Demandbase’s Integration with Marketo Brings Better Targeting to ABM

The general chain of command works like this: After audiences are created in Demandbase, users can launch demand generation campaigns in Marketo targeting these accounts. Customers will also be able to launch account-based ad campaigns with Demandbase directly from Marketo, expanding the first-person contact data in Marketo’s system to reach a broader buying committee outside of a target account.

Account-based marketing is a B2B approach that concentrates ad targeting on a distinct set of target accounts “so that you don’t waste your impressions on folks at companies that will never buy from you,” said Peter Isaacson, Demandbase’s CMO. “You can develop insights and intelligence around those accounts and feed that to your sales team so that they can close more deals.”

This kind of marketing usually involves gathering some kind of intent—small behaviors, like keyword searches, both on a brand’s website and across the broader web—that show certain companies are “leaning in” to a topic related to your particular business.

Through this partnership with Marketo, that same intent data can be married with first party contact details—names, email addresses, phone numbers and more—to better serve ads to potential clients.

“The challenge for marketers is that only a small fraction of your potential customers are identified in any company’s contact list,” Isaacson added. “So if you just market to that contact list, you’re missing—in some cases—90 percent of your market opportunity.”

Marketo imports the information from those contact lists into Demandbase’s platform to expand that list of contacts from the individuals you know to the buying committee that you don’t. Per Demandbase, this will also give customers a “comprehensive view” of the user’s journey, from the first flicker of intent to the click on a particular ad campaign.

“B-to-b marketers consider their contact database a core asset, but they have struggled to leverage it for the account-based campaigns that have become standard,” said Chris Golec, Demandbase’s CEO. “With our expanded partnership, mutual customers can improve the performance of their ABM programs by reaching their key contacts across channels.”