Newer 6Sense Customer Struggling with Intent

ryanrad39

Hi Everyone,

I am Ryan- I work with our sales and marketing teams here at VAI (I am a BDR by title but I have been working more on the marketing side recently looking to adopt an ABM approach). We are a relatively new 6Sense customer; onboarded earlier this year. We are really new to the concept of ABM and Intent Data, so by no means experts here.

We have been running some ad campaigns through 6Sense the last few months, and we are having some struggles with intent. We imported our search keywords from Google Ads but I am running into issues. I am wondering if anyone has encountered the following and maybe what you did to remedy the issue(s):

1. There is basically 100% overlap in the keywords (and the # of times each keyword was researched) that prospects in our funnel are scoring for, as our current customers- customers I know for a fact are not in market for what we offer/looking to switch to a competitor. This makes me think that the companies in our funnel isn't reflective of companies in-market.
2. On a significant number of our deals in our pipeline, the prospective company showed no signs of intent via keywords or otherwise (these opportunities came from other sources like lead gen websites that send us contacts they have spoken to and confirmed they are in market for a solution like ours).
3. On a lot of the clicks/web traffic we get as a result of advertising, the geo location 6Sense is providing of the supposed visitor is nowhere near where the company is located. When I try to find someone to go after at that location, there is never any contacts that can be found anywhere near where 6Sense is saying the location visit is from.

Appreciate any insight anyone has!

Eric Wittlake

@ryanrad39 It sounds like you may need to revamp your intent keywords.

Search terms often include multiple variations of similar terms, to insure an exact match to a search string. Since intent is drawn from the full page, you'll often see a company trigger for a group of related keywords all at once. The overlap is normal, but if it 100%, you can safely remove some of the terms without losing signal, and you'll make the intent keywords more management and easier to quickly read for an account.

If there are a lot of companies that are not showing intent, but you know are in market, you likely need to broaden your intent keywords. Are there broader category keywords or problem statements that are not worth bidding on in search that your intent keywords are missing? Intent picks up research signals earlier in the process, before someone would typically come to your site, so intent should include some of these earlier stage terms that you typically wouldn't use in a search program.

This article has some useful information about configuring your intent keywords: https://revcity.6sense.com/home/discussion/47/best-practices-for-selecting-and-adding-keywords

Jana_Marketing_Maven

First things first: Intent and Google keywords are 2 very different things.

I try to prep my sale team by saying Google (and Bing or whoever) is never going to give us the data on who is searching for what. Intent is really just research activity.

Think about your offering. What pain points to people often talk about when they are looking for your solution? Use that data/info to craft some generic keywords.

Who are your main competitors? Use that data to craft some branded keywords.

Remember that the simpler your keyword is, the more it can be mistaken for other things - we have a keyword for "Vault" but I caution our teams that the data could be related to a story on bank vaults (which has nothing to do with our offerings). So just one or two intents for a given keyword may not be enough.

Use keyword groupings. We offer a bunch of different solutions. I have our keywords grouped so I can easily create ads or segments from them based on industry (of the keyword). Maybe you want to group keywords for small businesses together, or you want to focus on insurance companies. Think about a theme for keywords and group them - keywords can belong to more than 1 group.

Finally, if none of that helps, reach out to your customer success team at 6sense and ask for some assistance.

Good luck!

Brandon McBride

@Jana_Marketing_Maven Coming from an SEO/PPC background, this one took some adjusting. One of our keywords, Change Data Capture, is abbreviated CDC.

Try tracking intent for CDC in the middle of a pandemic...

Edit to add: Pointing out the discrepancy in intent between CDC and Change Data Capture seemed to help.

ryanrad39

@Jana_Marketing_Maven Thanks for that insight!

I put a lot of our competitors in there... ones that I have confirmed that these in market accounts aren't showing intent for are talking to/researching.

We sell Enterprise Resource Planning software, which is commonly abbreviated "ERP." ERP can be a loose term, and encompasses a lot of different software mixed together. I.E. Financial/accounting software, inventory software and warehouse management software can all be parts of an ERP system. The problem is, in our instance, they have to be searching for an ERP system- we can segment the financial or inventory parts of our software to them for example.

