Transform your GTM strategy with Bombora’s
Company Surge^® data and Intent-driven digital audiences

Global companies are achieving success by using Intent data in their account-based marketing (ABM) and programmatic B2B advertising strategies. Draw inspiration from the success story of Siemens Digital Industries (DI) and discover how Bombora’s Company Surge^® B2B Intent data can propel your business to:

• Boost qualified lead flow for your GTM team 
• Increase advertising campaign ROI
• Elevate win/loss ratios
• Drive telequalification efficiency

How to produce highly qualified leads—and do it at scale

Siemens came to Bombora with a precise problem statement. They needed to produce highly qualified leads to feed their sales team from a market with limited movement due to the high cost of switching, and an environment obscured by noisy buying signals. 

The core challenge: buyers in Siemens’ target automation market didn’t exhibit reliable, standard buying signals, so Siemens couldn’t rely on traditional demand generation strategies to engage them. Broad outreach across a loosely defined addressable market meant investing in nurturing accounts for months, often with no real visibility into whether—or when—they were actually in-market for a solution. 

And once a buyer did move in-market, the opportunity to influence them (get on the vendor list, receive the RFP) closed quickly—often within days of a project being announced with funding secured.

Siemens’ key challenges included:

• A brutally short window to win. Major automation projects run 9 to 18 months, but the actual opportunity to influence vendor selection happens in the first 10% of that timeline—often just days after budget approval. Miss that scoping window, and Siemens was virtually guaranteed to lose the deal before they even knew it existed.
• The market looks big, but the real addressable opportunity is very thin. More than 90% of U.S. manufacturers weren’t actively running a new automation project at any given time. Of the ~10% that were, 90% had already passed the critical first 10% window, leaving only a fraction of genuinely viable targets on any given day, and high stakes riding on catching each one.
• Switching costs made customers reluctant to move, even when unhappy. Transitioning from a competitor to Siemens was emotionally charged and costly for the customer; as disruptive as a company abruptly switching overnight from a PC to a Mac. That high cost of change meant Siemens had to earn trust early and decisively, since inertia alone favored the incumbent.
• Traditional demand gen didn’t match how or when this market actually bought.
  • Engagement signals were misleading. MQLs based on surface-level engagement (a 10-second video view, a whitepaper download) were routinely rejected by sales, since many were engineers self-educating rather than actual buyers with funded projects.
  • The demand-gen lifecycle didn’t align with the buying cycle. By the time a lead “scored up” through traditional nurture streams, the customer’s project had already moved past the window in which Siemens could have influence; the customer would often already be deep into a formal RFP process with a shortlist forming. Outbound telequalification suffered the same disconnect, with reps chasing the full addressable market rather than the sliver of accounts that were actually in-window.

The solution: a new playbook, powered by Bombora Intent data

Siemens knew that generating high-quality opportunities meant delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person. As Dan Stareesinic, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Siemens, said, “Intent data helps us solve all three of these.”

To address their business challenges, Siemens built a repeatable playbook centered on Bombora’s Company Surge^® Intent data that allowed them to both accurately identify the truly addressable opportunities early enough in the buying cycle to influence them and then quickly reach the key members of the buying committee with targeted, relevant messaging. 

Zero in on the signal, catch the window before it closes

Traditional demand gen frameworks couldn’t help Siemens distinguish true signal from noise—an engineer watching 10 seconds of a video looked the same as a funded buyer starting vendor evaluation. Other data vendors offered only occasional flashes, not a consistent read of the B2B web. 

Company Surge^®, Bombora’s B2B Intent data solution, gave Siemens something different: a way to isolate the right accounts at the right time (active research tied to a funding event) and the right topics (grounded in real engagement data from the Data Co-op), filtering out the noise so only the signals that mattered made it through.

In order to zero in on the right accounts, Siemens used weekly Intent data signals that scored Intent (research intensity) on a select set of topics and topic clusters by company and company location. This narrowed a noisy, broad market down to the business units or office locations of specific companies conducting elevated, out-of-pattern research on specific topics aligned to their automation solutions. 

The Intent topic list itself was data-backed and purpose-built. Siemens developed it from sales feedback and analysis of verified opportunities that had progressed to the RFP stage; the more than 100 topics they tracked each week reflected real buying behavior, not guesswork. 

Each week, the Siemens team watched for elevated research concentrated in companies, specific business units within those companies and/or companies’ metro locations—a much stronger signal of an active, funded project than an isolated spike—giving them the continuous awareness needed to catch the thin sliver of in-market accounts the moment they entered their buying window, and filtering out noise.

Because that window could close within days of budget approval, the GTM team didn’t have the luxury of a multi-week campaign build. Once a signal emerged, they had hours to act on it, not weeks. To close the gap between signal and action, Siemens fed Bombora Intent signals directly into their CRM and marketing automation tools. The sales team got automated alerts when companies demonstrated elevated research activity. There were no new tools, no external spreadsheets to check, no lag between signal and action.

