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5 Steps to Successful Data-Driven Marketing | B2B Marketing

The biggest drivers of increased use of data-driven marketing include:

  • 53% – A need to be more customer centric
  • 49% – Maximize effectiveness/efficiency of marketing investments
  • 33% – Gain more knowledge of customers & prospects
  • 24% – The growing availability of audience data
  • 20% – A need to align with digital consumer preferences

Where are these data efforts being focused?

  • 69% – Targeting of offers, messages and content
  • 52% – Data-driven strategy or product development
  • 49% – Customer experience optimization
  • 44% – Audience analytics / measurement
  • 44% – Predictive analytics

Data should fuel every aspect of your marketing initiatives. And there’s a LOT of data out there.

However, this is where many marketers get tripped up.

It’s not about collecting every piece of data available. It’s about collecting the

right

data that can be used to create meaningful interactions with your customers.

Here are 5 essential steps to becoming a truly successful data-driven marketer:

 


1. Centralize Your Data


Being data-driven means you must have a way to access your data. And not just bits and pieces of it, but the full picture. The data that truly tells a story about your customers and prospects – a

360-degree view

.

As consumers interact with your brand, each of these touch points

must be integrated into a marketing database

. In addition to this internal or 1st party data, additional 3rd party data should also be included for a more robust profile of your customers.

Adding additional 3rd party demographic and firmographic data establishes a more comprehensive customer and prospect profile. This includes demographic data, such as age, health interests, marital status, net worth, occupation, religious affiliation, and more. Demographic data may include annual revenue, D&B credit rating, legal code, number of employees, primary business address, SIC, and years in business.

A data solutions provider will perform the following functions to ensure important customer details are integrated and remain current:


2. Add Unique and Hard-to-Find Data (HTFD) Sources


Data is everywhere. The number of unique data sources out there is larger than any one organization can wrangle. And make no mistake – these big data sets are the source of competitive advantage for companies across all industries.

Finding the right information from today’s huge data ecosystem is a hurdle that more than one marketer has yet to cross. Yet when these data sources are added to a marketing data mix, marketers can take the concept of being data-driven to entirely new levels.

Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) is a service approach in which unique and Hard-to-Find Data (HTFD) assets are sourced and structured from this Big Data universe. DaaS

delivers a constant stream of qualified prospects

, including your own customers, who are actively searching for what you are selling.

Distinctly different from list buying, these data sources are a highly customized marketing asset versus disconnected, one-time use prospect lists.

Some examples include:

  • Information (contacts, top customers, products, shipments) on 1.5 million buyers and suppliers in 90 countries. Helps sellers identify/evaluate buyers, helps buyers identify/evaluate suppliers.
  • U.S. manufacturing industry data with unique attributes such as certifications (ANSI, ISO), business type (exporter, distributor) and products & services (adhesive technologies, compounds).
  • Directly measured Digital Footprint Data™, that includes web pages surfed (minority of web traffic) all email and Machine to Machine (Internet of Things) digital activity (the majority of web traffic) – 60-80 Billion Transactions Daily.

 

This post first appeared on the

DataMentors blog

. Read the full blog post

here

.

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