide productivity, they are only as good as the underlying data and intelligence. BRIDGE's unique framework attempts to solve these practical challenges.

BRIDGEi2i Demand Acceleration Framework

At BRIDGEi2i we realize the complexity involved in a good demand management process. Legacy systems, disparate data sources, multiple workflow systems, various execution partners, internal functional dependency, rapidly expanding data availability, reducing budgets and skill deficiency have put B2B marketing organizations under tremendous pressure.

The schematic above highlights the complexity involved in Demand management process primarily driven by: Disparate data sources, a lot of them external to the organization, severely restricts the ability of an

organization to make meaning from the existing data without investing into an expensive data integration effort. The irony though is that the integration takes too long by which new data sources emerge, defeating the very purpose.

BIG data hype has made companies run after storing every piece of data without much direction on what that data can do. The myth around more data is good is leading to a lot of frustration among marketers especially when it's not actionable.

New age Marketing and sales Automation tools like Eloqua, Marketo, Aprimo, Salesforce.com etc. have brought in the promise of transforming Demand generation process. Although these systems have improved workflow efficiency, organizations still lack the Analytics capability to improve the effectiveness of the process.

Dependency on external vendors for campaign execution and the whole shift to Digital engagement is putting pressure on the process as well.

To help such marketing organizations BRIDGEi2 has developed a Demand Acceleration framework that focuses on:1) Quick deployment without high implementation costs.2) A test and learn environment with best-in-class Predictive Analytics support.3) Technology agnostic, we work with what you have or don't have.4) A partnership model where we stay with you till the end, sharing your problems and celebrating your success.

The Demand acceleration framework from BRIDGEi2i focuses on the intelligence that goes into the Demand Management process. Each phase/process/ step is analytically driven and provides instant value to our clients. We believe that there is no such thing as perfect data, and Analytics sophistication is a journey not a destination. Our clients can begin their journey irrespective of what systems/ tools/ technology or capability they have.

Lead Generation – BRIDGEi2i way:

The key objective remains the ability to answer the 4 basic questions :- Who are the target customers? What are their needs? How can one engage with them? When should one engage them?

BRIDGEi2i has stepwise Solutions to get to the questions above, in a very data driven way.

Step 1. Build Customer Intelligence. We believe that behavioral segmentation is one of the most critical framework that companies need to adopt for identify target customers. Although most companies have some kind of segmentation framework it's often not in a shape to be used for targeting. At BRIDGEi2i we build segmentation that can be used for targeting and help one test and learn.

The output of the segmentation exercise would be any of the following:a. Generic segmentation to create homogeneous groups.b. Value segmentation to Most/Least valuable customers.c. Customer Lifecycle Models ( Retain, Acquire, Develop or Nurture, Acquire, Protect)d. Propensity Models that predicts the likelihood to purchase in a specific timeframe.

Step 1b: Identifying Prospective Customers

Armed with an astute knowledge of the existing customers we help our clients identify prospects from a much larger pool for population. This typically involves:

a. Lookalike Modeling where one identifies Prospects who are similar to existing customers and hence likely to engage.

b. White Space and Profit pool analysis that identifies new segments that could be lucrative to target.

Step 2: Develop deep Campaign Insights

Once Customer Intelligence has provided us good insights on what groups of customers to target for a specific purpose the next question is what campaign to run for them. Analysis of historical campaign performance typically provides rich information on what kind of campaign would be effective on certain segments. An ongoing schema of Design of experiment helps in continuous evaluation of campaign types and customer segments.

After this the campaigns are executed. Typical campaigns will be multi-channel that will include email marketing, digital marketing, tele-marketing, social media, events etc.

A successful lead generation program is fundamental to ensure that inquiries and responses come in both in terms of Volume and quality.

Managing the responses that come in and ensuring those are qualified, routed , nurtured or passed on to the sales teams is the next most important part of the Demand Management process.

Step 3. Lead Management

Lead management is fundamental to the process of Demand management and a well laid out lead management process is a key differentiator in B2B marketing. There are distinct capabilities that need to be developed under lead management:

Step 3a. Inquiry Filtering and Enrichment

Campaigns involve multi-channel responses and inquiries too are spread across multiple channels with varying degree of information being provided. One of the most important aspects of an inquiry is identification and ability to contact. Inquiry filtering primary involves:

a. Contact data quality checks and deduplicationb. Contact data enrichment that helps lead scoring in a big way.c. Basic disqualification rules that keep junk out (e.g. Interest on the Career site should not qualify as

an inquiry).

