Enhance your marketing strategies by uncovering the interests of C-Suite leaders

How industry leader, Dell Technologies leverages executive insight.

We all have different hobbies and interests, from crocheting to cycling to true crime podcasts. When making our first friends in the school playground, we are taught that finding shared interests – for example, Pokémon or mermaids – is a great way of forming connections with new people. This lesson stays relevant throughout life, being used in first dates, meeting in-laws, and finding friends in a new city. It also applies in a work setting, but not only when trying to get along with a tricky colleague…

Marketing teams are always hunting for new information about their target audiences to tailor their approaches and, ultimately, close a larger deal. Research has found that 42% of executives believe personalized marketing and sales are valuable, and 32% were more likely to purchase if they were approached in this way.

This personal touch can be acquired from a market research or executive recruitment agency which collects information on C-suite leaders. However, gaining access to this information usually comes in exchange for a hefty fee. The alternative is to use a digital lead generating solution which has scraped all the information available on the internet about potential clients. This has its drawbacks, too, as the data can be inaccurate, outdated, and lack depth. Utilizing one might therefore lead to misguided targeting and ineffective marketing strategies.

Ideally, strategists need the best of both worlds; the cost-effectiveness of a web scraping tool with the depth of information that can only be generated by a human. One platform that offers that is Boardroom Insiders, from business intelligence specialists Altrata. Boardroom Insiders is a database of over 40,000 C-Suite decision-makers from across the globe, with each profile detailing individual business priorities, professional experience, and personal interests. These profile are developed by a dedicated team of in-house researchers who source information from interviews, articles, videos, speaking engagements, and more.

Mock Profile, Boardroom Insiders

Users of Boardroom Insiders can perform a detailed audience analysis with the information to highlight the leading interests and priorities of the group of executive decision makers. The results – which could include anything from a desire to optimize their company’s app to a penchant for golf – can be used to create buyer personas or in positioning strategy.

Learning what makes key business decision-makers tick can allow marketers to advertise their products in the right places at the right time, and therefore shorten the sales cycle. Having access to information that cannot be pulled from the internet also gives the company the upper hand over its competitors, which are likely campaigning in similar ways.

One example of a company that has succeeded in this is Dell. TechHQ spoke to Liz Conner, the company’s Senior Advisor for Field Marketing, about how Boardroom Insiders shapes the tech juggernaut’s marketing strategy. Boardroom Insiders allows her to connect with the right people at the Austin Grand Prix, which many C-level executives of interest attend.

She said: “In the past, we’ve had issues targeting people for that, it was kind of a mess. These are the accounts where we would just email everybody or invite everybody and see what sticks to the wall.

“With Boardroom Insiders, we were able to target specific people because we could say, oh, they’re a racing fan. We know these people have an interest in F1. Plus, we were able to see the relationship marketing and say, well, they’re not only interested in racing, but they also know X, Y, and Z here at Dell. That’s a great person to reach out to.”

“So, we have been able to target exactly who we want to invite and get much better traction with those people attending the events, and much better results.”

Source: Adobestock

Ms Conner added that she gets inundated with requests from the Dell marketing team for information about particular executives, because it allows them to “know the person [they’re] going to be reaching out to.”

She said: “I’ve got a whole profile on these people; their likes, the interests – both personally and work-related – their whole history of where they’ve worked, things that are important to them.”

One of the standout features of Boardroom Insiders that Ms Conner’s team utilizes is ‘relationship mapping’, which sets it apart from a standard CRM solution. It highlights shared interests or points of connection between a person at the user’s firm and a targeted executive. This could be that they worked together at the same company in the past or attended the same college.

She said: “If we’re looking for an executive to reach out to a specific company, we might say, okay, we think that this person in Dell should definitely reach out to this person in this company because they’ve got a prior relationship. So, it makes it that much easier to break the ice and get a foothold.”

Ms Conner said she also uses Boardroom Insiders to get contact information and verify someone’s employment. “If you’re looking for VP-level or higher information, Boardroom Insiders is amazing,” she said. “The level of detail and depth that they go into is phenomenal. I haven’t seen it across any other service that we’ve used.”

Even if the platform does not yet have information on the targeted executive, if Ms Conner puts in a request, she can get a whole profile “within 24 to 48 hours”. She describes the Boardroom Insiders team as “ultra-responsive” when she needs assistance and notes that the platform is constantly updated to make it more intuitive. This also reduces the need for her to juggle multiple CRMs to perform necessary tasks, turning it into a “one-stop shop”.

“We’ve got 15 different CRMs and many different sorts of software, so to be able to integrate everything into one place makes your life easier,” she said. “You know exactly where to go, you know how to navigate it, and it just reduces time and makes things more efficient.

“It’s kind of mind-blowing because you do get these two or three-page personalized profiles on these folks that make targeting so much easier for our marketing and sales teams because they’re not going in blind.

“So, I say to anybody, if you’re looking to target that VP and higher in an account, it’s absolutely worth its weight in gold.”

Find out how Boardroom Insiders can take your company’s marketing strategy to the next level here.