How To Fine-Tune Your Data Strategies With Webinars

August 8, 2019
Written by Elise Schoening
Published in Blog

The devil’s in the details — or in marketing’s case, the devil’s in the data. Almost every B2B marketer has a data problem, whether it’s getting the right data on target accounts ensuring data is accurate and up to date or aligning sales and marketing around the same data, the list is endless. And thanks to GDPR, the pressure is on to get your data strategies cleaned up and compliant.

But marketers need not stress, cleansing and enhancing customer data may be easier than you think and can yield long-term results. In a recent Buyer Insights and Intelligence webinar, Jack Wildt of ON24 discussed the value of declared data and how marketers can use webinars to capture it at scale and better arm sales reps for conversations.

Understanding The Three Ds Of Data

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Modern marketers often collect a variety of data, including demographic data from form fills and behavioral data from online engagement with content, chatbots and more. But are marketers really gathering all the data they need?

According to Wildt, declared data is the “white whale” of marketing — it has the power to unlock key buyer insights, but few marketers are able to capture it with their current strategies.

“Demographic data is the most wildly available data and it is essentially the who of who you are marketing to,” said Wildt. “Behavioral data is the what. It’s incredibly important; it’s basically the bread and butter of marketing. But we’re noticing that declared data is really our white whale… It’s the why of the people you’re marketing to.”

Leveraging Webinars To Capture Declared Data At Scale

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While traditional tactics such as display advertising and telemarketing may not be equipped to identify and store declared data, other channels such as webinars are. By leveraging webinars as a key part of your go-to-market strategy, Wildt says B2B brands can gain deeper insights into potential customers, cater sales outreach accordingly and better position themselves for success.

“Clicking an ad doesn’t declare anything about yourself,” said Wildt. “Filling out a form might, but it’s not really the most trustworthy thing. You can get declared data from emails, but it’s a very manual process. Webinars really are key; they are really the only way to do it at scale. You have someone’s attention for 50-60 minutes [during a webinar] and if you’re creating engaging content, they’re going to want to speak back to you.”

Driving Sales Conversations With Declared Data

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ON24 uses webinars to survey its audience in real time via polls and Q&As. This data is then captured and integrated into Marketo and used to enhance lead scores according to attendee interest, optimize content based on attendee feedback and start sales conversations. According to Wildt, the company triggers immediate actions based on people’s declared data within a webinar.

“When Jane Doe or Paula Price comes into a webinar and answers a survey or poll in a certain way, we trigger alerts through Salesforce and Marketo and we get people talking,” said Wildt. “We’re facilitating much better sales conversations and ultimately, helping people solve their problems… They’re more engaged with us and we’re able to react better to their engagement with us, so sales can have those great conversations and really understand their pain points and try to solve them.”

Using webinars as part of its go-to-market strategy has helped ON24 improve lead qualification and nurturing. According to the company, prospects with a high engagement score and declared data are 90% more likely to convert from an MQL to SQL.