The issues we solve with our software varies case by case... every company has what we sell at this point (ERP Software), and sometimes they aren't even having issues with their current system... its just that their current system is old and outdated! But I will have to go through and see if there are some keywords that might be consistent on what we solve.

Most people use the term "ERP" when talking about the software even though its a concept as much as it is a software.

I figured a lot of our keywords, the non-specific ones like "ERP" or "Cloud ERP," would generate a lot of noise, which is why I am seeing my customers not in market score for those.. but I am just surprised that out of the 500+ keywords we do have in the system, some of these accounts are not scoring for a single one of them despite being in market.

@Jana_Marketing_Maven @Brandon McBride what metrics do you all use to test if a keyword is successful or not? Right now I am just using keywords that are synonymous with companies recently added to our pipeline (early stage opportunities) but I wonder if there are other metrics I should be looking at.

Thanks again!

Brandon McBride

I don't. But I probably should. Right now, I operate off of keyword groups and leave the vague ones (like cdc for us) out.

I need to do some cleansing, too. There are a lot of keywords that have zero traction despite having Google traffic because, as @Jana_Marketing_Maven mentioned, they aren't the same.

One of the things I did do is look at use case keywords. Striim can be used for a lot of things and we've pivoted to vertical messaging.

So what types of issues does your ERP solve? Business Process Management might also be good if you're not already tracking it. I used to work for SUSE so we tracked a fair amount around SAP, which is an entire set of keywords on its own.

ryanrad39

Thanks! We had business management software, but I will add business process management.

Quite frankly, there could be hundreds of different issues that our ERP solves. They could have issues in accounting, inventory, warehousing or a combination of all that is causing them to not be efficient.

Oftentimes, companies will replace their ERP system, not because they are having issues with their current system, but its just antiquated and outdated, so they want to look at a more modern solution.

But, I guess I am having a hard time differentiating SEO/Google Search from Intent keywords. I understand 6Sense is tracking keywords on pages and not necessarily what they typed into the search engine. But wouldn't they still have to type in something similar to what is on that page they are going to? For example, if I reading an article on the "top 5 ERP systems for wholesale companies," wouldn't I have had to type some similar into the search engine to get there?

Brandon McBride

Yes and no. They may get there through a referral link or by directly going to, for example, Forbes.com and finding an ERP-related article from there.

6Sense isn't looking at what the article is optimized for, but what it's about. So while we may optimize our Intro to Change Data Capture blog for informational intent keywords like "what is change data capture", 6Sense sees "change data capture" and "ETL" (extract, transform, load).

Instead of thinking about them in terms of keywords, replace "keywords" in your brain with "topics". What does the article discuss? Your long-tail keyword above would probably cover ERP and wholesale as topics. Or if you're looking to identify accounts who want better ERP software for their account system, ERP and accounting could be keywords topics.

For me, though, I've found the best way to figure out what works is to add a bunch of keywords and see what sticks. There isn't a limit. I've found some stuff that's great and some stuff that isn't. When nobody's researching it, it's either the wrong topic or there isn't much content about the topic - in our case, strategic decommissioning of telecom equipment - which means I have to figure out what people are actually reading about when they want to do that thing.

I'm not sure whether to trim my list of keywords or leave them up there as a reminder not to try those again.

ryanrad39

Thanks @Brandon McBride!

I will keep adding keywords... I'll try to find some articles that my prospects might be reading, and what topics we might be missing.

Jana_Marketing_Maven

we don't have any hard and fast metrics for if a keyword is 'working' or not. I don't ever like to consider a keyword in and of itself as an indicator. It's typically a combination of things. So when I am pulling segments that use intent, I will look for orgs that have been researching at least 2 keywords from a keyword group at least 3 times within a month (your mileage may vary but i would suggest playing with those variables).

