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See the deck a martech startup used to raise $7m to help companies like Sony target B2B customers
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- Martech startup Ocean.io says its AI data platform is helping B2B marketers convert better sales.
- The company just raised $7 million from Peak Capital and existing investors.
- It plans to use the funds to grow its team and expand to the US.
Ocean.io, a martech data platform that helps B2B sales staff intelligently target key accounts, just raised $7 million in Series A funding. The Copenhagen-based startup will use the funds to expand into the US, hiring 25 people there by the end of the year, said CEO and founder Michael Heiberg.
Peak Capital led the round, which also included existing investors like Lottrup & Co. and Rulebreaker Ventures.
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Ocean.io says its data platform helps enterprises and B2B marketers prepare for the shift from lead-based marketing to account-based marketing, a newer strategy that uses AI-driven insights to help sales and marketing teams better find and target prospects. Ocean.io competes with the likes of Zoominfo, Clearbit, Cognism, and Apollo.io.
ABM can be a tedious, manual process. But Ocean.io’s data platform analyzes more than 300 million web pages, company registries, public databases, and existing account and transaction data to build profiles of businesses, similar to the profiles consumer marketers use to target people, said Heiberg. It can also generate lookalike lists of similar companies that the company can then target.
This kind of data helps companies focus on prospects that are likely to lead to sales, said Heiberg.
“B2C marketing has gotten data-driven and personalized in recent years, but B2B marketing is still stuck in the Stone Age,” he said. “Ocean.io goes beyond ‘industry coding’ to understand what companies specifically do.”
Ocean.io’s platform also integrates with client management systems from companies like LinkedIn, Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive, so companies can export target accounts and saved searches to create more tailored marketing campaigns.
Ocean.io, whose clients include Sony, UserTesting, Brandwatch, and JGL, claims to have grown revenue seven times in 2021, with a current revenue run rate of $6 million.
Check out some key slides from Ocean.io’s fundraising deck below.
Ocean.io aims to help enterprises improve their B2B strategies as the industry moves on from lead-based marketing to account-based marketing, which requires more data.
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But it claims that most companies still rely on inefficient, human-led processes to do account-based marketing.
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And that this approach leads to irrelevant prospects.
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And despite their best efforts, companies end up with the same issues as with lead-based marketing, like high marketing spends, and low conversion rates.
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Ocean.io’s pitch is that it can help enterprise and B2B marketers with highly-targeted prospects.
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The company does this by leveraging AI and data collected from over 300 million web pages, company registries, and public databases.
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It does this by using actual commercial performance data from its customers’ CRM platforms to identify ideal customer profiles, matching it with similar companies.
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The idea is that deeper personalization via specific vertical targeting leads to better conversions.
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Ocean.io says its data platform can help companies create personas not just on the company level, but also based on job title and role, seniority, and department.
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Its platform can also help calculate things like total addressable market, revenue projections, and others.
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Ocean.io’s platform can integrate with companies’ existing client management systems including LinkedIn, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive.
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The idea is to not just better target prospect accounts, but also create more tailored outreach and marketing campaigns.
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According to a testimonial, one client doubled its demo booking rate in the first week of using the platform.
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According to Ocean.io’s product road map, its next phase of growth will focus on scaling beyond Europe. It will focus specifically in the US, company CEO and founder Michael Heiberg told Insider.
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Ocean.io sees opportunity in a multi-billion B2B CRM market, growing at 10% year-over-year, and claims to have a net run rate of 100% as of August 2021.
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Ocean.io is not alone in the AI-driven enterprise sales field, and competes with the likes of Zoominfo, Clearbit, Cognism, and Apollo.io.
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In 2022, it’s setting its sights on the US market, and plans to use the funds to grow its team and hire 25 people in the US by the end of the year, said Heiberg.
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