How Contact-Level Ads Change the Game for Both GTM Functions

Your sales team is staring at a list of accounts that have “shown intent.” 

Microsoft, Google, IBM—great logos, but useless without context. 

Who’s interested? How should these lists of “engaged” leads be prioritized?

Nobody knows. 

So, sales does what they always do: play detective. 

They’ll research the company, do some LinkedIn stalking, and send out a boatload of cold outreach in the hopes of reaching someone who might be interested.

The problem here isn’t just a lack of data—it’s also the wrong kind of data.

Most GTM strategies still rely on account-level insights, which don’t go deep enough to drive real sales impact.

The solution? Contact-level advertising.

The shift from broad, account-level data to detailed, contact-level insights can be the turning point for real sales and marketing alignment, allowing both teams to work in tandem rather than in separate silos.

Here are five challenges GTM teams know all too well, and how contact-level advertising can help you solve them.

Intent data is the pride and joy of ABM teams, showing off which companies are engaged and interested in purchasing your product.

There’s only one problem: most ABM tools only give you account-level intent data, meaning you don’t know who within a company is actually interested.

Marketing generates interest online and passes over intent signals to sales. Sales gets a list of accounts that have shown intent, but without more data, they’re left donning a deerstalker hat and magnifying glass, Sherlock-Holmes-ing their way forward.

Someone from Microsoft visited your website. Someone from Google viewed your product on G2. Someone from IBM searched for keywords relevant to your business. 

While it looks nice on paper, this information isn’t actionable for your sales team on its own.

Instead of “someone at Microsoft clicked on an ad,” you could see “John, CMO at Microsoft, clicked on your ad about XYZ.”

That’s the power of contact-level intent signals.

Instead of handing over broad account-level signals, marketing teams can deliver engagement data on actual individuals—real names, job titles, and interaction history. 

Now, sales doesn’t need to play detective. They know exactly who’s interested and can reach out with confidence, turning cold calls into warm introductions.

In short, contact-level ads bridge the gap. Instead of warming up random people who aren’t going to buy anything, marketing and sales are aligned on their audience and have a clear overview of what they’re doing.

Marketing and sales alignment is always a hot topic, but no matter how much we talk about it, there doesn’t seem to be a great solution.

Some companies have even started to move their SDRs under marketing. To me, that’s a case of trying to fix misalignment between sales and marketing.

The problem? This only pushes the issue further down the line, causing misalignment to build up between SDRs and the rest of the sales team.

These teams often run in completely separate lanes with no way to connect their work smoothly. Marketing launches campaigns and hopes they’re warming up the right people. Meanwhile, sales is having conversations with prospects without knowing what messaging those people have already seen. 

This leads to mixed signals, missed opportunities, and disjointed buyer experiences.

Instead of operating in silos, marketing and sales should be aligned on who they’re targeting and how they’re engaging with them. 

With contact-level advertising, both teams are focused on the same people within an account. 

Marketing can reinforce the same message that sales is delivering, making their outreach feel seamless rather than scattered.

Pro tip: Our Sales & Marketing Alignment Dashboard gives clear insights into how these efforts are working together. You can see which contacts have been warmed up by marketing, which contacts are being targeted by sales, and where there’s overlap. You’ll also see a clear view of where your teams are aligned and where there’s opportunities to improve.

No more guessing or stepping on each other’s toes—just a streamlined, strategic approach that helps deals move faster.

For too long, the marketing-to-sales process has looked like a game of hot potato. Marketing attracts leads and nurtures them just enough to hit MQL status. Then, they toss them over the fence to sales, hoping they convert, but most deals simply don’t work like that.

If you’re lucky, you’ll need to engage with two to three stakeholders to close a deal. In some cases, that number can skyrocket to at least five, or up to 15 or more according to one study. 

When marketing’s job stops at the top of the funnel, sales is left to do the heavy lifting alone—often struggling to re-engage leads that have already gone cold.

Instead of treating marketing warm-ups as a one-and-done effort, marketing and sales should be working in tandem throughout the entire customer journey. 

Here’s how to make that happen with contact-level advertising:

• Map out the buying journey together: Work with sales to define key stages in the sales process. What does the path from initial interest to closed-won look like for your buyers? How does that journey differ for different roles in a buying group?
• Align ads with sales outreach: Create targeted ad campaigns that match where each contact is in their journey. With Influ2, you can upload lead lists from your CRM and target ads to specific individuals that your sales team is also targeting.
• Use engagement data to refine your strategy: If a key decision-maker interacts with your ads, sales can reach out with a warm intro. If engagement drops off, marketing can automatically add these contacts to a campaign specific to outreached leads who haven’t responded.

