How to Run Efficient B2B Audiences
Marketing is about getting in front of the right people at the right time.
Audience targeting requires data-driven precision, real-time adjustments, and strategic exclusions to ensure every dollar is spent wisely.
In a recent Attributed Podcast panel, three demand generation leaders, Liam Collins (Cognism), Alexei Ivanov (Moss), and Mathilde Dechansiaud (Oyster), shared their approaches on how top B2B companies structure, refine, and activate high-performing audiences.
All three companies use Dreamdata to power their audience targeting and measurement, ensuring that their targeting strategies are driven by real go-to-market data, not guesswork.
Here’s what we learned from their conversation.
Listen to the entire conversation here.
Defining the Right B2B Audience
Where does good B2B audience targeting start?
For Liam, defining the right B2B audience comes down to first-party data. His team analyzes historical conversions, CRM insights, and buyer engagement trends to create data-backed audience segments.
A good B2B audience for us is one that takes our existing first-party data and then is most accurately reflecting that within all the paid channels.
Check out Dreamdata’s guide on the 11 most relevant B2B audiences to learn how to structure and refine your targeting.
Using signals to improve audience targeting
While first-party data is a great starting point, it’s not enough to just define your ideal audience. You need to know when they’re actively in-market.
This is where engagement signals come into play.
All three panelists use Dreamdata to track engagement at the account level, pulling insights from website visits, content downloads, and CRM data and feeding that data back into their paid media and sales efforts.
Liam explained how Cognism uses engagement signals to identify high-intent accounts, moving them into more aggressive retargeting campaigns while notifying sales teams for direct outreach.
We've done a lot of work around when an account has a signal… and we're seeing that we're converting five times the amount of business.
Instead of treating every ICP account equally, Liam and his team adjust ad spend and sales activity based on real buyer intent.
Alexei agreed, noting that connecting engagement data from different channels is one of the biggest challenges in B2B marketing.
Engagement data should dictate audience targeting, not just static ICP lists.
For more on signal based selling check out this article.
Exclusions can be key to audience efficiency
One of the most effective yet often overlooked ways to improve audience targeting is through strategic exclusions.
Mathilde explained how Dreamdata helps Oyster dynamically exclude irrelevant audiences (like existing customers, competitors, and large companies) from their campaigns, ensuring they don’t waste budget on non-buyers.
Just make sure you've got the right exclusion, and you don't waste too much ad spend.
Liam noted that he systematically excludes past MQLs from non-brand Google Ads campaigns to focus budget on net-new contacts.
So, if someone has already engaged but hasn’t yet converted, they are moved into a different remarketing strategy instead of continuing to serve prospecting ads.
Exclusion lists, when done correctly, prevent wasted impressions and ensure budget is only spent on the highest-value prospects.
Refining your B2B Audience with segmentation
Once an audience is defined, the next challenge is structuring it correctly with audience segmentation.
Tailoring messaging to seniority levels
One of the biggest mistakes B2B marketers make is assuming that one message fits all. In reality, a junior-level end user and a C-suite executive require completely different approaches.
For more on messaging, check out this conversation with Emma Stratton.
Liam explains that there are two approaches to account penetration: top-down, where executives influence teams, and bottom-up, where end users champion your product internally. Both require different messaging strategies.
Liam emphasized that Cognism splits its audience by seniority to deliver the right message to the right person:
Mid-level managers and individual contributors → Need content that addresses their day-to-day pain points and helps them advocate for a solution internally.
VPs and C-suite executives → Need messaging focused on ROI, business impact, and long-term strategy.
Alexei agreed with the logic but cautioned against over-segmenting too early.
Don't be too narrow and don't be scared to go a little bit broad and challenge what sales defines as ICP.
Segmenting by seniority is crucial for messaging, but overly restrictive targeting can hurt scalability.
Regional segmentation is a commonly overlooked factor
Mathilde also stressed that even English-speaking markets should not be lumped together.
Our messaging resonates differently in different countries, and while you might think English speaking countries will all receive the same messaging, it just didn't work that way for us. So it's really important to split your campaigns by regions or even countries if you can and also test different messaging.
Beyond budget distribution, regional segmentation allows for:
Localized messaging: What works in North America might not land the same way in Europe.
Better bid management: Adjusting bids per region ensures better cost efficiency.
More precise targeting: Some job roles or industries might be more relevant in specific geographies.
Alexei supported this approach, explaining that Moss customizes campaigns for different regions to ensure both messaging and budget allocation are optimized.
Segmenting by geography isn’t just about budget, it’s about tailoring your message to how different audiences engage.
Automatically sync your B2B Audience into LinkedIn & Google without losing accuracy
To ensure accuracy and scalability, B2Bs must dynamically sync audiences into ad platforms like LinkedIn and Google, preventing outdated targeting.
To do this, you must then bring your B2B audience into ad platforms like LinkedIn and Google, without losing accuracy.
Dreamdata’s Audience Hub allows you to build precise audiences based on CRM and engagement data, automatically sync them back to ad platforms (no manual uploads required), and send daily updated conversions and audience data to ensure accuracy and freshness.
For Liam, the key is integrating first-party CRM data dynamically, ensuring that marketing and sales target the same high-intent accounts.
Alexei and Mathilde take a similar approach but with slight differences in execution. Alexei, for example, emphasized the importance of real-time audience syncing to avoid wasted spend.
Before, I would upload manual lists every month, and these would be outdated within a week. It would be like you're reaching accounts that we’ve lost or pulled in, and it's just like okay why are we wasting our ad spend on companies that we don't need to be reaching.
Read more about how Moss reduced CPL by 74% with Dreamdata’s smarter B2B audiences.
Mathilde, on the other hand, highlighted a low-effort, high-impact tactic for teams that lack advanced automation: uploading a list of existing customers into LinkedIn to create lookalike audiences.
You need to use that list to exclude from any campaign that you run to make sure you're not wasting any ad spend on targeting customers.
No matter your approach, defining an audience is never a one-time exercise, it’s an ongoing process that must be informed by real data.
A final word
B2B marketing success isn’t always about reaching the most people. It also requires reaching the right people, in the right way, at the right time.
From leveraging first-party data to segmenting by seniority, engagement level, and geography, the panelists reinforced that precision is key, but only when balanced with scalability and real-time optimization.
By integrating Dreamdata’s audience capabilities, all three companies have been able to refine their approach, reduce waste, and increase engagement. The best B2B marketers are those who continuously refine their audience-building strategies, ensuring that every ad dollar is spent with intent.
About the speakers
Alexei leads the paid media initiatives at Moss, focusing on optimizing digital advertising strategies across platforms like LinkedIn and Google. His expertise lies in performance marketing and aligning marketing efforts with sales objectives to drive customer acquisition.
Mathilde is a senior performance marketing manager Oyster, a global employment platform. She specializes in paid social and search marketing, with a focus on precise audience segmentation and exclusion-based targeting to maximize campaign efficiency.
Liam Collins is the Vice President of Paid Acquisition at Cognism, a leading sales intelligence platform. Liam specializes in creating personalized, value-driven campaigns that resonate with audiences across regions and industries.
