Ranga Kaliyur

There’s no doubt that B2B sales is increasingly being conducted in a methodical, scientific manner. Using a wide range of metrics and KPIs, this data-driven sales process ensures minimal revenue leakage and optimized pipeline performance. You may have heard of a few common sales metrics: customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, average revenue per user, etc.

This article focuses on a lesser known, yet enormously important metric to monitor & improve the overall health of sales: pipeline velocity. Let’s explore everything you need to know about pipeline velocity; what it is, how to calculate it, and most importantly, how to improve it. 

What is pipeline velocity? 

In short, pipeline velocity is the speed at which qualified opportunities move through the sales pipeline. 

In other words, pipeline velocity is used to measure how quickly leads are being converted into paying customers. This helps understand the efficiency of the sales process and identify areas of improvement. 

Think of a literal pipeline: if it’s chock-full of debris and leaks, the flow of water will be limited and inefficient. On the other hand, if it’s squeaky clean, a large volume of water can flow uninterrupted at maximum speed.

Similarly, a high-velocity sales pipeline results in a consistent, voluminous flow of leads and ultimately, revenue. You can see why it’s so important to keep track of this metric. 

How to calculate pipeline velocity?

Pipeline velocity is calculated using 4 other metrics:

• Opportunities - how many qualified opportunities are in your pipeline?
• Deal size - what is the average contract value of deals in your pipeline?
• Win rate - what percentage of opportunities will likely convert successfully?
• Length of sales cycle - on average, how many days does it take to close a deal? 

Here’s the most commonly accepted pipeline velocity formula:

Pipeline velocity = (Opportunities x average deal size x average win rate) ÷ length of average sales cycle (in days)

Let’s take an example. Say we have 60 qualified opportunities at various stages along the pipeline. The average deal size of these opportunities is $5000. Historically, we’ve observed a win rate of 20% and sales cycles of around 30 days. Accordingly, our pipeline velocity may be calculated as follows:

Extrapolating this, we arrive at a figure of $2000/day x 30 days for $60,000 per month. 

You may notice from the pipeline velocity formula that there are a few ways to improve pipeline velocity:

• Increase number of opportunities
• Increase average deal size
• Increase win rate 
• Decrease length of sales cycle

Each variable is a lever that may be pulled to ramp up pipeline velocity. Of course, the most obvious way is to increase the number of opportunities/leads and deal size (easier said than done!). That being said, improving the buyer experience is a low-hanging fruit that results in dramatic improvements in win rates and quicker sales cycles. 

But what makes improving the pipeline velocity so important anyway? Here are a few benefits of tracking and optimizing pipeline velocity:

Why is pipeline velocity important?

As HubSpot’s director of sales, Dan Tyre, puts it: 

“Sales managers live in fear that their pipeline is a bunch of fluff. In today’s world of instant gratification, uncovering a sense of urgency and establishing sales pipeline velocity is important because it uncovers a slow-moving, or worse, stagnant pipeline”.

1. Understand the overall health of the sales pipeline

Understanding your pipeline velocity helps keep tabs on the overall health of your sales pipeline. By knowing what works and what needs improvement, you can bring iterative, targeted changes to the sales engine. More revenue, less costs — win, win!

2. Ensure accurate sales forecasting

Measuring your pipeline velocity on a regular basis helps with accurate sales forecasting. For instance, taking the previous example, we have a pipeline velocity of $2000 per day, which can be expanded to $60,000 per month or $180,000 for the quarter. Using pipeline velocity is accurate as it’s based on real-time sales data, not estimates. 

3. Improve attribution & ROI

A powerful use-case is realized when pipeline velocity is used in tandem with attribution modeling. Picture this: each of your pipeline sources, broken down by qualified opportunities, deal size, win rate, and of course, pipeline velocity:

In combination with attribution, pipeline velocity can provide valuable insight into the most effective channels — which in turn can help guide marketing decisions and resource allocation. In this case, we see that even though paid social brings in more opportunities, it’s paid search that results in the most ROI given its larger deal size and better win rate.

Sales cycle benchmarks for SaaS

Pipeline velocity itself varies significantly based on the nature and size of the company in question. Instead, here’s a breakdown of the benchmark of length of sales cycles in SaaS

Length of sales cycle:

• Deals < $2000 ACV: 14 days
• Deals < $5000 ACV: 30 days
• Deals < $25,000 ACV: 90 days
• Deals < $100,000 ACV < 90-180 days
• Deals > $100,000 3 - 9 months

Depending on the nature of your business, your win rate should be anywhere from 5-20%. Of course, the number of opportunities and deal size is specific to your product, marketing & sales efforts. It wouldn’t make sense to maintain or refer to benchmarks in this case.

How to improve pipeline velocity?

In short, improving pipeline velocity involves eliminating points of friction along the customer journey and aligning workflows and stakeholders to ensure smooth sailing. Here are a few tactics and strategies to do so:

1. Make the most of existing traffic

Your website is a goldmine of hidden opportunities in the form of yet-to-be-converted accounts. Use an IP-based account intelligence tool (like Factors) to reveal anonymous accounts already engaging with your website, review pages, and ad campaigns. 

Given that these accounts are already familiar with your brand, they’re far more likely to convert: thereby increasing your “number of opportunities” and “win-rate”. 

2. Let visitors experience your work

As companies increasingly move towards product-led growth, it’s becoming all the more important to show, not tell. While not all products (especially those at early stages) can adopt PLG models, it’s really quite simple and effective to put up an interactive product tour on your website. This gives visitors a chance to know a little more about your work before choosing to book a demo, rather than having to go in blind. 

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Again, this likely increases the number of opportunities, reduces average sales cycle length, and improves your win rate. 

