Finding your audience

collecting the data

A robust B2B database can help you find your most viable prospects among existing or potential customers - But as an SME, without full-time analysts and data scientists, it’s easy to find yourself swamped by data, unable to do anything productive with it. The secret is to know which data you need, what you’re actually going to do with it, then organising it (and your team) accordingly.

Many SME’s have a huge amount of data sitting within their organisations. This includes transactional data, general contact and customer relationship management (CRM) information, plus social media followers, whitepaper downloaders, old leads and more. If this data is collated and analysed effectively, you can split your business prospects into different segments to ensure everyone receives relevant marketing messages through the marketing channels they use, but also you can focus your marketing spend and resources where they can create the most ROI.

For example, email marketing might work for one business customer while another might be more likely to respond to an offer sent through the post, or if you’re organising an event in a specific location, it’s unsurprisingly better to focus your marketing efforts on those who live or work within a 2 hour radius. Of course, your own segments will depend on the nature of your customers and your business. But what to do when you’ve exhausted what you have? If you’re fishing in a small pond, you’ll only catch so many fish, but growing your database organically is a slow process. It goes without saying that the more authoritative content you can create, in whatever form, the more organic search traffic you’ll attract. The more effort you can put into social media, the larger the audience your content can reach, but how can you dramatically increase the number of leads you have?

One particularly easy and comparatively cost-effective way of reaching a large number of potential customers is third party contact data. If you don’t have the time, expertise or resources to generate or grow your own lists, this can be a real lifeline, but knowing what you’re buying can be difficult.

If you’re fishing in a small pond, you’ll only catch so many fish

3rd Party Contact Data Acquisition

When acquiring B2B contact data, it’s important to have a clear idea of who you’re trying to reach. Reputable data providers can offer valuable advice in terms of how to target and select these people - they will normally be happy to count how many suitable prospects they have in their databases and provide small samples for you to get a good idea of what you’re buying. When renting or buying contact data from third parties, it is important to know what you’re getting yourself into. It would be nice to think that whoever you buy data from owns what they’re supplying, that their data is legally compliant, and that you don’t need to consider the implications of poor quality, or otherwise questionable data for your brand. Nothing could be further from the truth. Happily, this isn’t true of all data suppliers, and some basic diligence on your part can ensure that you’re purchasing compliant, high-quality data that will help you achieve your marketing goals. Some of the basics include:

• ICO registration In the UK, any person or corporate entity in possession of personal data should be registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). A free, 30 second check on the ICO website will confirm that your supplier is a registered data controller.
• Guarantees Although it’s impossible for any data supplier to ensure 100% accuracy, the guarantees offered before purchase can be a good indication of the supplier’s confidence in their product. Look for promises to replace or refund “gone away” or inaccurate records.
• Where is the supplier? Look for suppliers domiciled within the same legal jurisdiction, to ensure that compliance isn’t an issue - external regulatory zones can have significantly different, often far less stringent data regulations. Importing data can be legally challenging and ultimately, you will be held responsible if your marketing is in breach of local laws.
• Data ownership, permissions Ensure ownership, contact methods and frequency are clearly defined in writing before any data transfer takes place
• Cost If it seems too good to be true, it often is. Expect to pay between 10p and £1 for safe and legal B2B contact data, depending, of course, on age, the number of fields required, seniority, company size and other meta information.
• Age and Collection Method How was it generated and how old is it. Seemingly simple questions, but very important when attempting to understand the provenance of data. You might seek to understand the research methods employed by a supplier, the number of staff they have, and even ask to audit a few records. As new GDPR legislation comes into force, compliant companies will need to be able to provide call records and more. The more time you have to work with your supplier and investigate, the more you can understand the quality of what you’re buying.
• Range of Information Does the data provide enough information (other than simple contact details) to allow you to filter and target as you wish, for optimal campaign performance?

TOP TIP

Ensure that data is tagged appropriately when imported into systems or included with other data - you need to be able to demonstrate your own legal compliance, as well as expunge records when rental agreements come to an end.

Integrate

Whatever the size of your business, your database should underpin every aspect of your marketing. It should be integral to everything you do when devising and executing marketing campaigns. As we’ve already suggested, it makes sense to spend more of your marketing budget targeting the people most likely to buy from you.