We also have groups that are hyper focused on a specific solution - their alerts show ONLY their intent activity (which is a HUGE PIA because we can't use keyword groups for alerts right now, hopefully soon.... right 6sense team?) but it is also helpful. You could use this same strategy if you want to focus on a specific set of keywords for a month, narrow your alert.

hopefully that helps.

ryanrad39

@Jana_Marketing_Maven thanks, so for DSP campaigns, what are you tracking for success? Clicks, conversions or something else?

Not that I agree with it, but we have a typically sales oriented view of marketing... we allocate budget according to what is directly correlating to deals in our pipeline.

We have a very specific ICP; but a very low amount of our website traffic is from companies within our ICP. So in my mind, if we can drive the right companies to our website, it will result in more deals in our pipeline. So, I was trying to use Intent, whether 6Sense keywords or Bombora, to advertise to companies in our ICP segment that are showing signs for a solution like ours. But, if companies that are in market for a solution are not showing any signs of intent, it defeats the purpose.

Am I way off on what I should be analyzing then?

Jana_Marketing_Maven

For display campaigns, it depends on what we're trying to do.

1. Work in tandem with sales: for this, we have a specific list of accounts we are targeting with ads that follow the same message with whatever it is sales is promoting to the list. List could be received a few ways (created in 6sense, received from sales and uploaded, etc)
2. Generate more interest in our website: For this, we used intent and combined it with products 6sense said the organization had (we provide service, but maybe for you- using technology can be good to target/provide messaging on how your system works with XYZ tool). We ran ads trying to get the org to come to our site.
3. Generate traffic to specific products/services - this is where we lean heavily on intent.

Overall, we do an arrears review of whether the organization increased its buying stage. Marketing and ads alone would not influence that but an increase in activity would, especially increase visits to our website.

We look at clicks on the ad (view-throughs are a bit of a mess for us as we have 2 divisions with 2 models), and form fills (same issue but that is a bit easier to look at).

Marketing's goal is to try to get in front of organizations and increase their awareness of us. So that when sales does make the call, the person on the other end is more likely to know who we are (and hopefully have visited our site).

Kfir Pravda

Hey @ryanrad39

We usually see cases like the one you are describing where a company is selling a niche product within a mainstream segment - which seems to be case for you.

Some thoughts on how to cope with it (some were probably already mentioned)

• Create an ICP segment and target ads to it regardless of intent, and drive them to the website. Use onsite engagement tool such as Drift to engage with these accounts (you can connect the two), and see how well do they convert.
• Call 5-10 clients that your company sold to but they didn't show intent, and ask them how did they get to your site.
• Listen to sales calls, and extract the terms that are used by the buyers in these calls to explain their need
• Check G2 to see which of your competitors is being compared to you, and see if you can get their intent data as well to identify these accounts. Then create a segment based on competitors and see if you get anything there.
• Create a segment of very broad term coupled with your ICP criteria, and see how many accounts are there, and if it makes sense.
• WDYT?
• 
  

ryanrad39

@Kfir Pravda

Thanks for this!

• That is the next thing I will try if I am still seeing a good number of accounts not showing intent. The problem is, I have a limited budget for the number of accounts I am targeting as is, so to target roughly 90,000 companies in our ICP, would be a stretch
• Some of the ones that were not showing intent got to our site either through direct traffic/paid advertising (Google Ads)/SEO. Others were from lead gen sites, so when I called them and booked a meeting for the AE, they might not have ever been on our site! (Most always tell me they have never heard of us, the problems of being in a highly competitive industry)
• I have been adding most things I hear on sales calls. The problem is, a fair amount of time, the prospect will admit to us that the only reason they are looking for new ERP software is because their current solution is outdated/going out of support- otherwise they are having no problem with their current system!
• I have a lot of competitors in Branded keywords. I have to go through and make sure they are labeled correctly and maybe add variations to pick it up more signals around those competitors. I know for a fact that on a couple of deals that we spoke with and I confirmed the competitors with the prospect, 6Sense was not picking up those competitors as keywords, even though I am absolutely sure they are in the platform.
• "ERP system" I think is a pretty generic word. Over the last 30 days, 6Sense has picked up~48,000 accounts researching around this topic. This is one of the highest researched words as a whole in our instance. In the same time frame, 814 accounts of our ICP have searched that word (out of 85,000 total accounts in our ICP) what should that tell me about this word?

