Mark Huber, Director of Growth at Metadata, hosts a discussion with B2B demand generation leaders on optimizing campaign targeting strategies, featuring insights from Hana Jacover (Director of Demand Generation, MadKudu), Maurice Maxwell (Senior Digital Marketing Manager, LaunchDarkly), and Sidney Waterfall (Senior Director of Demand Generation, Refine Labs).
Go Beyond the ICP
Your ideal customer profile serves as a foundation, but deeper insights require extended research. Recommended approaches include:
- Review CRM data for customer patterns
- Understand your product thoroughly
- Consult cross-functional teams for perspective
Sales and product teams reveal customer language and pain points. Sales calls represent a high-value discovery tool across the entire funnel, offering comprehensive understanding of customer needs.
Target, Test, Then Scale
Start with highly targeted audience segments to validate core assumptions. Once confidence builds, scale gradually:
- Begin with your primary buyer parameters
- Expand through geography, then job titles
- Add product-specific factors
Monitor demo conversion rates to confirm targeting accuracy before expanding budgets and audience sizes.
Approach Intent Data with an Open Mind
Intent data accelerates decision-making when deployed strategically. Important considerations:
- Intent data alone doesn't confirm purchase readiness
- Combine intent signals with existing knowledge
- Pair high-quality data with engagement proximity metrics
- Remember: intent data is beneficial but not mandatory
How to use this resource in evaluation
Use Creating Better Campaign Audiences as a working prompt for your buying committee, not as a standalone takeaway. The useful question is how the idea turns into governed campaign execution: which accounts are included, which contacts are reachable, which channels carry the message, which budget controls apply, and how results are reviewed after launch.
Bring the resource into a demo or internal planning session and ask each owner to inspect a different layer. Demand generation should review the audience and offer logic. RevOps should inspect CRM, marketing automation, and reporting flow. Sales should confirm whether the campaign creates context they can act on. Finance should ask how spend, conversion quality, opportunity creation, and pipeline are connected before budget expands.
- Audience fit: define the exact account, contact, customer, or intent segment this idea should reach.
- Campaign controls: confirm approvals, exclusions, budget limits, creative variants, and launch readiness before spend starts.
- Measurement path: decide which leading indicators matter early and which pipeline outcomes matter before scaling.
- Next action: turn the concept into one reviewed campaign object, one owner, and one follow-up date.
The strongest walkthrough should make the resource concrete: a campaign plan, visible guardrails, and a reporting path that a revenue team can inspect without relying on native ad-platform summaries alone.