Large marketing organisations make use of sophisticated tools to achieve this integration, including business intelligence, analytics and marketing automation systems - they can identify trends and behaviours and act upon them with little input from personnel, automatically delivering the right message at the right time, autonomously nurturing a prospect along the purchase path.

This doesn’t preclude smaller businesses however. There are less expensive platforms available, and of course, even with the most modest budgets, it is possible (although time consuming) to manually integrate data. Tools as simple as excel can be used to identify opportunities in the short term. Over time, as you’re able to demonstrate ROI, investing in systems to help with CRM and data management will pay dividends.

Whatever the size of your business, your database should underpin every aspect of your marketing.

The Customer Experience

Modern B2B customers expect high quality experiences at the time and on the device of their choosing. From simple design and user interface right through to content and personalisation. Marketing-savvy buyers don’t want to receive emails containing deals for “new customers only”, or products that aren’t appropriate to their business. Of course, by ensuring that data you acquire contains the information you need to personalise, or with simple data capture (to augment existing data), such personalisation becomes relatively easy to achieve, particularly as you are able to invest in automation. If your resources don’t immediately allow for it, the most important thing to remember is not to overstretch yourself - if you’re not able to give your customers a good experience in a channel - for example, you don’t have the resources to respond in a timely fashion on the latest social network or you don’t have the time to post regular updates (think twitter, blogs, etc), our advice is to focus on doing a good job where you can, so that your customers are always getting high-quality experiences. Grow from there.

Focus on Content

Whether you’re targeting new customers or developing existing ones, it’s essential to have something to say. If they’re coming into contact with your brand as part of their own research or you’re messaging prospects as part of outbound marketing activity, modern buyers expect a message other than “look at our stuff”. Mature brand owners will talk about the “lifetime value” of customers, and SMEs need to think in the same long-term way. Certainly, established brands understand the importance of strong content to inform, educate and entertain existing or potential clients. They are able to use their data to help create content, then target it to different segments.

Assess your customers and their buying cycle to develop content for each stage. For example “a dummies guide” explainer video might be just what an inexperienced purchaser needs to get started, or an “upgrade your” white paper might be a tempting read for a potential customer who’s outgrown their current solution. Using the data that you have, such as sector, job level, company size, location and more, identify your customers pain points and create content to help and inform them. Putting this content in their hands will build your reputation as a thought leader in your space and keep your brand top of mind.

Customers expect high quality experiences at the time and on the device of their choosing

Follow Up

In today’s multi-channel, content-focused digital landscape, many business leaders have forgotten the power of sales and simple customer relationships - especially in B2B. Even beautiful, well timed, highly personalised messages don’t beat personal relationships, but you can’t always phone every lead or meet every prospect.

When it comes to prioritising the hottest leads and prospects, simple (even manual) engagement scoring can help you focus your resources where they are most needed. For example; if a lead continues to click on your marketing emails, download your content and visit your website, a 2 minute phone call might tip them into converting, whilst someone who hasn’t interacted with your brand for over a year might be a waste of such resources. Limited effort is required to compile a spreadsheet of such interactions, or, if systems and resources allow, basic automation tools can alert sales staff based on such behaviour. Sales and customer service teams (however small or disparate) should also make continuously augmenting, cleaning and updating customer data an ongoing priority. This knowledge can then be used to further improve your campaigns and help personalise content which, in turn, will improve conversion rates.

Analyse responses and measure

Whether you’re a business owner beholden only to yourself, or a full-time marketer, there is significant pressure to demonstrate marketing ROI. When devising your marketing strategy or planning specific campaigns, is your aim to increase sales, boost customer loyalty or raise brand awareness? How will you measure success? Certainly by keeping a careful track of data acquisition sources and campaign parameters, it is possible to associate direct sales with marketing spend. Thereafter, it is possible to take a holistic view of marketing spend and ROI, before drilling down to a campaign level.

As with many of the issues discussed in this paper, there are plenty of analytics and marketing resource management systems on the market that can help you to do this, but spreadsheets can be an excellent start. By simply plotting spend and sales, you can create a powerful report that will offer a real insight into what’s working and what’s delivering the best ROI and importantly, what isn’t. Perhaps most importantly, when you have analysed your responses and measured your ROI, don’t be afraid to make changes. Measure your ROI on a granular basis (perhaps within your marketing segments) and compare. Move your budgets around on a regular basis, continually interrogating your marketing spend. Finally, don’t be afraid to stop spending where you can’t demonstrate ROI.