Key takeaways:
- Reduce non-ICP lead waste by using contractor data for smarter exclusion logic and targeting refinement.
- Build exclusion lists as carefully as inclusion lists—understanding who you don't want matters equally.
- Validate market assumptions with data; pull back from weak markets and double down on strong ones.
- Align your targeting universe closely with total addressable market to prevent quality degradation.
- Enrich inbound leads monthly to identify underperforming segments and refine strategy accordingly.
Most performance marketing teams are not struggling because they lack reach. They are struggling because too much of that reach is wasted on the wrong audience. In this interview, Rod Coleman, Director of Performance Marketing at Buildertrend, explains how his team uses ToolBeltData to reduce non-ideal client profile (ICP) lead flow, sharpen targeting, and make smarter decisions about where to invest. If you are responsible for growth, market coverage, or lead quality, this conversation offers a practical look at how contractor data can help improve performance without increasing waste.
Kirill: Rod Coleman is the Director of Performance Marketing at Buildertrend. Rod, tell us a bit more about your role and what your team is working on.
Rod: I lead demand generation and acquisition, which essentially means performance marketing.
Our team is focused on bringing more qualified leads into the funnel, helping move them efficiently toward conversion, and ultimately driving new annual recurring revenue (ARR).
That includes both acquiring new customers and re-engaging former customers who may be back in the market.
Kirill: For those who may not be very familiar, what exactly is performance marketing?
Rod: Performance marketing is really centered on demand capture.
We focus on ideal client profile (ICP) prospects who are actively searching for construction management software, as well as people who may not be ready to buy yet but are becoming aware of the problems they need to solve.
Our job is to capture that demand, build awareness among future buyers, and make sure Buildertrend is top of mind when they are ready to make a decision.
In short, it is the collection of activities used to acquire customers at different stages of the buying journey.
Kirill: Give me a little history around Buildertrend’s partnership with ToolBeltData. When did you start using the data, and why?
Rod: The history goes back further than my own time in the role. Buildertrend started using ToolBeltData roughly two to three years ago as part of a broader effort to build top-of-mind awareness and sharpen targeting.
When I became more familiar with the data and its capabilities, I was specifically focused on reducing non-ICP spend. We were seeing a large number of leads come in that were not a strong fit for Buildertrend, so I wanted to look at every lever we had to improve quality and targeting.
ToolBeltData was one of the first resources I identified that could help us do that. At the time, we had roughly 60% non-ICP leads coming in. That represented a lot of wasted spend because those leads were less likely to stick and more likely to churn.
My goal was to reduce that while increasing exposure to prospects who were actually a good fit, and ToolBeltData helped us sharpen our approach.
Kirill: How are you currently using the data and the match report?
Rod: One of the biggest ways we use the data today is to exclude the kinds of customers we do not want.
In performance marketing, understanding who you do not want can be just as important as understanding who you do. ToolBeltData has helped us build much stronger exclusion logic, especially in areas where platform targeting can be somewhat limited or ambiguous.
We wanted to move our non-ICP rate down from about 60%, and today we are trending closer to 20%. To me, that is a dramatic improvement.
A major reason for that progress has been our ability to use ToolBeltData for exclusions and to filter out low-fit prospects.
Kirill: Where in the process is the data most valuable for your team today?
Rod: Right now it is most valuable at the top of the funnel, where it helps us acquire new customers while filtering out the ones we do not want. Another important use case has been ad hoc match reports.
About six months ago, we began taking our inbound leads each month and enriching them to better understand what trades and segments they belonged to. That helped us compare them against the segments where we had stronger win rates and the segments where we consistently underperformed.
We found that five to ten of those segments were repeatedly low-converting. We could get them to a demo, but they were not closing.
ToolBeltData surfaced those insights, which allowed us to take our exclusions and targeting one step deeper. In other words, these were technically within our broader ICP, but they were not the right fit for our strategy.
Kirill: You talk a lot about ICP. Are there specific markets or geographies you want to focus on, and do you also use ToolBeltData to identify potential markets?
Rod: Yes, absolutely. We do have target markets, and the match report has helped us validate whether our lead flow actually lines up with the customer base we want to build.
We wanted proof points that could either confirm our assumptions or challenge them, and ToolBeltData helped us do that. It showed us that leads and customers were indeed clustering in some of the markets we expected. It also helped us identify markets where we were losing, and where the underlying prospect base may not have been deep enough to justify continued focus.
That gave us the confidence to pull back in weaker areas and double down in the markets where we were seeing stronger results.
Kirill: What is one campaign or test where ToolBeltData produced especially clear results for your team?
Rod: The clearest example has probably been across our search campaigns, especially lower-funnel search activity. By layering in ToolBeltData, we were able to get more precise with our targeting and reduce wasted spend.
Kirill: If you were advising another performance marketing leader, what is the simplest starting point for using contractor data effectively, and what common mistakes would you warn them against?
Rod: The biggest thing I would stress is that you need a very clear understanding of your total addressable market (TAM). If the targeting data you are using is much larger than your actual TAM, that is usually a sign that quality is not there.
Your targeting universe should align fairly closely with your TAM. If it does not, you are likely introducing unnecessary waste. It is also important to size your opportunity correctly, not only at the account level but also at the lead and contact level.
One of the things ToolBeltData helped us do was understand both the number of relevant accounts and the number of viable contacts inside that universe. That made forecasting much more grounded because I could assess whether we actually had enough realistic opportunity to hit our goals.
I would always recommend treating your TAM as your north star and using segmentation as the guardrails around it.
Marketers are often tempted by very large audiences because they look attractive on paper, but bigger is not better if the quality is weak. You may get the leads, but they will not be the right leads.
Additional Reading
If you found this case study interesting, be sure to also check out our ACIQ case study.