3. Document. Everything. Always.  

There’s no doubt that sales demos and discovery calls are important. But more often than not, buyers don’t have the time to sit through another 30-min. Make life easier for your sales reps, CS team, and of course, the customers themselves by introducing comprehensive documentation on everything they might need to know. 

Use-cases, How-tos, Implementation, etc, etc, etc should be easily accessible to anyone interested in your work — to mitigate the risk of unnecessary back-and-forth friction. This will certainly help reduce the length of the sales cycle. 

4. Align relevant stakeholders

A vital, yet often overlooked step is ensuring alignment across marketing, sales, CS, and the customers. This involves timely handoffs, relevant communication, straightforward pricing and product details, and clear PoCs across every stage of the customer journey. This helps both the customer and internal departments streamline the sales process end-to-end.

5. Stay on top of data & metrics 

The accuracy of your pipeline velocity metrics (and any other metric, really) relies heavily on the quality of your data. Ensure you’re regularly maintaining numbers on qualified opportunities, deal size, and length of sales cycle in your CRM so the same may be leverage for pipeline velocity measurement. 

How Factors help monitor & improve pipeline velocity

As important as it is, it can be a tedious, unintuitive chore to measure pipeline velocity — unless you have the right analytics solution, of course :) 

Factors is an AI-fuelled intelligence & analytics platform that helps teams identify, score, and track accounts across the customer journey. We’re talking about automated sales velocity calculations, flexible conversion funnels, IP-based account identification, multi-touch attribution, and more — everything you need to kickstart and refine your ABM process and…pipeline velocity! 

Accelerate B2B Sales with Pipeline Velocity Optimization

Pipeline velocity is a crucial metric that measures how quickly qualified leads convert into customers, enabling businesses to refine their sales process.

It’s calculated using four key factors:

1. Opportunities: The number of deals in your pipeline.

2. Deal Size: The average value of each deal.

3. Win Rate: The percentage of deals successfully closed.

4. Sales Cycle Length: The time it takes to close a deal.

Improving pipeline velocity enhances sales forecasting, boosts ROI, and ensures a healthy pipeline. Strategies include optimizing existing traffic, effectively showcasing products, and aligning stakeholders for smoother deal progression. AI-driven tools like Factors streamline tracking and analysis, making it easier to refine your sales process and drive faster conversions.

Customer centricity is at the heart of a successful business. Delivering value to buyers at every customer journey stage drives sales conversions and retention. This, however, is easier said than done — especially in the case of B2B customer journeys. 

Understanding the customer journey is crucial for modern marketing and sales strategies. With evolving customer behaviors and preferences, it's essential to adapt and refine approaches to address the complexities of how customers interact with brands. 

This journey is no longer a straightforward path but a complex, often non-linear process. To effectively engage with potential customers, businesses need to grasp the intricacies of each stage, especially awareness, consideration, and decision. This blog explains these stages, offering practical insights and strategies based on current industry understanding and research.

TL; DR

• Understanding the customer journey is crucial for B2B marketing and sales success due to its complexity and non-linear nature.
• Customer journeys map out various buyer interactions to track how and why prospects become paying customers. 
• The customer journey consists of 5 broad stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy. 
• Delivering relevant material along each stage ensures that prospects feel understood and valued. This, in turn, contributes to successful journeys and provides practical insights and strategies for each stage.
• Businesses can enhance engagement and build long-term relationships by addressing customer needs and behaviors throughout the journey.
• Factors.ai connects the dots across campaigns, websites, and CRM to map the customer journey using path analysis and account timelines.

The Evolution of Customer Journey Stages

The B2B sales cycle involves several stakeholders and touch points across campaigns, social media, organic efforts, offline events, and more. A customer journey maps out these interactions to track how and why prospects become paying customers. 

Since B2B sales cycles tend to be lengthy, non-linear experiences, it can be challenging to map them accurately without the right tools and frameworks. 

Learn more about customer journey mapping here: The Complete Guide To Customer Journey Mapping.

Traditionally, the customer journey was viewed as a linear process, with prospects moving through clearly defined stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. However, modern perspectives reflect a more nuanced view. Today’s customers might navigate through these stages in a circular or even chaotic manner, reflecting the complexities of contemporary decision-making.

According to Gartner, only 17% of a customer journey is spent directly conversing with the vendor. The remaining 83% takes place through independent research and internal deliberation. Hence, businesses must distribute relevant value at each journey stage — even outside discovery sessions and demo calls.‍

Understanding the Awareness Stage

The awareness stage is where the customer journey begins. At this point, potential customers become aware of a problem or need but have not started actively seeking solutions. It's crucial to recognize that potential customers need help understanding the scope or urgency of their issue during this stage. They may be exploring general trends or innovations without a clear sense of how these relate to their specific needs.

Customers in the awareness stage primarily gather information. They might browse blogs, read articles, and engage with introductory content. Marketing efforts in this stage should focus on educational content that introduces customers to new concepts or challenges. Content such as informative blog posts, eBooks, and webinars can effectively capture their interest and lay the groundwork for further engagement.

Transitioning to the Consideration Stage

As customers move from awareness to consideration, they start recognizing the need for a solution. This transition is often triggered by an internal realization, such as remembering the inefficiency of current processes or the impact of emerging trends. This is a critical phase for businesses where prospects evaluate various solutions to address their identified needs.

During the consideration phase, customers will likely seek detailed information about potential solutions. They will look for case studies, ROI calculators, and in-depth product details to compare options. Effective marketing strategies during this phase should provide comprehensive resources that assist decision-making. This includes offering detailed product descriptions, customer testimonials, and interactive tools that help prospects understand the benefits and value of different solutions.

A few questions to ask here would be:

• Is the value of my product easy to grasp?
• Can people find my business without hassle?
• How does my product compare against competitors in terms of pricing and features?
• What is my unique selling point to convince buyers to pick me over the competition?

