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Demandbase Tech Targeting Trims B2B Marketing Waste

Demandbase has incorporated a new filter in its Demandbase Company-Targeted Advertising platform. The filter, called “Technology Targeting,” lets users target and personalize display ads based on the technology they use. In other words, users can now include the specific criteria of ‘technologies used’ as part of their campaign targeting requirements with the Demandbase platform.

Demandbase did not pick this particular metric — the technology deployed in a company — idly or on a whim, Greg Ott, chief marketing officer at Demandbase, told CRM Buyer.

A Defining Attribute

“The technology that a company uses is an important defining attribute,” Ott said. “One of the most important marketing insights realized in B2B over the years is that you are most likely to sell to companies with similar attributes to those companies that you have sold to in the past.”

For example, a salesperson who finds that a product sells well to companies that happen to use Salesforce.com in house can develop prospect lists to include those, and mainly those, whose companies run on the Salesforce.com platform.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be the CRM system either.

“It might be tech used for the back office system or the supporting platform for their website or the technology they use for their development stack,” said Ott. Any of these elements “could be a critical component in determining the qualified audience for a sales rep.”

A Wide Range of Attributes

Demandbase launched its Demandbase Company-Targeted Advertising late last year. It is a product for B2B advertisers to target and personalize display ads for specific companies.

Demandbase differentiates itself by curating the business prospects that are served ads. Users can define the attributes of the audience that will be served the ad campaign — attributes that now include the type of technology they use.

The company is building out this list of searchable attributes even more, according to Ott.

“As we go forward, we will add custom first-party attributes. That way, customers will be able to tell the system who their existing customers are and where they are in the pipeline,” he explained. “They will then be able to even further tailor the ads, based on what they know about these companies.”

This ability to programmatically optimize a campaign based on customized attributes will be added to Demandbase’s feature set some time in Q2, Ott said.

It will be a key advance for the company’s customers, he added. “We are changing the way in which companies can use display advertising in the B2B space.”

Erika Morphy has been writing about technology, finance and business issues for more than 20 years. She lives in Silver Spring, Md.

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