Infer uses advanced predictive models to help B2B companies do a better job of identifying leads that are likely to turn into customers. By analyzing buying signals and predicting which leads are most likely to go on to become customers, Infer’s smart technology is making a big difference for high-flying startups like AdRoll, Box, Optimizely, and Tableau.
It’s a big challenge The company’s data science techniques can be tough to explain to its target market of sales and marketing teams. Infer overcomes this challenge by breaking down concepts like they’d be taught in school
(A description of the user journey from “What’s the Deal with Intent Data”)
“We focus on educating audiences about this new space, so that we’re able to emerge as a trusted advisor,” explains Sean Zinsmeister, director of product marketing at Infer. “Predictive analytics and scoring are fairly new concepts that have begun heat up in the last few years. It can be overwhelming for people to learn new concepts when there are lots of competing voices. Content marketing was a powerful tool to package these ideas to make it easy for the person evaluating the technology.”
Here are the lessons that Zinsmeister has learned from helping develop Infer’s content strategy:
Visual marketing is a strategic need—not a “nice to have”
Infer’s goal is to help its customers and potential customers understand the role infer plays in reaching revenue goals faster. Many people are visual learners or have short attention spans so you need to pull them in quickly and continue to educate them by using both text and visuals to make sure the concepts of predictive analytics don’t become lost amongst the technical details.
(A schematic from “What’s the Deal with Intent Data”)
“Illustrations and diagrams add a necessary layer of simplicity and context to the point we’re trying to get across,” says Zinsmeister. “Everything needs what we call a ‘visual vocabulary’ for for the story to hang together. We find that marrying visuals with text-based content creates that ‘aha’ moment for our audience.”
Like many SaaS startups, however, Zinsmeister’s team lacked the dedicated design resources needed to transform text content into easy-to-digest educational tools.
(Cover of Infer’s eBook on intent data.)
“We looked a number of different options to execute on this project. Given their track record and their approach projects like this, we felt confident in our decision to work with Visually.”