At this stage, it’s important to highlight why your product outshines the others with relevant case studies, product webinars, FAQ documentation, and more.

Navigating the Decision-Making Process

The decision stage is where customers are ready to finalize their purchase. At this point, they compare different solutions and make a final choice. However, it's important to note that the decision-making process is sometimes linear. Customers may revisit earlier stages if they encounter new information or if internal factors, such as budget constraints or organizational changes, influence their decision.

The decision stage involves evaluating competitors and making a purchase decision. Marketing efforts should be geared towards removing any final obstacles to purchase. This includes providing clear pricing information, offering competitive comparisons, and addressing any lingering objections. Strong calls to action and easy-to-navigate purchasing processes can significantly impact the final decision.

Circular and Non-Linear Customer Journeys

Modern customer journeys are often circular or iterative rather than strictly linear. Customers might revisit earlier stages as they gather more information or reassess their needs. HubSpot supports this perspective, noting that the customer journey can involve looping back to previous stages, reflecting the dynamic nature of modern decision-making.

To effectively manage this non-linear journey, businesses must be adaptable and responsive. Implementing tools for account scoring and path analysis can help identify where prospects are in their journey and adjust marketing strategies accordingly. For instance, if a prospect shows renewed interest in a particular product feature, it may indicate a return to the consideration phase.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

The customer and buyer journeys are both essential concepts in marketing and sales, but they refer to slightly different processes. Here’s a breakdown:

Leveraging Customer Feedback and Data

Collecting and integrating customer feedback is crucial for refining the customer journey. Feedback at various stages provides valuable insights into customer needs and preferences. By incorporating this feedback, businesses can better align their marketing strategies with customer expectations and improve overall engagement.

Implementing tools for feedback collection, such as surveys and user reviews, can help businesses understand pain points and areas for improvement. Regularly analyzing this data allows for continuous optimization of marketing efforts and enhances the overall customer experience.

Enhance Customer Experience with Personalization

Personalization plays a vital role in managing the customer journey effectively. Tailoring content and interactions based on customer behavior and preferences can significantly enhance engagement. Using data to personalize email campaigns, website content, and product recommendations can create a more relevant and engaging customer experience.

Personalization should be based on insights gained from customer interactions and feedback. Data analytics involves understanding customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. Personalized content can address specific needs and concerns, making it more likely to resonate with the target audience.

The Role of Technology in Managing the Customer Journey

Technology plays a significant role in managing and optimizing the customer journey. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, marketing automation tools, and analytics platforms are essential for tracking and analyzing customer interactions. These tools can provide valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns.

Implementing CRM systems allows businesses to manage customer relationships more effectively by tracking interactions, managing leads, and analyzing data. Marketing automation tools can streamline communication, and nurture leads through personalized content and targeted campaigns. Analytics platforms provide insights into customer behavior, helping businesses make data-driven decisions and optimize their marketing strategies.

Integrating Omnichannel Marketing for a Seamless Journey

In today's digital age, customers interact with brands across multiple channels. Integrating an omnichannel marketing approach ensures a seamless and consistent experience throughout the customer journey. This involves unifying marketing efforts across various platforms such as social media, email, and in-store experiences.

An effective omnichannel strategy involves synchronizing marketing messages and ensuring that customer interactions are consistent regardless of the channel. This enhances the customer experience and provides a holistic view of customer behavior, enabling better decision-making and more personalized interactions.

Difference Between Customer Journey and Sales Funnels

While the customer journey and sales funnel are often used interchangeably, they represent different aspects of the purchasing process.

The sales funnel is a linear model that outlines a customer's stages, from awareness to purchase. It typically includes stages such as awareness, interest, decision, and action. The funnel model focuses on guiding customers through a sequence of steps toward a final conversion. It's a valuable tool for visualizing and managing the sales process but can oversimplify the complexity of modern customer interactions.

In contrast, the customer journey is a broader concept encompassing all customer interactions with a brand, from initial contact to post-purchase experiences. It acknowledges that customer interactions are not always linear and may involve multiple touchpoints and feedback loops. The customer journey model emphasizes the importance of understanding and optimizing the entire experience, including emotional and contextual factors, rather than just focusing on driving conversions.

The Importance of Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is a valuable tool for visualizing the customer experience. It helps businesses understand customers' various touchpoints and interactions with the brand. By mapping out the customer journey, companies can identify potential pain points and opportunities for improvement.

Creating detailed customer journey maps is essential to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. These maps should include all journey stages, from initial awareness to post-purchase interactions. Regularly updating and analyzing these maps allows businesses to stay attuned to evolving customer needs and optimize their marketing strategies.

Tracking Customer Journey Maps with Factors.ai

Factors.ai provides a robust platform for tracking and analyzing customer journey maps. This tool offers valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and interactions across various touchpoints.

With Factors.ai, you can:

1. Visualize Customer Journeys

Create detailed maps illustrating how customers interact with your brand through different stages. This visualization helps identify critical touchpoints and understand the overall customer experience.

2. Analyze Customer Behavior

Track customer actions, preferences, and engagement patterns. Factors.ai provides data-driven insights that inform your marketing and sales strategies, allowing you to tailor your approach based on actual customer behavior.

3. Optimize Touchpoints

Use the insights gained from journey maps to optimize customer touchpoints and enhance the overall experience. Factors.ai enables you to identify pain points and improvement areas, helping you refine your strategies for better results.

4. Measure Impact

Assess the impact of interactions and touchpoints on customer satisfaction and conversion rates. Factors.ai offers tools to measure the effectiveness of your efforts and make data-driven decisions to drive better outcomes.

By leveraging Factors.ai, you can better understand the customer journey and make informed decisions to enhance engagement and drive success.