A good inquiry filtering process bring in enormous amount of discipline into the lead management process and helps de-clog the system.

Step 3b. Lead Scoring

Lead Scoring is essentially a prioritization tool which predicts the how interested an inquiry is in making a purchase. An expensive way of doing that would be to call each inquiry and ask them a series of questions to judge, the Business they are in, the Authority they have on the purchase decision, the Need they have and the Timing they are looking at. To avoid tele-qualification costs or complement it lead scoring has become very popular in the Lead management process.

Scores using Weights

This Lead scoring process look at two aspects of an inquiry, the profile and the engagement. Profile is generally related to the account the inquiry is coming from and the engagement piece looks at what the particular contact has done as part of the inquiry or before. Event attention, response to an email, website visit etc. are indications of engagement by a particular contact.

Although popular this method forces one to pre-determine what aspects of engagement need to be considered and is increasingly being accused of simplifying a multi-dimensional aspect of scoring propensity.

Predictive Lead Scoring

A sophisticated lead scoring process involves looking at leads won and lost in the past and building a predictive model that tries to model the multidimensional aspects of why a lead is converted. The data elements which are used in the modeling process are extensive and the power of statistics is used to determine what variables impact the conversion probability instead of having to second guess those variables as in the Weightage method of lead scoring.

Data Used for Predictive lead Scoring:

1) Historic data of the lead funnel from Inquiries to Win / Loss.2) Firmographics / Demographic data on the inquiries at an account as well as Contact level.3) Campaign details on how an inquiry came in.4) Nurturing history of a contact5) Any Trigger data on accounts at the point of inquiry.6) Any data related to the Sales Pursuit7) The overall deal size, margin, timeframe taken for deals won.8) Reason associated with losing a particular deal.

Analytical Models used for lead Scoring:

Classification methods of Statistical models, specifically Knowledge Models with response variable (in this case the conversion of a lead will be the response variable) help address lead scoring. Popular classification techniques we use include:

Logistic Regression Decision Trees Discriminant Analysis Bayesian Techniques Support Vector Machines

The above methods and few other adaptations are tested on each Scoring model to get the best fit.

Step 4: Lead Routing

Lead routing is very critical for an optimized Sales Pursuit. Broadly all qualified leads gets routed to either an organization's direct sales force or to Channel partners.

Step 4a. Routing rules for direct sales force

In order to ensure that the lead routing is in Sync with the ground realities of the Sales force, lead routing framework takes into consideration multiple facets of the sales force. The schematic below broadly captures the considerations for a lead allocation logic.

Step 4b. Routing rules for Channel partners

Leads to channel partners are optimally routed based on the following factors:

1) Partner type2) Partner territory3) Partner performance4) Contractual obligations5) Breadth of Services.6) Service history7) Historical conversion rates.8) Competitive considerations.

Routing algorithms here are basically linear optimization models with constraints.

OfficeBangalore: 389, 2nd Floor, 9th Main, HSR Layout, Sector – 7, Bangalore – 560 102 Phone: +91-80-42102154US: 1013 Centre Road, ST # 403S, Wilmington, New Castle, DE 19805Phone: +1 858 312 1075

Web: www.bridgei2i.com | email: enquiries@bridgei2i.comFacebook | Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn: BRIDGEi2i

BRIDGEi2i Demand Acceleration Framework is analytically sophisticated, designed for rapid deployment, flexible for incorporating customization and is guaranteed to provide positive ROI.

We encourage any marketer struggling with point solutions, complexity of available tools/ technologies and constrained by limited budget to reach out to us so that we can partner with you to help you meet your business goals.

The Demand Acceleration Framework is powered by our Demand Analytics Architecture which provided as a Managed Service to our clients. Hence we stay invested with our clients through their journey.

About BRIDGEi2i

BRIDGEi2i provides Business Analytics Solutions to enterprises globally, enabling them to achieve accelerated business impact harnessing the power of data. These analytics services and technology solutions enable business managers to consume more meaningful information from big data, generate actionable insights from complex business problems and make data driven decisions across pan-enterprise processes to create sustainable business impact. BRIDGEi2i has featured among the top 10 analytics and big data start-ups in several coveted publications.