The future of B2B marketing lies in how effectively we utilize high-intent customer data.
As HubSpot Senior Product Manager Maggie Philbin said in a spring webinar Kuno co-hosted with StackAdapt on B2B data-driven marketing, “Event data … is simply a moment in time. It’s a thing that happened—an interaction.”
Recognizing this, we’ve moved away from relying on static data to capturing real-time customer interactions and responding with sales enablement strategies, allowing for new ways to foster customer engagement and improve sales processes across industries.
We help brands translate raw data from scattered marketing channels, CRM systems, and digital behaviors into intentional multi-channel marketing campaigns that garner conversions and spur deals and revenue.
Here’s a closer look at why it matters and how we at Kuno approach B2B marketing strategy in this new era.
Why Data-Driven Marketing Enablement Matters
Customer expectations have changed.
It’s estimated that at least 80% of B2B buyers expect a self-service purchasing experience similar to what buying on more conventional consumer platforms such as eCommerce stores, said Robert Rose, founder of Seventh Bear and Chief Strategy Advisor at the Content Marketing Institute, in the webinar.
“We’re also seeing the macroeconomic sort of trend of the experience or the servitization of manufacturing of B2B, where so many B2B providers these days are being expected to provide better experiences as part of what they do for a living,” Rose said.
“In other words, it’s more about not just about how do we create a transaction with a customer full stop, but how do we create the experiences that keep them coming back, to keep the idea of subscribing, to keep them upselling and cross-selling into other solutions that we provide and expanding the things that we are doing as part of understanding that customer journey even better?”
Data-driven marketing enablement catalyzes isolated data into fuel for these kinds of customer-centric experiences toward business growth.
Reaching out to a customer who has recently watched a video or visited a product page is like fishing with a spear instead of casting a wide net of leads and then spending hours sorting through them.
For instance, your team can see which customers signed up for a free trial but haven’t logged in. They can be targeted with a sequence of short emails telling them how to get started.
Sales enablement data also provides sales (and marketing) teams clarity on ideal customer profiles, pain points, and the sales funnel. They can see which deals closed in the past quarter, the industries they represent, and how long deals took from the first interaction to a final decision. This offers a stronger sense of where to find quick wins and those industries that take longer, but present more profitable opportunities.
A sales and marketing enablement platform gives sales and marketing teams a singular data platform, allowing for consistent messaging and efficient content creation that matches each stage of your buyer’s journey.
Building a Data-Driven Marketing Enablement Strategy
A truly effective marketing enablement strategy doesn’t start with a tool—it starts with a plan. To transform prospect or client data into more meaningful outcomes, you need a clear roadmap that connects insights with action.
This means aligning marketing with sales, defining what success looks like and selecting the right systems to capture and act on high-intent signals.
Here’s how to build a data driven strategy that lends itself to expediting your sales process and delivers more measurable business outcomes.
Define Your Sales and Marketing Enablement Goals
What metrics define our success?
Whether it’s increasing leads per month, boosting customer lifetime value or reducing sales cycle length, these objectives need to be defined in order to inform your marketing and sales enablement strategy.
Other valuable digital marketing metrics could include:
- Website sessions
- Website engagement
- Click-through rates
- New contacts
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Percentage of closed-won vs. closed-lost deals
- Annual customer retention rate
While the right platform will make your designated metrics easier to measure, you’ll likely need to develop custom dashboards and reports to make them more relevant to your company’s specific goals. Our RevOps team has extensive experience in reporting, and we can help you filter out the noise of vanity metrics and tie the most important data directly to the markers that matter most to you.
Audit Your Current Marketing Operations
Evaluate how your team currently collects, shares, and activates sales enablement data across your marketing and sales teams. Start with the basics:
- What data is captured by your CRM systems or marketing automation platforms?
- Who has access to that data, and (more importantly) are they using it?
- How do you evaluate leads against your ideal customers?