Building Long-Term Customer Relationships

The end goal of managing the customer journey effectively is building long-term customer relationships. This involves facilitating a smooth journey from awareness to a decision and ensuring ongoing engagement and satisfaction post-purchase. Loyalty programs, personalized follow-ups, and excellent customer service are crucial to fostering long-term relationships.

Post-purchase engagement is crucial for maintaining customer loyalty and encouraging repeat business. This can include sending personalized thank-you emails, offering exclusive discounts, and providing excellent customer support. Companies can turn satisfied customers into brand advocates who contribute to long-term success by continuously nurturing customer relationships.

Optimize Your Customer Journey for Better Conversions

Understanding and optimizing the five stages of the customer journey - Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy - can significantly impact customer engagement and business growth.

Here’s how:

1. Awareness: Educate potential customers with valuable content that addresses their pain points and introduces your brand.

2. Consideration: Provide in-depth solution comparisons, case studies, and testimonials to help prospects evaluate their options.

3. Decision: Ensure a seamless purchasing experience with clear pricing, demos, and a frictionless checkout process.

4. Retention: Build long-term relationships with personalized engagement, exceptional customer support, and loyalty programs.

5. Advocacy: Turn satisfied customers into brand advocates by encouraging reviews, referrals, and community engagement.

By refining each stage, businesses can enhance customer experiences, increase conversions, and drive sustainable growth.

In a nutshell

Navigating the modern customer journey requires a comprehensive understanding of the various stages and an adaptable approach to marketing. The transition from awareness to consideration is a critical phase that demands targeted strategies to address evolving customer needs. Businesses can better engage with prospects and drive successful outcomes by focusing on educational content, detailed product information, and practical decision-making support.

Understanding that the customer journey is often non-linear and iterative allows businesses to remain flexible and responsive. By focusing on each stage and addressing your customers' unique needs and behaviors, you can achieve long-term success and foster a positive relationship with your audience.

Factors.ai can help track each stage, from awareness to advocacy. To see Factors.ai in action, book a personalized demo here!

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FAQs on 5 Stages Of Customer Journey

1. What is a customer journey, and why is it important for businesses?

The customer journey is the complete experience a customer has with a brand, from the first interaction to post-purchase. It is important because it helps businesses understand customer behaviors and needs at each stage, allowing for better engagement, sales conversions, and long-term relationships.

2. How can businesses track and improve the customer journey?

Businesses can track the customer journey using tools like Factors.ai, which provides insights into customer behavior, engagement patterns, and pain points. By analyzing this data, businesses can optimize touchpoints, improve customer experience, and enhance overall marketing strategies.

3. What are the 5 stages of a customer journey?

The 5 stages of a customer journey are:

1. Awareness: The customer recognizes a problem or need.
2. Consideration: The customer explores potential solutions.
3. Decision: The customer chooses a solution and makes a purchase.
4. Retention: The business focuses on keeping the customer satisfied and engaged.
5. Advocacy: Satisfied customers recommend the brand to others.

With a market share of 83% and its brand name officially a verb in the dictionary, it's no secret that Google is the most dominant search engine on the planet. This, in turn, makes search ads or PPC one of the most popular marketing channels for marketers as well. In fact, as much as 65% of SME businesses run PPC search ad campaigns on Google — with nearly 80% of teams claiming it's a necessity for success.

That being said, Google ad campaigns are not without their drawbacks, especially for B2B marketers. Google ads primarily rely on keywords and searcher intent in deciding when and where to display ads. Account-based marketers, however, would rather have a say in who to display their ads too as well. 

For example, rather than blowing through budgets by displaying ads to everyone that looks up “CRM software”, an ABM marketer may prefer showing their ads only to a list of 1,000 specific target accounts. This way, wasted spends may be eliminated and bids may be raised, given the narrow target audiences.   As it stands, however, Google supports a rudimentary and largely ineffective approach to audience building and segmentation for its ads. The following blog explores these limitations and highlights a better way to build audience segments with Factors.ai.

Let’s dive in.

As it stands: Google Ads audience targeting

Google Ads supports the ability to to reach people based on who they are, their interests and habits, what they’re actively researching, or how they've interacted with your business via Audience Segments.

How Audience Segments works

Google’s audiences are made up of segments of people with specific interests, intents, and demographic information based on Google’s database. Advertisers may choose from a wide range of segments such as “music fans”, “people shopping for bicycles”, or “people that have visited your website”. This data is estimated based on people’s engagement with Google’s own products and third-party websites. Specifically to Search ads, Google supports 4 types of Audience Segments:

1. Affinity segments: Reach users based on their passions, habits, and interests
2. Detailed demographics:  Reach users based on long-term life facts.
3. In-market: Reach users based on their recent purchase intent
4. Your data: Reach users that have interacted with your business.some text
   1. Website and app visitors: Reach people who have visited either your website or apps.
   2. Customer Match: Reach your existing customers based on your CRM data.‍
   3. Similar segments: Reach new users with similar interests to your website visitors or existing customers.

In addition to this, Google also supports Custom Segments and Life Events as segment types for it’s other ad channels (Display, Videos, etc).

Limitations with Audience Segments

In theory, Audience Segments sound super valuable. Based on your selection of Audience segments, Google’s AI models will automatically choose the right audience to best fit the needs of your campaign. However, a closer inspection reveals inherent limitations with each of the four approaches: 

• Affinity segments, detailed demographics and in-market segments are primarily tailored for B2C and D2C use-cases. That is, they’re built to cater to audiences based on individual interests, as opposed to account-level buying intent. They may work well to identify and target “skiing enthusiasts”, these audience segments often struggle with “B2B SaaS teams looking for a CRM”.
• Your data audiences segments do a slightly better job in that they attempt to target audiences based on existing brand engagement. Still, it’s fraught with limitations. According to Google’s advertising policy, Google advertisers may only upload customer data, not prospecting data from their CRM. This is of course, extremely limiting given that the majority of your total addressable market may not be actively engaging with your brand. Furthermore, Google’s own retargeting capabilities are limited to a vague set of website visitors (via Google Analytics) as opposed to comprehensively enriched audiences across website traffic, LinkedIn ads, and other channels. 

