A few weeks ago, I was reading the New York Times (the online version, of course) and came across an article that made me say “Huh?” This article, “Put Ad on the Web. Count Clicks. Revise,” showcased advertising agencies that are bringing former Wall Street analysts over to Madison Avenue to help them track ROI on their marketing campaigns.

Now I don’t know about you, but I feel like this is something Online Marketers have had to prove for some time. In my role as an ROI Consultant, I know I feel pressure from clients to help show initial ROI on a regular basis. This is especially true this year, as marketing budgets have withered away and we have had to produce more results with less money. In fact, we’ve tasked ourselves with helping clients achieve ROI for some time, as evidenced by TechTarget’s foray into responding to this pain point.

Aside from congratulating ourselves on how far ahead of the curve we are, what’s next for Online Marketers? You are being asked to innovate and do more with less. As an industry, we have progressed far past click thru rates, conversions and demographics; far past traditional ROI. We need to prove more, see how our lead generation efforts are working; actually watch what our target audience is doing so we can craft content appropriately. Learn what they aren’t telling us by way of registration questions.

One way we are doing this at TechTarget is by transitioning into behavior-based email messaging. As users interact with editorial pieces, vendor-sponsored content, websites and apply for conferences, we watch them to see where they spend their time. That helps us tailor our outbound messaging based on what is important to them now. The response is incredible-but what is most interesting is what we can ascertain from this intelligence.

We are now able to identify “hyper-active” leads and show exactly what they’re touching on our network. With this information we can show “mass activity” around topics so you can be present to influence our users, make recommendations on how to reposition your next program based on hot topics, and identify leads who might be more inclined to purchase based on their activity level.

Armed with this type of information, we push past ROI and into new territory that the New York Times can report on in 2 years.

An old boss once told me that success happens when preparation and opportunity meet. This also holds true for targeting an audience with your marketing campaigns. I’ve been thinking about the evolution of targeting and how it has and, in some cases, has not progressed. As marketers, we often default to the basics of a targeted audience’s make up: title, industry, role, technical characteristics and so on. Why not first think of project, responsibility on the buying team, interest level, purchasing stage…  Because targeting is not just about capturing the right audience at the right time, it is also about the investment you make and passing on the most likely opportunities for sales to engage and close. Helping sales save time, effort and hard costs and focusing efforts on the opportunities that really matter could move those opportunities along faster as well as save budget and resources.

So, how do we do this? Employ a targeting strategy that takes into account activity, content and context at least as much as demographics. Finding an active, interested, engaged audience can help your marketing campaign by providing a better starting point for your qualification and selling efforts. How you use the intelligence from the activity, content and context can also better shape the follow-up approach to lead qualification. Think in context of the enterprise technology buying team. All the leads that you capture may not have ultimate authority or the need may be latent, but knowing their role can help with qualification by determining the type of questioning and relationship that sales would want to build. This type of strategy can help you identify the urgent, actionable leads that inside sales and field sales can jump on quickly and can put the proper emphasis on the leads that matter.