How Aptivio helps CMOs with Sales & Marketing Alignment

By Garrett Rutledge
February 18th, 2022
The preferences of B2B consumers are becoming digitally dominant. B2B buying journeys have and continue to change at a rapid pace, and as a result, B2B sellers and marketers alike are struggling to keep up. The typical linear buying process has become virtually non-existent in today’s hyper-digital environment. Customers are increasingly taking prospecting into their own hands, whether it be through independent learning on various digital channels or leveraging strategic networks and key stakeholders. As a result, B2B marketers and sellers have little room for error and less frequency of engagement. Marketers must be personal and timely, and sellers need to be targeted and integrated into digital experiences to meet revenue goals. Thus, the goal is not to simply encourage sales and marketing integration but rather, to develop a converged sales and marketing alignment approach that’s fully integrated, symbiotic, and delivers a seamless experience to buyers.

For B2B marketing leaders, flexibility is essential and results must be delivered. In the following, we’ll take a deeper look at the reality B2B marketers are now faced with, and how Aptivio is the solution that can help marketing leaders hit their key KPIs and ensure sales and marketing alignment.

The Challenge for B2B Marketers

It’s no secret that in the last few years, in particular, buyers are favoring digital self-service and remote human interaction over face-to-face engagement. Therefore, B2B sellers have less time to engage and there’s a growing emphasis on lead quality and predictability of buyer stages. For B2B marketers, this creates added pressure on campaign performance and the output that’s delivered to sales. Naturally, sales and marketing alignment becomes more challenging.

A core challenge for B2B marketers is tracking ROI on marketing activities. In fact, it’s the number one challenge for B2B marketers today, according to the survey results of a HubSpot study shown above. Validating marketing’s attribution to revenue is a pain felt for all B2B marketers, particularly in today’s hyper-digital landscape.

There have never been more channels to reach customers, and as these targets take prospecting into their own hands, it makes it even harder for marketing teams to reach them not just at the right channel, but at the right time with the right message. The path to purchase for each B2B buyer is complex and unique, therefore, personalization and timeliness are paramount forB2B marketers. The customer must be placed at the center of any marketing initiative, and the focus must be on understanding their needs, behavior, where they’re at in the buyer lifecycle, and who the relevant decision-makers are for any account.

One-size-fits-all tactics simply do not work anymore. Not only do such approaches struggle to drive conversions, but they also dilute brand value. With repetitive, cookie-cutter-like messaging, the brand suffers and customers lose trust. However, with a personalized approach that delivers tailored messaging through the preferred channel at the right time, B2B marketers will be primed for great success in today’s rapidly evolving digital commercial landscape.

It’s important to note that generating traffic and leads, as well as sales and marketing alignment, are also among the top challenges. As traditional forms of demand generation and engagement continue to produce diminishing returns, the need for personalized, multi-channel approaches will only increase.

When it comes to aligning with the sales team, the goal of marketers should be to enable an integrated, end-to-end experience where there's not necessarily a “hand-off” to sales, but rather a natural progression to the sales team based on demonstrated intent and interest. B2B sellers today must be part of a digital, virtual selling experience, and marketers can help greatly in facilitating this approach. Marketers should aim to deliver not just quality, but actionable leads to sellers. As a result, their chances for increasing marketing attribution to revenue will only increase and trust will be fostered between the two teams.

Our real-time action cards and AI-powered system allow marketers to always act in real-time and capitalize on opportunities with prospective buyers. As was mentioned previously, it’s a matter of connecting in the right channel with the right message at the right time. Aptivio’s action cards are generated in real-time to produce suggested actions for marketers that will help nurture a lead further along the buying lifecycle.

Aptivio enables marketers to execute more targeted, and ultimately, more affordable campaigns rather than cost-heavy, scattergun initiatives. Marketers can experience healthy ROI on campaigns and reduce the cost to acquire new customers.

The bulk of the opportunities in Aptivio are classified as Early Target or Active Research stage companies. These are the opportunities that marketing runs campaigns against to generate engagement signals to increase the strength of the opportunity so it can be passed over to sales. Marketing typically uses filters in the system to create highly targeted campaigns based on buyer intent to raise awareness or drive engagement.

These early-stage opportunities can be found in Aptivio’s Opportunity Whitespace Dashboard, shown below. This feature is one of the core unifying elements of our product. This dashboard is a product view that can have particular benefits for marketers and sellers alike. The dashboard also operates in real-time, and updates itself as our buyer intent AI engine continuously monitors signals.

Now what?

Investing in emerging tech like AI is the best option for marketing leaders to develop personalized, flexible, real-time, and multi-channel digital experiences for buyers. AI has a remarkable ability to handle mass amounts of data and instantly translate the information into real-time insights. Though the digital frontier and its many customer touchpoints have often presented challenges for B2B marketers, the benefit is buyers leave behind wells of data to be responsibly leveraged. AI’s ability to manage data at scale cannot be denied, however, marketers don’t just need data, they need the right data. That’s where buyer intent data comes into play. Buyer intent refers to the information and processes that reveal the “intent” of an account or prospect towards purchasing your product or solution.