That being said, if you provide Google enough data about your target audience members via Customer Match lists, it can spot your target accounts and serve them, and them alone, your ads.

‍Long story short, Google’s native targeting mechanisms exist by the name of Audience Segments. However, this isn't, in its current form, very helpful to B2B marketers. In the following section let’s explore how Audience Segments may be used as a jumping off point in tandem with an account intelligence and activation tool such as Factors.ai to make the most of your targeted ads.

Better Google audiences & targeting with Factors.ai

What if you could retarget existing customers with personalized ads on upselling opportunities? Or vary your bids based on buying stage and ICP fitment? Or re-engage with long gone MQLs and lost opportunities with YouTube ads or GDN? These are a few examples of the powerful use-cases supported by Factors.ai for your Google Ads. Here’s how it works:

1. Identify and enrich: Factors identifies and enriches anonymous companies engaging with your website, LinkedIn ads, and G2 pages. These companies may be segmented via a combination of granular engagement and firmographic criteria within Factors. These segments may be as straightforward or involved as you’d like. A straightforward segment may look like: “US-based software companies” while involved segments may look like: “US-based software companies with 100-999 employees that have viewed at least one LinkedIn ad and visited the pricing page”. Create as many segments as you’d like depending on your intended objectives and granularity. 
2. Fire into Google Analytics: The next step involves firing relevant events (in this case, an event is an engaged company that matches your segment criteria) into Google Analytics. As you might recall, Google Ads will only retarget website visitors and contacts that have been recorded in GA or your CRM. Pushing these audience segments from Factors into GA acts as proxy to this. 
3. Push from GA into Google Ads: Now that you have built up segments in Google Analytics, it’s a simple matter to push said accounts into Google Ads for further targeting across search ads, videos ads, display ads, and more. Here are a few more ways in which you can use this flow:

How you can use Factors.ai + Google Ads

In addition to the aforementioned use-cases, here are a few more ways to leverage Factors.ai:

Variable RSA

Regardless of the size of your business, your marketing team is working with a budget. Accordingly, most marketers focus their efforts on specific, relatively low-volume keywords so as to not blow their budgets on irrelevant clicks from high-volume keywords. With Factors, however, you can have the best of both worlds by bidding on broader keywords and response search ads only for the companies you care about. For example, you may bid $2 for the long tail keyword “CRM software for US-based SMEs” but bid $6 for the short tail keyword “CRM software” only for the Audience Segment you care about. This way, the higher bid ads will be displayed only when your target accounts are searching for it — as opposed to the entire internet.

Granular targeting 

Given marketing’s limited budgets, you could choose to focus your ad spend only on companies that meet a super specific engagement and ICP criteria as the one highlighted earlier (“US-based software companies with 100-999 employees that have viewed at least one LinkedIn ad and visited the pricing page”). This way, you know that your ads will be served only to highly engaged accounts with explicit buying intent. This smaller pool of target accounts also enables you to raise bids more aggressively given the focused scope of audiences.

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Cross-channel targeting

A key aspect of the account-based market is targeting (and retargeting) accounts across channels. At the moment, Google Ads only supports the ability to target accounts visiting your website or in your CRM. With Factors, this reach may be expanded to companies viewing your LinkedIn ads, engaging with your G2 pages, or simply part of your ABM target accounts list. These segmented accounts may then be automatically targeted across your search ads, display ads, videos ads, LinkedIn ads, mail outreach, and more with Factors’ code-free workflow automations. 

Looking to learn more about Lead Forensics pricing, features, and more? The following article provides a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know about Lead Forensics pricing. 

Lead Forensics is a popular B2B website visitor identification tool that reveals anonymous companies visiting a website and surfaces relevant contact details (Email, Phone numbers, etc) within those companies for outreach and targeting. Lead Forensics is used primarily by B2B marketers, sales folk, and agencies to leverage existing website traffic to drive sales revenue and marketing ROI. 

Lead Forensics Pricing & Plans

Lead Forensics offers two plans: Essential and Automate. Essential is designed for small to medium sized businesses to identify anonymous businesses viewing your website, unlock relevant contact data (phone numbers, mail ID, etc) and manage existing leads. Automate offers all this, plus additional features such as custom workflows, sequence actions (or as they call it, The Orchestrator), advanced CRM integrations and Fuzzy matching algorithm to maintain data hygiene. 

Here’s a detailed feature overview of how the two plans compare to each other:

Source

Note that:

• Lead Forensics offers a 7-days free trial
• Lead Forensics does not offer a free plan

Unfortunately Lead Forensics does not openly reveal its pricing details. You’ll have to reach out to their sales team for an accurate quote based on your requirements and scale. That being said, we’ve dug deep to find what we can about Lead Forensics’ pricing:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Lead Forensics pricing runs between around $250 to several thousand per month, depending on the volume of website traffic. Multiple reviews also highlight that obtaining contact data (phone numbers, email addresses, etc) cost an additional fee on top of the monthly platform subscription fee

To be fair, the few reviews that do provide hints into Lead Forensics pricing are…well, unhappy customers. Ignoring their not-so-great opinions of the product, we can see that Lead Forensics charges these users approximately £209 + vat per month (or $260/mo) and $500 per month respectively. 