- Are you building dynamic lists based on real-time customer interactions?
- How do you currently engage with list contacts?
- How do you use behavioral insights like content engagement, video views, email opens, or pricing page clicks?
- What marketing automation and email workflows do you have in place for appropriate follow-up?
- Does your sales team have resources they can share at each stage of the buyer’s journey?
- How are you using data to further optimize sales forecasting and processes?
By documenting these areas and identifying bottlenecks or blind spots, you’ll reveal opportunities to improve sales productivity, personalize or otherwise warm-up marketing campaigns and reduce sales funnel friction.
In our discovery process with any new client, we evaluate existing customer data, lead scoring, workflows and reporting to identify areas for improvement. We audit content to determine if your team has the right mix of resources for each stage of the customer lifecycle and look for ways to use data to optimize ad targeting and spend.
For one software-as-a-service company, we identified gaps in resources that would otherwise directly support the sales team, including an interactive product demo, case studies and comparison guides.
We used data to create email campaigns targeting prospects who had taken specific actions, such as visiting the pricing page or the scheduling page without requesting more information or booking a demo.
Over 18 months, efforts like these influenced 61 deals worth a total of $1.6 million.
Refine Your Targets With First-Party and Third-Party Data
With the deprecation of third-party cookies and tightening regulations, first-party data is the most reliable—and most valuable—asset for marketing enablement.
You already have first-party data on prospects in your database and you can see which pages they view or which or which forms they complete, but with tools like HubSpot Custom Events, you have greater ability to track more meaningful data on real-time interactions.
Custom Events are directly integrated into HubSpot so you can more clearly see actions a specific person has taken, such as watching a video or clicking a button for a free trial (even if they didn’t complete the form to sign up for it).
Using first party data with programmatic ad platforms like StackAdapt, marketers can target people anywhere, whether they’re browsing on their laptop at home or on their phone at a trade show.
When you supplement your CRM with third-party data from sources like ZoomInfo or Apollo.io, you can cast a wider net. For instance, you may have a list of companies that meet your ideal customer profile, but you may not have specific contacts. You also don’t know if any of those companies are actively researching a solution you provide.
With intent data, you can drill down further to see buying signals, such as:
- Whether they’ve visited your website (before they fill out a form)
- How much time they’ve spent on specific pages
- What other solutions they may be researching
Based on this data, you can send more targeted emails that help them take the next step.
Michelle Yien, manager of strategic partnerships at StackAdapt, said marketers using first-party data have seen as much as a 75% lower cost per lead and that 56% of conversions can come from audiences powered by this kind of data, even when it only comprises 40% of the media budget.
That’s a competitive edge that can’t be ignored.
At Kuno, we regularly work with clients to segment first-party data from HubSpot and activate it in StackAdapt to drive efficient, targeted ads. Using lists of top clients, churned customers and high-quality leads, we build campaigns that exclude poor-fit leads while maximizing ROI on the ones that matter.
This integration avoids stale CSV uploads, promotes both privacy-safe practices as well as real-time updates to your audience segments, allowing for faster lead conversions and minimizing wasted ad spend.
For instance, we worked with an equipment manufacturer to set up marketing campaigns using StackAdapt and a combination of first- and third-party data to show retargeting ads to prospects who had previously visited their website. We also set up account-based marketing campaigns based on parameters that included company size, revenue and job titles.
These campaigns brought in five high-intent new contacts, resulting in several opportunities and a new deal worth $130,000.
In addition, we targeted a list of previous customers with closed-lost deals in HubSpot and generated a deal worth $30,000 — an opportunity that would have otherwise been lost.
Development a Marketing Enablement Framework
Data alone doesn’t create results: it’s how you use that data that makes the difference. At Kuno Creative, we apply a structured, data-informed approach to marketing enablement that scales with your business.
Here’s how we turn insight into action at every stage of the journey.
