Tailored Campaigns for Targeted Success

The Challenge

GWI provides audience research data to some of the world’s largest brands and agencies—from Nike to Google to WPP. Their platform helps marketers understand their audiences through surveys of millions of consumers across 50+ markets.

Their ideal customers are senior marketing professionals and insights leaders at enterprise organizations—a sophisticated audience that has seen every marketing tactic in the book. These are people who analyze data for a living; generic marketing messages weren’t going to impress them.

The core challenges were clear:

• Highly educated buyers: Their prospects could spot inauthentic marketing from miles away
• Complex buying committees: Deals required buy-in from insights teams, marketing leaders, and procurement
• Strong competition: Other audience research platforms were also targeting the same accounts
• Long evaluation cycles: Enterprise contracts involved extensive data quality assessments

Generic demand generation wasn’t working. They needed campaigns that would cut through the noise and demonstrate real understanding of their prospects’ challenges.

Our Approach

We developed a precision Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy that treated each target account as a market of one—because in enterprise B2B, that’s exactly what they are.

Deep Account Research

Before launching any campaigns, we invested heavily in understanding GWI’s target accounts:

• Organizational Mapping: Identifying the insights team structure, reporting lines, and decision-making dynamics
• Current Stack Analysis: Understanding what research tools and data providers each account already used
• Use Case Identification: Pinpointing specific scenarios where GWI’s data could add unique value
• Trigger Events: Monitoring for signals like new CMO appointments, rebranding initiatives, or expansion into new markets

This research phase took 3-4 weeks but proved essential—it informed every piece of creative and every targeting decision that followed.

Persona-Based Messaging

We developed distinct messaging tracks for different buyer personas, each speaking to their specific concerns:

• CMOs & Marketing Leaders: Focused on strategic advantage—understanding Gen Z, identifying whitespace opportunities, and gaining competitive intelligence
• Insights & Research Managers: Emphasized data quality, methodology rigor, sample sizes, and integration with existing tools
• Media & Planning Teams: Highlighted audience understanding for media planning, targeting precision, and campaign optimization
• Data & Analytics Teams: Spoke to API access, data flexibility, and technical implementation

Each persona received different content, different ads, and different offers—because a CMO and an insights manager have very different questions.

Multi-Touch Campaign Execution

Our paid social strategy created multiple touchpoints across the buyer journey:

• LinkedIn Sponsored Content: Thought leadership articles reaching key personas through job title + industry + company size targeting. We tested different content angles—from industry trends to methodology deep-dives—to see what resonated with each segment.
• LinkedIn InMail: Personalized outreach at scale for Tier 1 accounts, offering exclusive research previews and one-on-one demo calls with industry experts
• Programmatic Display: Awareness building through premium business publications (Forbes, Business Insider, AdAge) and retargeting engaged website visitors across the web
• Content Syndication: Targeted distribution of high-value gated content through partners like NetLine and TechTarget to reach new contacts within target accounts

Campaign Coordination with Sales

We established a tight feedback loop between marketing and sales:

• Account Intent Scoring: Weekly reports on which accounts were showing engagement signals
• Content Consumption Data: Sales could see exactly which content each prospect had consumed
• Coordinated Outreach Windows: Marketing ramped up activity 2-3 weeks before planned sales outreach
• Post-Meeting Nurture: Automated sequences kept prospects engaged between sales conversations

The Results

The tailored approach delivered significant improvements across the entire funnel:

• 85% increase in engagement rates compared to previous generic campaigns—proof that personalization works
• 2.5x pipeline influenced by ABM-touched accounts versus non-ABM leads
• 40% improvement in MQL to SQL conversion due to better lead quality and pre-qualification through content engagement
• Shorter sales cycles as prospects arrived better educated about GWI’s value proposition
• Higher average deal values from engaging multiple stakeholders early in the process

What Made It Work

Success came from the combination of thorough research, genuine personalization, and persistent multi-channel engagement. When prospects saw messaging that clearly understood their specific challenges—whether that was proving ROI on insights investments or understanding emerging consumer segments—engagement followed naturally.

Three factors stood out:

1. Research-first approach: The upfront investment in account research paid dividends throughout the campaign
2. Persona-specific creative: Different messages for different roles meant higher relevance across the buying committee
3. Sales-marketing alignment: Treating ABM as a true partnership, not just a lead generation exercise

The key was treating ABM as a relationship-building exercise—using marketing to warm accounts and create opportunities, while arming sales with the intelligence they needed to have meaningful conversations. When sales finally reached out, they weren’t strangers; they were trusted advisors continuing an ongoing dialogue.

Ready to implement targeted ABM for your B2B company? Explore our Account-Based Marketing services or get a free quote to discuss your strategy.