“To ensure a right sized solution for each of our clients, our pricing model is based upon relevant B2B traffic to a website or specified web pages. We offer a free trial period to ascertain the traffic volumes over a one week period. After which time, we will produce a bespoke proposal tailored to your business and your visitor traffic levels. We are committed to producing the right package and proposal for your business, which is why we don't have an off the shelf pricing model.” - Lead Forensics

Lead Forensics Reviews

Lead Forensics claims to maintain one of the world’s largest B2B IP-databases. But how do Lead Forensics customers find the platform to be on a day-to-day basis? Here’s what reviews have to say about user experience with Lead Forensics: 

In Summary 

Lead Forensics Benefits:

• Intuitive onboarding 
• Customer support

Lead Forensics Drawbacks: 

• Data inaccuracy
• Cost

Lead Forensics Rating:

• G2: 4.3/5
• Capterra: 3.4/5 
• TrustRadius: 2.6/10

Lead Forensics Alternatives

There are several account identification and intelligence solutions out there. Here are a few common Lead Forensics alternatives to consider:

• Factors.ai - for data-accuracy and advanced analytics, scoring, and attribution 
• Leadfeeder (Now Dealfront) - for EU-centric account intelligence
• Clearbit - for accounts and contact level intelligence

Factors is a leading account intelligence solution that helps B2B teams identify, qualify, and convert anonymous website traffic. Factors works with industry-standard data partners to provide accurate, cost-effective account intelligence. Why Factors over Lead Forensics? 

• Better data: Factors identifies up to 64% of anonymous traffic — that’s 27% more accounts than the closest alternatives. 
• Better intent signals: Factors stands out from alternatives in that it captures intent signals (ad views, impressions, page views) from LinkedIn and G2 in addition to website activity for holistic account engagement tracking.
• Better deals: While Lead Forensics doesn't openly reveal prices, internal demos reveal that Factors provides far more cost-effective plans. Learn more here: factors.ai/pricing
• Better analytics: Factors is built upon strong analytics and attribution foundations. As a result, it provides granular website tracking, path analysis, timelines, and more. 

FAQ

1. What does Lead Forensics do? 

Lead Forensics tracks business IPs to identify anonymous website traffic at an account-level. Once a visiting company has been identified, Lead Forensics also shares relevant contact information such as mail IDs and phone numbers to streamline outreach and targeting. 

2. What is the lead forensic code?

The Lead Forensics code is a tiny piece of code placed on a business website. It’s this code that enables users to identify websites visitors’ business IP addresses. This IP is then matched with an IP database to reveal business names and properties.

We’re delighted to announce our partnership with leading B2B marketing intelligence platform, Clearbit! 

With this partnership, users can leverage Clearbit’s extensive intelligence database in tandem with Factors’ proven analytics platform to identify, qualify and convert accounts like never before. 

Not a Clearbit customer yet? No worries! You’ll still be able to enrich anonymous accounts with over 100+ firmographic & technographic attributes through Factors at no additional cost. 

If you’re already using Clearbit, you can simply connect Factors to your Clearbit account using an API key. 

We’re super excited for the immense value this partnership brings to our customers. Here are a few ways in which you can expect to make the most of Clearbit + Factors. 

What’s in it for you?

Factors is a tried and tested analytics & attribution solution loved by 200+ high-growth SaaS teams. This partnership with Clearbit complements our core features — web analytics, multi-touch attribution, account scoring, path analysis, and more — with robust IP-based intelligence and account enrichment. Here’s what’s in it for you:

1. Identify, qualify & convert 

It’s commonly accepted that only about 4% of website traffic actually reveals itself through form submissions or sign-ups. This means that the majority of accounts engaging with your brand, remain anonymous! Now, with IP-based intelligence & enrichment, you can accurately identify hidden accounts visiting your website, engaging with product reviews, or simply viewing ad campaigns. Once identified, you can configure custom scoring criteria to qualify high-intent accounts based on their firmographics, technographics, and engagement.

This is tremendously valuable to marketing and sales teams as it’s far more effective to prioritize in-market, brand-aware accounts as opposed to cold accounts from generic ICP lists. 

With Factors x Clearbit, you can accurately identify up to 50% of anonymous accounts already engaging with your brand. These accounts may then be filtered down to ICP accounts based on firmographic and technographic properties such as industry, size, geo, techstack and more. 

Now, it’s probably unlikely that all ICP accounts on your website are ready-to-buy. Some may be further along the funnel than others. Factors helps qualify sales-ready accounts based on their engagement across websites, product reviews, and ad impressions. 

Let’s take 5 milestones to explain: 

1. visits pricing page 
2. visits G2 review 
3. reads blog for > 30s  
4. views LinkedIn ad 
5. opens sales email 

On Factors, you may configure your scoring model to tag accounts that complete all 5 milestones as “hot”, accounts that complete none as “ice”, and accounts that complete 2-3 milestones as “warm”. Note that this scoring model is completely customizable within Factors based on the touchpoints you care about most.

Ultimately, this combination of intelligence and analytics empowers teams to go after the right accounts at the right time to drive markedly more conversions. 

But don’t just take our word for it…

2. Build workflows, effortlessly

Go-to-market teams should spend less time worrying about operations and logistics and more time iterating on strategy to drive pipeline. To support this approach, Factors can push relevant account data to nearly any other platform (CRMs, MAPs, internal comms, etc) in the world using Webhooks (Zapier, Make, etc). 

For example, let’s say your ICP looks something like this: US-based software companies with 500-1000 employees using HubSpot. With Factors, you can configure trigger alerts so when an account that matches this criteria visits a high-intent page (like factors.ai/pricing), Factors can automatically:

• Push this data to a retargeting list in your CRM 
• Notify the relevant SDRs on Slack 
• Initiate a sequence on your mail automation tool

This way, 

• The marketing team can retarget warm accounts with relevant ad campaigns 
• SDRs can reach out to relevant prospects while the iron’s still hot 
• And known prospects can be placed in a nurture sequence

All without any manual intervention. 

