Contact-Based Marketing Playbooks

How Playbooks bring structure to your shapeless funnel:

Let’s set the scene: your CMO turns to you and asks, “who from our target accounts is ✨actually✨ showing interest?”

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Suddenly you're drawing a blank. It feels like you’re chasing shadows.

🤡 Your ABM platform says there’s intent.
🤨 Sales says the account is cold.
👻 Analytics shows traffic…but from who?
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And that’s when the haunting begins: ghost clicks, ghost accounts, ghost MQLs.

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The problem: You’ve got a ghost problem

Let’s be real: your funnel isn’t missing leads. It’s missing motion.

Your systems are collecting signals: page visits, ad clicks, intent data, email opens. But that data is scattered across tools, trapped in static reports, or stuck in dashboards no one checks.

So instead of turning signals into action, your GTM engine stalls out in one of three ways:

• Cold campaigns: You launch the same nurture regardless of buyer behavior.
• Silence from sales: A high-intent visit goes unnoticed because no alert was triggered.
• Manual missteps: Marketing spends hours stitching together lists instead of executing fast.

The result?
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Great leads fade into the background. Campaigns miss their moment. Sales gets frustrated.

That's where playbooks come in.

But first: Funnel Vision

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Most tools stop at “this company is showing interest.”

Funnel Vision goes deeper: showing which contacts are active, what they’re researching, and how engaged they are with your brand.

It maps every contact across two dimensions:

• Intent stage – Are they problem-aware, comparing vendors, or ready to buy?
• Engagement stage – Are they cold, marketing engaged, sales engaged, or already a customer?
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The result? A 16-square grid that acts like a radar for your funnel.
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You can see who’s heating up, who’s slipping away, and who’s ready for outreach.

And here’s the best part: each square comes with a recommended Playbook so you’re not just seeing the signal, you’re acting on it.

What Playbooks actually do (and why it matters)

Think of Vector Playbooks as the séance that turns your haunted funnel into a living, breathing GTM motion.

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They don’t just show you what’s happening. They tell you what to do about it, and help you do it instantly.

Each Playbook is a pre-built, ready-to-run GTM motion. It takes the signals surfaced in Funnel Vision like contact-level intent, engagement, and behavior and turns them into tactical plays like:

• Launching targeted ad campaigns to specific buyer roles
• Sending real-time alerts to AEs when key contacts spike in activity
• Enrolling the right people in sales or nurture sequences
• Triggering gifts or event invites at the perfect moment
• Reporting on silent-but-active prospects to plan better campaigns

But this isn’t just a list of tasks. It’s about orchestration at scale.

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Playbooks bring structure to your chaos. Instead of relying on random Slack pings, spreadsheet exports, or gut checks, they operationalize what happens next, so every buyer signal maps to a clear, purposeful action.

You can move faster, too. No more waiting days to build a campaign or pass a lead to sales. Playbooks let you act instantly on live data without bogging down RevOps or manually stitching workflows together.

They also make your marketing smarter. Every play is behavior-driven, persona-aware, and tied to funnel position, so you stop wasting budget on irrelevant outreach and start delivering timely, high-impact engagement.

And because Playbooks bridge marketing and sales, they tighten the entire GTM loop.

Marketing doesn’t just pass leads. They support deals.

Sales doesn’t just guess who to follow up with. They strike at the right time.

Best of all, Playbooks help you prove the value of your signals. It’s not just “we saw intent.” It’s “we turned that intent into six sourced opportunities” because you ran the right play before the moment vanished.

The four phases of full-funnel activation

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Vector's 26 Playbooks cover every part of your funnel from cold contact to customer expansion:

1. Out-of-market? No problem.

Warm up cold contacts with low-cost, high-awareness ads that build recognition without breaking the budget.

Examples:
Activate The Unaware With Affordable, Hyper-Targeted Ads

Drive Cold Contacts To Events With Targeted Ads

2. Intent is showing? Strike now.

Trigger retargeting, email, and sales alerts when someone shows signs of real buying behavior.

Examples:

Trigger Sales Alerts From Competitive Or Category Research

#NoForms: Convert Content Readers With Relevant Outreach

3. Deal in motion? Surround it.

Support sales cycles with stakeholder ads, decision-maker insights, and multi-threading support.

Examples:

Get Execs Involved Before Competitors Win By Default

Track The Buying Group: Real-Time Alerts From Open Opps

4. Already a customer? Don’t stop.

Catch expansion signals, competitor risk, or upsell readiness and route them to CS, AMs, or your next campaign.

Examples:

Turn Unknown Interest Into Expansion And Education Opportunities

Catch Customer Churn Signals Before They Escalate
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Vector Playbooks help you take real-time action at every stage of the funnel.

They’re powered by Funnel Vision, so every alert, ad, or campaign is grounded in what your buyers are actually doing.

Final thought:

Your funnel doesn’t need more leads. It needs movement.

Playbooks make that happen: automatically, intelligently, and at the exact right moment.

Let’s stop watching ghosts float by.

👻 Let’s run the play.