The combination of buyer intent data and AI can offer marketers a fully comprehensive solution that empowers them to be more personalized, timely, and effective. At Aptivio, we’ve created the ideal buyer intent AI platform. Aptivio was engineered for today’s digital world and its disruptive capabilities represent the future of B2B engagement. We’ve leveraged our AI expertise to build an all-in-one, accessible, and affordable buyer intent AI solution that ensures B2B marketing leaders will hit their essential KPIs.

We make it easy for marketers to engage in timely and effective action and earn the trust of the sales team. In an environment where every buyer’s path to purchase is complex and unique, it’s imperative to leverage a buyer intent AI system like Aptivio that makes it easy to navigate this complexity and deliver personalized experiences.

Want to learn more about how Aptivio can unite your sales and marketing teams? Take a look at the product page on our website and discover how Aptivio supports not just sales and marketing, but the entire revenue team.

Meeting KPI Targets with Aptivio

Aptivio can notably help marketing leaders improve on marketing’s attribution to revenue and ROI, customer acquisition costs, early-stage engagement, and the production of marketing-qualified leads.

Aptivio facilitates early-stage engagement and the output of marketing-qualified leads by discovering hidden revenue opportunities based on 150+ buying signals that are tailored to your go-to-market approach.

The signals are driven by our AI-powered buyer intent data coverage that monitors 1 trillion external data points in real-time. Signals are then matched with the buyer stage and tailored to the specific buyer levels down to the actual decision-maker for an account. As a result, marketers are empowered to deliver tailored approaches to leads that have shown strong buyer intent based on our signal monitoring.

In the graphic below, you’ll see a visual depiction of Aptivio’s unique IP that powers our buyer intent AI engine. Our signals, action cards, and contextual plugins come together to deliver the most comprehensive buyer intent solution on the market. Through this special combination, B2B sales and marketing leaders are enabled to execute a sales and marketing alignment approach that allows them to hit KPI targets and drive conversions.

Our real-time action cards and AI-powered system allow marketers to always act in real-time and capitalize on opportunities with prospective buyers. As was mentioned previously, it’s a matter of connecting in the right channel with the right message at the right time. Aptivio’s action cards are generated in real-time to produce suggested actions for marketers that will help nurture a lead further along the buying lifecycle.

Aptivio enables marketers to execute more targeted, and ultimately, more affordable campaigns rather than cost-heavy, scattergun initiatives. Marketers can experience healthy ROI on campaigns and reduce the cost to acquire new customers.

The bulk of the opportunities in Aptivio are classified as Early Target or Active Research stage companies. These are the opportunities that marketing runs campaigns against to generate engagement signals to increase the strength of the opportunity so it can be passed over to sales. Marketing typically uses filters in the system to create highly targeted campaigns based on buyer intent to raise awareness or drive engagement.

These early-stage opportunities can be found in Aptivio’s Opportunity Whitespace Dashboard, shown below. This feature is one of the core unifying elements of our product. This dashboard is a product view that can have particular benefits for marketers and sellers alike. The dashboard also operates in real-time, and updates itself as our buyer intent AI engine continuously monitors signals.

Bringing Together Sales and Marketing

Aptivio is designed to bridge the gap between marketing and sales. We increase marketing attribution as our product displays signals marketing generates with their engagement activities. Sales teams can then see these marketing signals to have a clear understanding of the marketing team’s impact and contribution to nurturing a given lead. The sales team is then more satisfied with the leads they’re receiving and marketing generates a higher ROI as they can run targeted campaigns rather than taking a scattergun approach.

Aptivio’s product does more than just align sales and marketing. We enable a holistic, converged approach that fosters an interdependence of people, processes, and technology, which is essential to have amidst increasing digital interaction.

Aptivio’s data spans across all buyer stages, and signals are produced through a continuous cycle that determines lead fit, access, demand, timing, engagement, and risk. As marketing runs campaigns, influenced by signals, additional buyer intent signals continue to cycle back in as leads get nurtured along the buyer lifecycle. As these leads move over to sales, reps can see a full narrative for any potential buyer, rather than simply showing a prospect clicked on an ad or post.

This process facilitates a natural trust between the teams and fuels features of our product such as our interested buyer’s dashboard seen below. In this view, reps can see targets that have demonstrated interest and engaged with our signals, and therefore, have greater clarity on what steps should be taken next to nurture them further.

We make it easy for marketers to engage in timely and effective action and earn the trust of the sales team. In an environment where every buyer’s path to purchase is complex and unique, it’s imperative to leverage a buyer intent AI system like Aptivio that makes it easy to navigate this complexity and deliver personalized experiences.

Want to learn more about how Aptivio can unite your sales and marketing teams? Take a look at the product page on our website and discover how Aptivio supports not just sales and marketing, but the entire revenue team.