As marketers, we’re constantly looking to be relevant with our outreach. That’s because we know that relevancy increases the likelihood of recipients engaging with our content. One way to increase your relevancy quotient is to leverage industry news announcements into your marketing campaigns. But to do so, you need to have the right data in place to act quickly on the information – otherwise, your outreach becomes dated or worse yet, irrelevant.
Take, for example, the recent legislation passed by the U.S. government banning federal agencies from using Kaspersky Lab’s anti-virus software. If you are a competitor to Kaspersky, a competitive take away campaign aimed at Kaspersky Lab’s customers would be highly relevant.
Having Technographics In Your CRM Or MAP Systems Lets You Act Quickly On News
If you had your own Kaspersky Lab moment for your industry, how quickly would you be able to act on that information? Well, if you had technographic data (technology install data) in your CRM or marketing automation platform, you’d be able to generate a campaign-ready list of accounts and prospects (who use your competitor’s software) in minutes. In theory, that means you could see the news in the morning and have a campaign ready to go in the afternoon.
News Announcements Provide An Opportunity To Act And Be Relevant
The news about Kaspersky Lab is pretty dramatic, but every day there are a wide range of other types of announcements that can provide us with opportunities to be relevant, including:
- Mergers and Acquisitions, which provide an opportunity to re-evaluate existing technology purchases and look for alternatives;
- Industry Promotions, a great chance of getting out in front of new decision makers;
- New Round of Funding, which could indicate that a startup may have the funding to invest in your solution;
- Negative Reviews, which means bad news on a competitor’s solution gives you a chance to highlight how your technology can help; and
- End of Life, when announcements regarding certain software or hardware being discontinued or no longer being supported allow you to enter the conversation as a potential replacement solution.
Make Integrating Technographics Into Your CRM Or MAP A Priority For 2018
According to the 2017 ABM Benchmark Survey Report by Demand Gen Report, 30% of the companies surveyed said they planned to use technographic data for their ABM programs in 2018 and now you can see why.
Barbara Winters is the VP of Marketing at HG Data. She has more than 20 years of technology marketing experience and a successful track record of growing brand value and revenue through integrated marketing programs. Prior to HG Data, Winters worked at Intel in a variety of marketing roles, from campaigns to market research to branding and messaging. As a non-engineer who has spent her career in tech, both software and hardware, Winters’ expertise revolves around helping brands talk to their customers instead of themselves.