With this approach, marketing and sales stay in sync, working the same accounts with aligned messaging.

Sales gets a list of prospects from marketing, but without deeper insights, it’s just that: a list. 

There’s no way to know which contacts are interested, which are just browsing, and which are worth reaching out to right now. 

That means wasted time on cold outreach and missed opportunities with warm prospects.

Instead of a static list, use engagement data from contact-level ads to focus on the most active prospects.

Contact-level ad data shows exactly who’s interacting with your ads, giving sales a live feed of engaged contacts. If a prospect watches a video ad or clicks through to your site, sales can reach out immediately while interest is high.

Want to make this even more efficient? Automate it!

For example, when a prospect clicks on an ad, you can automatically add them to a sales sequence or send an email from an SDR to follow up immediately on that engagement signal.

With actionable data on engagement, sales reps can prioritize outreach based on real interest, so they’re always focusing on the most promising opportunities.

More marketing teams are being measured based on pipeline or revenue generation, but how can you build a reputation for supporting the company when your efforts can’t be measured accurately? 

According to one study, 60% of marketers struggle to measure the impact of their efforts across channels and campaigns. 

Sales is closing deals, but marketing has no insight into which efforts influenced revenue.

This can lead to a frustrating cycle where marketing feels like their work isn’t fully recognized, and sales feels like they’re working from scratch with every lead rather than building on the moment that marketing has already created.

To truly align your GTM teams, both marketing and sales need visibility into how their efforts impact pipeline and revenue. 

Contact-level advertising makes this possible by connecting ad engagement data with your CRM, so you can:

• Tie marketing campaigns directly to revenue: Instead of measuring success with vanity metrics like impressions and clicks, marketing can track exactly which contacts engaged with ads, moved through the funnel, and contributed to closed-won deals.
• Report on the same KPIs: When both teams can see the same data, alignment follows. Instead of marketing being measured on leads generated while sales is measured on deals closed, both teams can track their impact on pipeline growth and revenue.

Looking for a shortcut to help marketing and sales report on the same KPIs? Contact-level advertising is a strong instrument for change.

As a marketer, I would be frustrated if my CEO tells me I’m measured on pipeline generated, but my SDRs are disqualifying the leads I send them. But with contact-level advertising, I know we’re all aligned on the individuals we’re reaching out to. 

By integrating contact-level ad data with CRM insights, sales and marketing can operate as a single, revenue-driving unit.

We’ve all heard the claim that “outbound is dead.”

Salespeople do hours of cold outreach, and hear nothing back from prospects—conclusion, it must not work.

The truth is, however, that this rhetoric is only accurate for sales teams who continually send generic outreach messages that don’t resonate with their audience. 

Prospects who are inundated with irrelevant sales pitches will tune them out, and those efforts fall flat.

To make your outreach count, you need to engage prospects with relevant content before initiating direct contact.

Here’s how contact-level ads can help:

• Target specific decision-makers with personalized ads: Sales and marketing can work together to identify key members of buying groups within your target account. Then, marketing can create ad campaigns that target specific cohorts, speaking directly to the pain points and interests of these contacts.
• Monitor engagement to gauge interest: With Influ2, you can see insights into who is engaging with your ads, and analyze which messages and content pieces are capturing attention, helping you understand what appeals to each contact.
• Align sales outreach with engagement insights: With this information at hand, sales teams can focus outreach efforts on contacts who have engaged. More than that, they can tailor their outreach messages to match the content that these people have already engaged with, referencing pain points or challenges that have been proven to resonate.

By using personalized ads to warm up your leads and tracking how they interact, your sales team gets the inside scoop on which messaging really connects. 

This turns cold, generic outreach into smart, targeted conversations that resonate with prospects—boosting your chances of success.

Ready to move beyond guesswork and broad, account-level data? Contact-level advertising empowers your teams to engage with the right people at the right time. With this tool in your toolbox, your GTM teams can:

• Accelerate sales cycles by engaging with decision-makers early in the buying process.
• Reduce cold outreach and prioritize warm leads.
• Enhance alignment between sales and marketing by looking at the same detailed data.
• Measure influence and tie engagement data directly to closed deals.

If you’re ready to get started, book a demo with Influ2 to see how contact-level advertising can fuel more targeted outreach and meaningful engagement with your audience.