TechTarget revenues rose 10% to $33.8 million in Q3 2019 driven by their sales and marketing intelligence Priority Engine service. Quarterly Priority Engine revenue rose 30% year-over-year and is up 37% year-to-date. The firm added 51 new Priority Engine customers in Q3.
Long-term contracts now represent 35% of revenue.
TechTarget believes that their initial success selling to firms outside of the top 200 customers “bodes well for our launch of Priority Engine Express in 2020, which is targeted at the next largest 5,000 software vendors and resellers, for whom we don’t currently have attractive offerings in their price range.”
TechTarget collects second-party intent data and opted-in contact data from its 140 B2B technology media sites. Priority Engine identifies companies actively in-market along with who is conducting purchasing research, the buyers’ journey stage, and other vendors under consideration.
TechTarget said that its new features have been “well-received” by clients as it “increases the value and ROI of Priority Engine for our customers.” They are also confident in their “robust” 2020 product roadmap. “Our customers are still in the early stages of their transition to becoming data-driven sales and marketing organizations. We have many customers that are using our data in sophisticated ways to drive market share gains and revenue growth,” stated their 8-K filing.
The firm plans another ten percent increase in Priority Engine pricing, similar to annual price hikes of the past two years. CEO Michael Cotoia is confident in their ability to raise prices:
Our customers take a look at our data that we offer, real and observed purchase intent data, and they have a very large initiative around…their sales and marketing organization. So, we haven’t really had a pushback price. They do understand how we get our data in terms of providing the right content and publishing the right content across…thousands of technology segments. Owning and operating those sites and communities across our network throughout TechTarget and really observing and capturing the real intent that we’re getting from buying team members… it’s very clear, it’s very taut, it’s very concise, so we haven’t really seen any pushback on that.
TechTarget CEO Michael Cotoia
“By helping companies see and interpret real buyer needs and preferences, Priority Engine first provides a relevant, permissioned basis for a marketer to intercept a buyer’s journey and then it assists users in taking very specific influencing and engagement actions,” CMO John Steinert recently told ABM Report. “Because Priority Engine provides the actual permissioned people doing buying research, it saves tons of resource that’s commonly wasted chasing prospects who don’t have a need and leads that are actually dead ends. And because Priority Engine shares the real needs and preferences of the actual buyers with both marketing and sales when they share the platform, it enables far better conversion at every step, from funnel, to pipeline, through to renewal.”
Cotoia is also confident in TechTarget’s market expansion strategy. “We are seeing [SMB] customers now. We’re taking their input. We’re looking to possibly modify, enhance, position, package, create some other additional spinoffs of this Priority Engine Express for different segments within all those others. So, we’re off to a good start.”
Priority Engine Express will remain in beta until Q1 with several dedicated sales reps during the beta window.
One identified opportunity is value-added resellers at both the national and regional levels. “They are looking to really identify the opportunities and the projects and buying teams that are in their regions” and focus on their go-to-market strategy and active prospects said Cotoia. “We want to make sure that we have the right user interface [and] ease of use for those regional resellers so that their sales teams, inside sales and outside sales, have easy and quick access to the potential projects and buying teams within their market.”