B2B Media Firms Emerge As Targeted Data Sources

With most marketers (74%) planning to boost data marketing budgets, per a new Global DMA/Winterberry Group study, the hunt is on for targeted data sources. Luckily for business-to-business campaigns, a new data source is emerging in the form of B2B media companies, according to a recent CMO.com post by Scott Vaughan, CMO of Integrate. With print and website profits squeezed, media companies that already generate traffic for B2B marketing clients are reinventing themselves as data source experts and offering access to highly specific customer and prospect performance data, Vaughan asserts. To his point, we note that Bombora, which collects intent data from client companies such as CBS Interactive, UBM and Forbes to build a data bank of 180 million U.S. B2B users, has just made its data available to Adobe's newly launched Audience Marketplace and its Marketing Cloud. Bombora is not alone in the burgeoning B2B media data mart. It's time for B2B marketers to adjust data strategies. B2B media firms can provide two types of valuable data, Vaughan notes. First, they can mine online activities and content interest to harvest behavioral prospect data that signals intent to buy. That data can be used for targeting of ads or e-mail offers, lead scoring and prospect nurturing. Second, B2B marketing and sales can tap into company-content consumption data for account-based marketing. Media companies can use digital tactices, demand generation and data solutions to identify purchasing intent for a specific list of target companies, using company IP address and domain intelligence, for example, so that when target companies engage with content, they can be immediately retargeted. Vaughan acknowledges that the media company shift from traffic and lead gen provider to data source is still in an early stage, but he advises marketers to start planning on how to board the emerging data intelligence train. To see his suggested tactics, read http://www.cmo.com/articles/2015/11/6/b2b-media-company-transformation-means-more-data-for-marketers.html