Thanks again!!

Kfir Pravda

Sounds similar to one of our past client that is also in a very competitive market.

In addition to 6Sense intent data it might be worthwhile to check G2 buyer intent offering - when integrated with 6Sense you could create segments that are based on 3rd party, 2nd party, and 1st party data. If you are in a competitive market you could see who is looking for ERP vendors, and who is comparing you to others. This could help you to get a better picture of the buyer behavior - assuming that your ERP is there.

JKnoesel

@ryanrad39 I couldn't agree with @Brandon McBride more, it is constant addition and subtraction. On our end it is an almost never ending process of ensuring we have relevant keywords, part of it is we just hadn't added a certain keyword yet, or the conversation is changing around a solution and we need to add keywords to catch up.

To your question around Geo targeting, that has hurt my brain for a long time. What I can chalk it up to most easily is the remote work environment and IP misidentification. There have been several examples where our internal employees will show up as visiting our site from a prospect account. My answer to it has always been digging into the account in Sales Navigator and trying to get to the bottom of what could have been going on. I tend to err on the hopeful side and target the account anyways, maybe your stakeholder was on vacay 🤷‍♂️.

ryanrad39

@Kfir Pravda Thanks- we are on G2, and I have been working towards expanding our presence there. I am hoping at some point our team would be open to looking at their intent offering. Same with Capterra- we get a fair amount of leads/referrals from them, so it might be worth expanding our offering with them too.

@JKnoesel Working on adding some more keywords.. do you have an average number of keywords that you are working with at a given time? We are up to over 600 and still seeing in-market accounts with no keyword intent...

Knowing that no software is perfect, how do you justify to your management team that not every company is going to be mapped correctly?

Thanks!

JKnoesel

@ryanrad39 for context we currently are tracking around 300 keywords. I also notice that accounts that reach out to us first tend to have far less keywords associated than an account we have been actively working. Without knowing all the background A. it could be you just haven't mapped the keywords they were researching (seems unlikely with 600 keywords being tracked), or B. similar to what I am seeing with some of our inbounds they just haven't started really researching yet and are looking to your org to answer their questions.

A next step could be just asking those accounts with no keywords what their process up to that point looked like. Could give you insights into alternative keywords, or it could just be they are looking at your team as step one in their process.

Alternatively, I work for a 6sense solutions partner org. It could help getting a set of outside eyes to take a look at where you are.

ryanrad39

@JKnoesel Thanks- most of the leads we are getting that are not showing intent are from sites like Capterra (Software Advice), erpfocus.com and selecthub.com. In all likely hood they landed at these sites in the first stage of this process, to review their options and get more info, before they did any alternative research.

That could account for why they are not showing any intent... but these sites have our keywords in articles and content all over, so I am still surprised there would be no intent.

These do tend to be early in the process, its just interesting because when we get these leads, it generally means they are ready to talk to sales.

JKnoesel

@ryanrad39 are you circling back to check those accounts a week or so after they become a lead? Part of it could be the data lag with keywords. Maybe it could be you are getting the form right when its submitted, but the fresh keywords might be lagging behind. I could be wrong here, but I have always understood that keyword data is 2 days behind.

ryanrad39

@JKnoesel Yeah, likewise I thought that could be the culprit.

In some instances, yes, in others no, there is still no keyword research being performed despite being well into our sales process.

I went back 180 days as well, to see if there was history before becoming a lead. None of them showed anything still.

JKnoesel

@ryanrad39 Yeah I would def recommend doing some sort of double check with your reps. See with some of those accounts that are showing no intent if you can partner with an AE or however you guys run ops to learn more about how the prospect got there. Sounds like you will be banging your head against the wall without insights like that.

ryanrad39

@JKnoesel I am very lucky as the SDR to have AEs that let me sit in on basically every call. So, I get to hear first hand the problems the prospects are having that is causing a search for a new system. Super valuable insight for 6Sense. Plus, I am the one usually setting the meetings, so I can see what drove them to us (usually).