Omnichannel Marketing: B2B Training Guide

Preparing for an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Omnichannel marketing has gone mainstream. It’s not a fringe experiment just for the cutting-edge marketers who dare to try. It’s real. More and more B2B marketers like you are making the commitment to do it and do it well. And, for good reason. According to McKinsey & Company, typical B2B buyers now use six different channels over the course of their decision-making journey.

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

You've probably heard a lot about it, but what exactly is the definition of Omnichannel? Omni means “all” and channel means “route.” Add Marketing and it means all the ways sellers get in front of buyers as buyers gather information to make an informed decision. And today’s B2B buyers are actively informing themselves — both online and offline.

All paths on the buyer's Omnichannel journey should lead to a purchase. Along the way, your buyers are providing you with rich insights about their intent and preferences. That data can be connected and linked with deterministic (factual) data about their companies so you can see the full picture of who your customers and prospects are and what they’re experiencing.

As an Omnichannel Marketer, you have to expertly interconnect the right mix of channels and data to identify, target, and engage with your customers — where and when they expect you to.

B2B Omnichannel Training Guide

Modern marketers know that one engagement channel is not enough. That simply isn't how buyers engage with sellers these days.

That's why you need to commit to Omnichannel Marketing. Are you up for the challenge but not quite sure how to prepare? Read on to learn how.

1) Identify Your Customers

Most B2B marketers are inundated with buyer data. And, your target audience is learning about your brand across both online and offline channels. That’s why this is Omnichannel — not just digital — Marketing. You’ll need to master the best of all relevant channels to be competitive.

For example, a buyer at a company could start as an anonymous visitor on your website, captured by your web analytics tool, and then become known to you via a site visitor identification service or completed web form when they download your whitepaper. At the same time, an associate from the same company could visit your booth at an industry event and end up in your CRM system.

As this first-party data is collected across your sales and marketing systems, it’s imperative you stitch them together. In order for your Omnichannel Marketing strategy to succeed, you need to build a view of which accounts are engaging with you, link related contacts, and then enrich those records with third-party deterministic company and contact data built for B2B marketing. Going a step further, layering on associated insights around intent, buying headquarters, company growth trajectory builds the most actionable picture. To summarize:

• Identify active customer channels. Coordinate with internal marketing counterparts to identify all channels where your customers interact with your brand.
• Unify your customer data. Apply a persistent identifier like the Dun & Bradstreet D‑U‑N‑S^® Number where your customer data resides for improved attribution, segmentation and targeting.
• Complete the customer picture. Enhance your first-party customer data with deep third-party company, contact and intent data for segmentation analysis.

Now you have account profiles enhanced with behavioral and firmographic attributes. Integrated in one place, you are prepared for the next step toward Omnichannel Marketing — performing analysis of those who interact with your brand to identify which segments to target and then filling the gaps in your audience segments.

2) Identify and Target Your Best Segments

With a unified view of your audience — their identities as professional people and the businesses where they work, along with some online insight — you're ready to perform segmentation analysis to focus on the right companies and contacts most likely to buy your products and services.

Be clear on your goals when analyzng the data so the best audience segments are targeted for your campaigns. Combine firmographic characteristics, such as business size, industry and geography, with predictive indicators of behavior like propensity to buy and customer lifetime value. In this step, you will:

• Perform segmentation analysis. Hone your ideal audience with firmographic and persona insights paired with predictive indicators and website activity.
• Find best new “look-alike” customers. Reach the prospects that match your high-performing segments and uncover companies related to your existing accounts.
• Identify unknown site visitors. Match IPs, cookies, and mobile devices to site visitors — again, linked with a persistent business identifier like the D‑U‑N‑S^® Number to connect online and offline activity.

Having rich account profiles can open audience expansion opportunities. Knowing the attributes of your best customer segments can help you find look-alike prospects with similar profiles. And uncovering the related parent companies, subsidiaries and branches of your most profitable customers can open new doors with existing accounts.

Even more, your website is an amazing source of audience information. Identifying anonymous site visitors further deepens your segmentation competence. Matching visitor IP address logs, web cookies, and mobile device IDs to a persistent business identifier helps you associate unknown visitors with a company and persona. It further connects your online and offline channel data for spot-on targeting and improved conversions.

Now you’re on course for the third step of your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy — engaging with your customers.

3) Engage with Your Customers

Engaging with your customers is the payoff for all the work you’ve done so far.

The reality is your buyers are gathering product information wherever they can find it. So, each interaction matters, and the best campaigns will feel consistent and personalized for your customers.

Your preparation has helped you build the perfect data and platform plan to execute account-based marketing. As you deploy Omnichannel marketing, ensure your campaigns are coordinated with the sales team’s targeted account outreach so your audience has a positive experience with your brand at every touch point.

Throughout your Omnichannel efforts, keep your eye on your data quality and ‘freshness’. Customer data can change at any moment. Our extensive experience with commercial data reveals that in the next 60 minutes, 692 new businesses will open, 12 will file bankruptcy, 90 companies will change their name, and 312 CEO or owner changes will occur. Keeping up with this change could be a full-time job!

Omnichannel Marketing is a B2B reality and the marketers who focus on perfecting a data-inspired approach will be the winners. By keeping your data in order and connected across channels, you will have the audience knowledge you need to deliver a personalized message to specific buyers at the right time and place. You will reap the rewards – higher lead conversion rates, far better customer experience, and most importantly, increased ROI for your Omnichannel Marketing investments.

• Create a personalized experience. Personalize content to what identified contacts care about based on their roles and decision process.
• Be consistent — on screen and on site. Unite digital campaigns with sales team personal outreach, right time emails display retargeting, and event meet-ups.
• Keep your data fresh. Cleanse and update customer data to keep account and contact data current.

4) Commit to Omnichannel Marketing

B2B digital marketers know the key to differentiate and remain competitive is by delivering engaging Omnichannel customer experiences.

One of the many advantages of working with Dun & Bradstreet is clients have options on how to take advantage of our data and insights. Clients can work with solutions from our portfolio, or with partner solutions.

In the case of Omnichannel marketing, Dun & Bradstreet’s acquisition of Lattice Engines brings clients a world-class Customer Data Platform (CDP) that consolidates a single customer view, enables predictive analytics to guide segmentation and then supports consistent omnichannel activation.

In addition, we have partnered with Adobe to help B2B companies drive improved targeting for personalized Omnichannel Marketing campaigns. A single digital experience platform that integrates with other on-premise or cloud solutions, Adobe’s Experience Cloud combines data from Dun & Bradstreet on over hundreds of millions global businesses with online visitor activity and features more than 700 targetable audience attributes.

D&B Visitor Intelligence Within Adobe Analytics

Anonymous visitors are identified by matching IPs, cookies and mobile device IDs to Dun & Bradstreet’s proprietary business identifier the D‑U‑N‑S^® Number, unlocking both company and persona visitor data. Together with Adobe Analytics, marketers get a clear 360-degree view of customers and powerful predictive models to fuel B2B programmatic campaigns, deliver highly personalized site content, and measure marketing success.

Dun & Bradstreet B2B Audience Segments Within Adobe Audience Manager

With over 300 precise B2B audience segments from Dun & Bradstreet available within the Adobe Audience Manager, marketers can build unique audience profiles to identify their most valuable segments and use them across any digital channel.

Omnichannel Marketing preparation and execution requires dedication, persistence, and endurance. Using the tools and techniques outlined in this training guide will help you succeed.