In short, Factors can automate a lot of the heavy lifting, so teams can focus on what they do best.

Learn more about how customers use Factors for intent-based outreach and retargeting.

3. Make the most of marketing

If you’re like most B2B teams, you’re investing significantly in paid ads, content & seo, events & webinars, and other marketing efforts. For the most part, however, it's challenging to measure the impact of these efforts. 

Let’s take content, for example. Without the right tools, marketing teams have little visibility into which anonymous accounts are reading blogs, how accounts are engaging with case-studies, and what the bottom-line impact of content assets are. 

As a solution to this, Factors and Clearbit complement each other seamlessly to: 

• Identify anonymous organic traffic to monitor traffic quality
• Measure engagement with metrics such as time spent & scroll-depth
• Attribute the impact of ungated content assets on conversions & pipeline

There are several other ways in which our customers are leveraging Clearbit’s intelligence with Factors’ analytics and attribution. If you’re curious to learn more, schedule a demo with our team here:

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Why Clearbit?

While it’s true that there are several B2B intelligence platforms and alternatives out there, Clearbit stands out as one of the best when it comes to accuracy, technology and value. As a leader in this space, Clearbit is home to one of the largest, most reliable IP databases &  infrastructure in the market.

We believe that this partnership will further empower our customers to discover otherwise hidden buyer intent, build robust audience lists, analyze the impact of content and campaigns, and improve customer experience and conversions across the board. 

FAQ

1. Do users need a separate Clearbit account to use this?

Nope! You do not need to be a Clearbit customer. Our partnership allows users to leverage Clearbit data as part of Factors for no additional charge. Learn more about how this works over a quick chat with our team! 

2. How does pricing work?

Access to Clearbit data is part and parcel of our pricing plans at Factors. You won’t have to pay extra or purchase Clearbit separately. Instead, our pricing is based on the volume of accounts identified and monthly unique visitors. Learn more about our pricing here: factors.ai/pricing

3. Can Factors identify email IDs or phone numbers of anonymous website visitors?

No. Factors works with data partners to discover account-level information such as company name, industry, size, technographics, and much more. Factors does not identify or distribute anonymous user level information such as phone numbers or mail IDs. 

4. Is Factors privacy compliant? 

Absolutely! Factors is aligned with GDPR & PECR privacy standards. Factors is also SOC2 Type II certified. Rest assured, your data is yours alone — and is protected vigilantly with industry-standard security practices. Moreover, Factors only de-anonymizes IP data at an account-level. We do not identify or distribute anonymous user-level data (personal phone numbers, mail IDs, etc) whatsoever. 

5. How does IP-based identification work?

Read more about how IP-based account identification works here.

With over 750 million users, LinkedIn is by far the largest professional network in the world. 

What started off as a simple platform for like-minded business people to connect, has transformed into a social media behemoth. Today, LinkedIn offers everything from algorithmic news feeds, LinkedIn groups, live streaming, and of course, a wide range of advertising mechanisms. 

What does this mean for us B2B marketers? Opportunity.

LinkedIn’s massive database of professionals, companies, and industries may be leveraged by marketers to reach out to the right audience with the right message and drive high-quality opportunities. 

‍But there’s no hiding behind the fact that paid marketing on Linkedin can be expensive and competitive — especially for Seed/Series A companies looking to make limited budgets go a long way. 

As a result, early-stage teams generally prefer spending on Search Ads over LinkedIn. The former is believed to drive more high-intent leads and in turn, better return on ad spend. Conversely, LinkedIn is thought to be better suited to bigger companies for expensive, top of the funnel branding campaigns.

‍This is not necessarily true. 

When executed well, LinkedIn ads can be an effective channel to generate high-quality leads and bottom-of-the-funnel pipeline  — even for smaller teams. This chapter of our no-nonsense guide explores the Linkedin ads framework we’ve crafted over months of wins, mistakes & learnings as an early-stage start-up.

‍We won’t be discussing the basics of Linkedin Ads given that there’s loads of resources available on this as is. Instead, you can expect to find practical guidelines to pick off low-hanging fruit and drive RoAS. 

‍Linkedin Ads For Series A: Framework & Priorities‍‍

Quick results with limited spend and minimal effort is at the core of our LinkedIn ads framework. With that in mind, we suggest using LinkedIn ads to target the following audiences: 

1. Retarget prospects that are already engaging with your company
2. Target customers of your competitors 
3. Target top of the funnel ICP audience with ABM 

Given that not all accounts are equally likely to convert, It’s important to prioritize the right set of audiences. Here’s an order of priority we’ve been seeing growing success with:

1. Your first priority should be to retarget accounts that are already interacting with your brand — visiting high-intent pages, engaging with G2 reviews, or viewing previous LinkedIn ads. Given that these accounts already know about your product/company in some capacity, we can safely assume that they’re problem, solution AND brand aware. 

This audience is at a stage where they’re researching solutions (including yours!) to solve a challenge that they’re actively facing. This set can also include lost and churned accounts that have returned to engage with your brand. 

In short, this audience is relatively further along the sales funnel and accordingly, will require the least effort (and spend 😉) to convert. 

‍2. Next, look to target customers of your competitors. While this set of audience may not be aware of your brand, they’re certainly aware of the problem and are in fact already using an alternate solution. This implies that they’re ready to buy and may consider switching to your solution if it’s a better fit. In terms of ideal customer profile, it doesn't get much better than this. Use sales intelligence tools like Builtwith or Slintel to generate competitor customer lists. 