Discovery & KPI Alignment
Every client engagement begins with a deep discovery process. We gather input from both marketing and sales teams, analyze existing customer data and identify key friction points across the buyer’s journey. From there, we collaborate to define meaningful KPIs that align with your business goals: improving customer satisfaction, enhancing customer experience, shortening sales cycle length, increasing sales productivity or something else entirely. This phase ensures we’re not just collecting data, but collecting the right data to inform decisions and gauge success.
Technology Integration
Once goals are established, we evaluate your current tech stack and identify opportunities to connect CRM systems, sales enablement tools and analytics platforms. Our RevOps team provides for frictionless data flow between your content management systems, CRM and other sales platforms, and other sources of first- and third-party data. We work to eliminate data silos and build a centralized infrastructure where real-time insights can inform personalized outreach and automated marketing campaigns. We also implement tracking frameworks—such as custom events or cookie consent strategies—to ensure every critical customer interaction is captured cleanly and compliantly.
Content Enablement
We audit your marketing collateral, sales content, and CRM contact records to identify any gaps or inconsistencies. Using engagement and intent data, we determine what content resonates with your target audience at each stage of your buyer’s journey. Then, we create and promote personalized content—from email sequences and sales playbooks to gated assets and interactive tools—that reflect buyer behavior and readiness. For instance, if a user clicks on a pricing page but doesn’t convert, we can trigger a follow-up campaign featuring testimonials, ROI calculators or demos designed to re-engage them.
Analytics & Optimization
We use predictive analytics to identify patterns in your audience behavior and anticipate future needs—whether it’s the optimal time to re-engage a prospect or where and when to allocate ad spend. Our team sets up thorough testing protocols across email subject lines, CTAs, landing pages, even social media platforms, using A/B testing to validate and refine messaging. These insights help us improve campaign performance iteratively while informing broader marketing strategy adjustments.
Continuous Growth
Sales and marketing enablement is an ongoing process. That’s why we establish ongoing feedback between marketing, sales, and leadership. Using tools like HubSpot’s dashboards and customer journey analytics, we monitor the real-time impact of your sales enablement tools and campaigns on pipeline velocity, customer lifetime value and customer engagement. We meet regularly to review performance, identify emerging market trends, and adjust campaigns accordingly.
Real Examples of Kuno in Action
Kuno partnered with Blackline Safety, a wireless location technology company for lone workers, to improve its marketing and sales processes.
Since most of the sales process was documented in spreadsheets, the project started with recording sales initiatives, automating touchpoints, and setting up automation to move deals forward.
Then we took a pilot approach to the rollout of HubSpot CRM, working with a small group of power users with previous CRM experience and training them on the software. The pilot group became advocates for change and helped the rest of the 70-person sales team to embrace the new platform. By replacing two different platforms with HubSpot CRM, the client saved an extra $76,800 per year.
The sales team now feels comfortable doing everything in HubSpot from logging daily activities to creating new deals and contact records. They have a more standardized process for using data to advise and inform their marketing activities.
We also partnered with a fast-growing eCommerce payment solutions provider to optimize their use of HubSpot across marketing, sales and partner management. By auditing and documenting fragmented sales enablement processes, implementing automation for webinars and form fills, integrating platforms like Zoom and CaptivateIQ, and using flexible association labels, we helped them reduce manual tasks and improve data integrity. This saved the company time and money while setting a foundation for scalable revenue growth.
Turn Data Into Growth With Kuno
If you’re a marketing or sales leader looking to achieve sustainable growth with data-driven marketing, we can help. Whether you’re struggling with disconnected, fragmented systems, low conversion rates or underperforming campaigns, we work alongside your team to build and scale a marketing enablement initiative tailored to your business goals.
From optimizing your technologies and aligning teams to crafting personalized content journeys, and targeting prospects who are more likely to be ready to buy, we’ll help your team transform disparate data into a dynamic revenue-generating engine for your business.
Start the conversation today.
