How to: Make the most of first-party data image

Make the most of first-party data

Marketers may place a premium on first-party data, but a recent survey shows that a lack of volume is often a top obstacle for organisations looking to deploy and derive value from data-driven marketing and media initiatives. Nowhere is the volume challenge more acute than in the B2B space, which has been relatively late to adopt a data-driven approach and reluctant to embrace costly data collection solutions. But as it turns out, B2B marketers, even those in small and medium-sized businesses, do have access to first-party data. What they lack are creative strategies for unlocking that data and putting it into action.

Digitise

Typically, B2B firms think of first-party data solely in the context of the information collected from a visit to their website. That information is incredibly valuable, but within the larger context of the buyer’s journey, website data is only a small sliver of the story. Phone calls, emails, trade show meetings and even the internet research your sales team does before contacting a prospect are all potential sources for valuable first party data.

Consider a simple phone call. When a salesperson talks to a prospect or an existing customer, that conversation can yield a lot of information about the prospect’s business. For instance:

  • Annual budget for new purchases
  • The best times and methods for contact
  • Who makes the final purchase decision.

This is all information a good salesperson will try to obtain, but is any of that information currently being captured and turned into data?

Chances are, most of what your sales team knows about their prospects is housed in their heads and on the notepads on their desks. By asking your sales team to fill out a few fields on a shared spreadsheet, you’re capturing actionable first-party data that can be combined with additional first and third-party data sets.

Localise

Even in a global economy, all business happens locally. A dentist serves a small community in Alaska. A cookie company sells all over the world, but they bake and ship their cookies from Akron, Ohio. A contractor builds roads across the southwest, but they’re located in San Diego. Your customer lives and works in a unique location, and that kind of first-party data, while easy enough to obtain via cookie browser data or contact forms, is incredibly valuable.

If the dental chair you’re selling has a seat warmer, the creative for your Alaskan dentist should highlight that feature and speak to the area’s cold weather; a simple stock photo of snow-capped mountains can go a long way here. If you’re selling payroll software, that cookie company in Akron is going to want to know your product can handle the nuances of doing business in Summit County, Ohio; again, housing that information in a database that feeds email, web, mobile and social will turn a generic interaction into a custom one.

Likewise, if your contractor in San Diego would be the first one in town to buy your new, more durable concrete, you absolutely want to tell them they can be the first in their area to offer it.

Personalise

When I was a kid, I worked in my grandfather’s veterinary office. I thought I was a clerk, but as it turned out, I was his lead-gen operation. After exams, my grandfather added one or two qualitative notes to each animal’s file. If he told Mrs Smith that her dog, Rex, had a great smile, he’d make a note on an index card. My job was to send out postcards reminding Mrs Smith to bring Rex in for an annual checkup. But instead of just bulk mailing postcards with generic messages, my grandfather instructed me to write a personal note that referenced whatever details he had recorded in the animal’s file. As you can imagine, it was a time consuming process, but also an incredibly effective one.

Today’s technology allows us to automate the index cards my grandfather used. One of the most effective ways to exploit the rich first party data you’re collecting is to translate it into personal creative. If you sell dental equipment, for example, and you know that your prospect is actually an orthodontist, custom creative that references their specialty will go a long way. Along the same lines, if you’re targeting a dental group with multiple locations, a message about a single dental chair won’t be nearly as impactful as one aimed at a buyer who is likely to purchase a dozen chairs and is therefore more likely to consider the cost per unit and any economies of scale you can offer.

By using even one or two pieces of first party data to customise your creative, your message stands a much stronger chance of breaking through the noise, because you can be certain that it speaks to your customer’s needs. Ultimately, that’s the idea behind focusing on first party data—to put the customer at the centre of your marketing and sales operation. Because the deeper you’re able to go with data collection, the more insight you’ll have into your customers, and the more likely you’ll be to convert.

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