‍3. Finally, target your general ICP audience with account-based marketing (ABM). This consists of the set of accounts that fit your ideal customer profile criteria (based on size, industry, revenue range, technographics, etc). Although this set of audience would make great customers, they’re unaware of your brand as well as the problem your product is solving for. Accordingly, these accounts will require the most effort (and spend) to convert. 

With this priority framework established, let’s explore how to build these audience lists, run ads that convert, and optimize paid LI ads.

I. Build Audience Lists

‍For Retargeting…

Here’s a 3 step process on creating an audience list for LinkedIn retargeting

‍Step 1. Identify accounts from your website, reviews, and ad impressions

Use LinkedIn’s website tracking pixel in tandem with IP-based account identification tools to discover anonymous companies engaging with your website, G2 reviews, and previous LinkedIn ads.

Tactical Tips: LinkedIn’s website tracking pixel is limited to the number of visitors who actually accept cookies upon landing. This may be an issue for smaller teams with limited traffic because visitors accept cookies only 11% of the time. This may dramatically shrink your audience list. Luckily, there’s a quick fix: 

‍Use an “opt-out” cookie policy instead of an “opt-in” policy everywhere outside the EU to have cookies accepted by default. Both policies are privacy compliant outside the EU, but an “opt-out” policy will result in far more accounts identified by the LinkedIn pixel.

Step 2. Filter down your targets

Depending on the size of your website, you may identify hundreds or thousands  of unique accounts every week. It’s probably unrealistic to go after each and every one of them. Instead, refine your list by only targeting accounts that visit high-intent pages (Pricing, Landing pages, Comparison blogs, G2 reviews etc) and fit your ideal client profile based on geography, industry, technographic, revenue range, etc. Once complete, you’ll be left with a list of high-fit, high-intent ICP accounts. 

Tactical tips: In order to launch a campaign on LinkedIn, you must target at least 1,000 members. (Or 300 members, with Matched Audience — but we strongly discourage the use of MA). Given that you’re likely targeting multiple people from the same company, a final list of 500 accounts is a good starting point. 

3. Build a target member list:

At this stage, we have a brand-aware and possibly in-market set of ICP accounts ready for targeting. Use a sales intelligence tool like Apollo, Zoominfo, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator to create a list of at least 1,000 relevant members to target based on their roles, seniority, etc. 

‍Tactical tips: We find that it’s valuable to create awareness across the entire company you’re targeting. Accordingly, we strongly recommend targeting at least 2-3 employees from every account: final users, their managers, and the final purchase decision makers. 

‍For Competitor Customers & ABM

The process for creating audience lists in these cases is straightforward. Skip straight to building target member lists using sales intelligence tools like Builtwith, Zoominfo, Slintel, etc. Construct lists of competitor customers and ICP accounts by apply the right filters (technographics, firmographics, roles) so you’re left with the right contacts from the right companies. 

Now, we’re all set to run highly targeted ads that drive conversions.

‍II. Run ad campaigns

At this stage, we have a primed list of high-fit, high-intent audience fit for targeting. It's safe to assume that every member we’re targeting would find the product/service we’re marketing to be, at the very least relevant, if not of explicit interest to them. 

So now, we run great ads! Here are a few point to keep in mind:

‍Define objectives

The objective and approach of your LinkedIn ads should differ based on the audience you’re targeting. For instance, retargeting ads should look to convert brand-aware accounts and accordingly can be far more direct as compared to ABM ads targeted towards brand-unaware accounts. Here’s how to think about it: 

With retargeting ads, ads you’re targeting members that have already visited your website, interacted with your review pages, or viewed a previous ad. We needn’t create brand awareness from scratch. Instead, we should aim for these ads to generate sign-ups. Accordingly, use straightforward lead-gen forms instead of content assets or website redirects here. In this case, leads generated and conversion rate will be the two key objectives. You may also track cost per conversion and cost per lead. Targets for these will vary based on your budget and ACV. 

Tactical tips: Keep the number of form fields to a minimum. Work mail and phone number are plenty. 

With ads targeted towards competitors' customers and ICP audience in general, it’s better to use a 2-stage funnel: the first stage involves running comparison ads or branding ads to create awareness about your solution. The second stage involves converting target accounts with standard lead gen forms. While this is a more elaborate process than a simple lead gen form, it’s sure to drive better conversions as the target audience will be aware of your work, and thus more likely to submit a form. 

‍Make a mark with messaging

You do not want to run pesky ads and have people mute your campaigns. It’s vital to incorporate customer research into your ad copy and designs to capture positive attention. Even little things like line breaks and emojis can make or break your campaign. 

Remember to sell on every element of the ad: the intro text,headline, in-image text, description, etc. Most users won’t consume every part of the ad in its entirety — so ensure that each element is persuasive in its own right:

Depending on the target audience, you’ll want to use different messaging. The two examples shared above are relatively more direct with a clear objective — “let us give you a free trial”. This will probably be better suited to retargeting campaigns. 

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For ads targeted towards competitors, however, comparative ad creatives are likely to perform better. That being said, it’s also important to stay on the right side of the law and respect copyright and trademark policies. Here are a few competitor ad creatives we’ve found success with:

Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.   

Continue to experiment with different ad formats, messaging, and creatives until you identify what clicks. Here are a few examples of ads we’ve found success with:

‍1. Testimonial ads:

2. Before/After ads:

3. Ads with a hook or questions:

And there you have it! Advertising on LinkedIn, when done right, can be a highly effective channel to drive pipeline and revenue. To conclude, here are a few common mistakes to avoid while running LinkedIn ads:

• When using LinkedIn targeting, ensure that job titles are set in inverted commas so LinkedIn only targets users with those specific titles as opposed to related ones. Eg: ‘CMO’, ‘PMM’, etc. 
• Do not use the audience network on LinkedIn as it generally targets irrelevant members resulting in wasted spends.