Influ2 Takes Ad-based Approach To Overcoming ABM Challenges Via 'person-based Marketing'

Marketers may still be getting used to the concept of account-based marketing (ABM) but a B2B advertising startup called Influ2 is suggesting they begin thinking about person-based marketing, with an approach based on a “segment of one.”

Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Influ2 formally launched earlier this week with a platform that draws data from customer relationship management (CRM) systems and other sources to develop specific lists of decision-makers in an organization. Influ2 can then buy and serve ads directly to a CFO or CIO, for instance, and provide analytics back to a marketing team about exactly who clicked on it or engaged in some way.

Dmitri Lisitski, CEO and co-founder at Influ2, suggested the idea of person-based marketing, or PBM, will take enterprise marketers further by digging deeper into their target accounts.

“ABM still brings faceless traffic to your website, while every visitor from your PBM campaign is a lead,” Lisitski told B2B News Network. “Person-based marketing is more efficient, solves the attribution problem, and is truly actionable.”

Influ2 is launching at a time when the online ad industry is struggling to deal with “banner blindness” and ad-blockers, while B2B brands in particular have tended to focus more of their efforts around content marketing programs. However Lisitski said so far, more than 70 per cent of his customer’s ad impressions are from “content ads,” that tease something beyond the mere availability of a product or service.

“Can you imagine that partners of Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz or Sequoia will read a blog of a pre-beta startup? But that’s exactly what we’ve achieved when we first started testing our technology 11 months ago,” he said.

“You can develop an amazing white paper or publish breakthrough insights on your blog, but your target audience might not even notice. We solve the problem of content delivery by showing content ads directly to the decision makers inside your target customers.”

Lisitski said marketers should expect to triple the response rate to their demand generation campaigns through Influ2. He said firms should also think about how the technology, which uses machine learning to deliver the right ads to a particular user, could close more existing deals in their sales pipelines.

“There are a dozen decision makers involved from the customer-side, while your sales is talking to two or three people,” he said. “Senior VPs, CEOs, and finance teams are out of touch, and you can dramatically increase your success rate by building brand awareness among all stakeholders.”

This could represent a major paint point. Although it was more focused around e-mail, a survey from the CMO Council this week showed that 80 per cent of marketers admit they are unable to realize the full revenue potential of their customers.