Integrating Intent to fuel marketing and sales motions

Intent data didn’t stay siloed in one channel; Siemens used it to multiple motions at motions at once: account-specific advertising and telephone-based sales qualification. Both drew from the same signal; each acted on it differently.

Powering personalized, account-specific advertising via LinkedIn

Intent data did more than tell Siemens when to reach a buying committee; it told them what to say. The Siemens marketing team built campaigns around key Intent topic clusters so messaging spoke to real, specific needs rather than generic pitches, putting the right message in front of the right account at the moment when it mattered.

To ensure activation speed, Siemens fed Bombora data directly into Sprinklr, their marketing automation and activation platform. This integration allowed them to build digital audiences based on Bombora Intent signals and deploy their Intent-aligned campaigns into LinkedIn the moment the “window opened.” 

Creative was dynamically generated with the target company’s name, messaging tailored to the needs and mindset of the buying committee members, and the Siemens products that aligned to the topical research. Ads were then launched to deliver precise, personalized relevant messaging to the right account at the moment intent surfaced.

Shaping the telephone sales motion

The traditional Siemens telequalification (TQ) approach—broad-based outbound calls sweeping across the full conceptual TAM—typically produced just a 1% Sales Accepted Lead rate. Siemens applied Bombora Intent to completely re-engineer that legacy GTM motion. It’s a very different channel than advertising, but built on the same signals and insights: reach the right accounts and members of the buying committee at the right time, with messaging tailored to their demonstrated needs and interests.

Rather than spreading outreach thin across that broad TAM, Siemens redirected TQ efforts exclusively to the accounts showing Intent, and went deeper on each one, using multiple touches and richer context to penetrate the account rather than qualifying it with a single surface-level call.

As Dan Staresinic said, “If you email somebody who created that Intent signal, if it lands in the right inbox, it’s a wanted email; it’s irresistibly clickable.” 

From lost deal to live opportunity: Intent data in action at Siemens

Sales reps at Siemens received Intent alerts directly in their CRM. Siemens’ Intent topic list included not just automation and manufacturing topics, but Siemens’ solutions and brands and named competitor entities as well. When an account showed high Company Surge^® Intent scores for one or more of those topics, reps knew immediately if a target was actively researching Siemens’ own solutions, a competitor’s, or both, and could reach out to discuss specific pain points while continuously tracking any shift in competitive interest.

In one particular instance, a sales rep observed high Intent across three highly relevant topics, including a named competitor, at a key prospect account. They reached out to a contact there from a previous lost opportunity.

The contact said, “Your timing is perfect because we are just starting vendor evaluation for a next-generation factory.”

It wasn’t a crystal ball; it was Bombora’s Company Surge^® B2B Intent data that ensured that this sales rep had “perfect timing.”

After several follow-up meetings, Siemens was able to understand the account’s project scope and requirements and learned about issues they had with the incumbent service provider.

Ongoing monitoring of Intent data surfaced additional scope insights, helped track the account’s continued interest in competitors, and informed proactive competitive responses throughout the sales cycle.

Ultimately, Bombora’s Intent data was instrumental in Siemens getting in front of this key prospect early, establishing authority and expertise by providing highly relevant information, keeping on top of the competitive landscape, and closing a deal of great significance.

Having achieved enthusiastic buy-in from GTM and sales teams, and earned the attention of executives in the highest levels of the company, Siemens established a channel for growth.

Not only did Siemens launch what became a steady revenue stream, it was also able to grow the business relationship over time and across their portfolio of products and services.

The results: Transforming your GTM strategy with Bombora’s Company Surge^®

Siemens applied Bombora Company Surge^® Intent data to transform their account-based marketing and advertising strategies and develop a high-value sales pipeline at scale.

Bombora’s B2B Intent data made it possible for Siemens to identify real, “in-window” opportunities the moment they emerged—and to focus both marketing and sales motions squarely on those accounts. The results:

• • Higher-quality lead identification: Increased Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) rates from a 1% baseline to nearly 90% with Intent-targeted outreach.
  • Accelerated pipeline opportunities: Identified more than 400 new sales opportunities with accounts that were either completely new or had previously gone cold.
  • Elevated win rate: Achieved a 94% win rate on Intent-driven opportunities.
  • Higher tele-efficiency: Cut telequalification costs down to approximately $15–$20 per accepted lead—a 99% improvement in telequalification efficiency.

• Increased advertising ROI: Lowered LinkedIn ad cost to $3–$4 per click, down from an internal benchmark of about $25 per click.

Most importantly, Siemens directly generated substantial, top-line revenue growth from leads strictly attributable to Bombora Intent data.