“Data is a precious thing and it will last longer than the systems themselves.”
– Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW)
Business-to-business data is crucial for the survival and functioning of any enterprise. Such is importance that enterprises might belong to any industry or sector; they will be blind and deaf and left in a lurch without B2B data. Businesses inevitably need data to acquire new clients, sell their products, and gain revenue. B2B data can be used to change the trajectory of companies; it can nudge them toward success as it powers sales and marketing campaigns.
Business to business data commonly known as B2B data is information about other companies that is vital for an enterprise’s sales and marketing endeavors. It usually comprises of contact lists or contact databases that can be used for marketing or sales endeavours including demand generation, lead generation, outbound sales and more.
According to the type of service or product, businesses need to infer the right kind of data they have to leverage for their sales and marketing initiatives. The data includes personal and behavioral information encompassing attributes like name, email address, contact details, company name, location, job titles, and more.
Various types of B2B data are mentioned below:
Demographic data is static information that helps enterprises decipher if a contact suits their total addressable market (TAM) market. It includes personal and geographical characteristics like name, contact number, age, skills, location, etc. The focal point of demographic B2B data is the company’s employee base details that can be leveraged for marketing campaigns and lead-scoring and nurturing.
Firmographic data’s core focus is on the company. It includes the company name, location, employee size, revenue, company performance, industry type, and more. Marketers can use firmographic data for segmentation, and from the insights they derive about the firm, they can focus only on specific companies and customize their offerings per the company’s needs.
Technographic data gives vital details about the company’s technology stack and its digital footprint. Companies developing various tools can gain significant insights into the tech preferences of a company and choose the targets they want to target. For instance, a business can infer if the company is using an outdated tool and send the right message to the right inbox about the latest product they need to function better.
Chronographic data is essential to understand the timing of company activities, track events, and the occurrence of significant changes helping businesses recognize a potential sales or marketing opportunity. Chronographic data includes company relocation, event appearances, acquisitions, job hiring, and more information. This data helps businesses recognize a potential sales or marketing opportunity.
5. Intent Data
Intent data tracks the users’/company’s online behavior and the type of content they are engaging with. This type of B2B data can be used to assess the purchase intent of a company based on their research habits during their website visits. Intent data allows sales and marketing teams to target prospects precisely during their buyer journey, i.e., when they research products and make a purchasing decision.
6. Quantitative Data
Quantitative data is discrete or continuous data with numerical values that can be used for analytics, which includes the company’s annual revenue, website traffic, email open rate, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, and more.
7. Qualitative Data
Qualitative data describes the characteristics of prospects and can provide insights that will help in process developments. It allows marketers to decipher how their prospects feel and think. One-on-one interactions focus group meetings, and surveys are usually used to collect qualitative data.
It is essential to understand why businesses should avoid sourcing data in-house. When an enterprise attempts to source data in-house, it must invest immense efforts in hiring and training teams, pay subscriptions for multiple tools, and spend time validating, cleansing, and appending data. This process eats into the team’s bandwidth and increases workload, negatively impacting its performance. Also, data structuring and validation consumes the in-house teams’ valuable bandwidth.
95% of businesses find it cumbersome to manage unstructured data, and 80 to 90% of the data generated is unstructured.
Here is an overview of the best places to procure data for your business:
1. From Social Platforms
Prospects are usually on various social platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. LinkedIn is one such platform that houses valuable information that can be helpful for businesses. 66% of B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn as a social media channel for marketing. As users include information about themselves to create their LinkedIn profiles, businesses can tap into this potential and reach out to them. With the available multiple search features, businesses can collate a contact list that fits their ICP (ideal customer profile), and using web plugins, B2B marketers can get the missing pieces of information they need.
A business’ website is a great source to get relevant information about them. Publishing blogs, infographics on the website can attract users interested in the topics being discussed. Data can be collected through websites by posting gated content like white papers and articles that requires users to fill out an intent form to access them. Information can also be sourced from a website’s Meet the Team section. Additionally, crucial details about the company’s funding and investment can be obtained from websites like Crunchbase.
The network for professionals is a good source for businesses to get helpful information about an employee that can be used to analyze the market, recruitment, and more.
Through review data, businesses can get information about competitors or companies they are interested in. By analyzing review data, firms can infer specific needs and want of a company’s employees and other positive or negative aspects relevant to them.
Businesses can save time and cut to the chase by sourcing data from paid vendors. They can share relevant information points that fit their ICP with the data providers and get accurate details of prospects.
Accurate data plays a vital role in a successful sales cycle. Besides helping close sales deals, accurate data ensures efforts invested in marketing do not go futile. Businesses can get B2B data in sync with their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) from a B2B data provider without worrying about missing data points required to communicate with the prospect. Businesses can share their criteria with B2B data providers and avail contact lists generated as requested. Before purchasing, companies can determine whether all the requested data points are available in the contact list and pay for only what they need. Businesses stand to gain immensely by associating with data providers as they can access accurate data with a 95% IPR (inbox placement) rate. Also, the contact lists shared by the data providers are easy to integrate with CRM tools and available in easy-to-use download formats.
B2B data providers can help businesses access marketing or contact databases of industries like technology, hospitality, healthcare, and more. These databases have comprehensive global B2B data enriched with relevant details that company name, location, size, and contact information about key decision makers, professionals, and more. Comprehensive global B2B data allows businesses to establish connections with clients and companies located across the globe.
Furthermore, B2B data providers put rigorous processes in place to ensure the authenticity and accuracy of data. Besides updating their databases once every 90 days, data providers determine the authenticity and activeness of contacts through AI and manual verification.
Furthermore, B2B data providers put rigorous processes in place to ensure the authenticity and accuracy of data. Besides updating their databases once every 90 days, data providers determine the authenticity and activeness of contacts through AI and manual verification.
B2B data provider’s verified contact databases are segmented using to help businesses discover, connect and convert the prospects to attain marketing success. These well-segmented databases with versatile data enable enterprises efficiently execute niche-specific targeting and onboard clients.
Also, the contact databases are compiled by strictly following compliant guidelines, including CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CCPA, to ensure that the businesses do not fall foul of the law. The versatile and compliant data places businesses precisely in front of their clients by enabling effective communication.
In addition to usual data mining, B2B data providers help businesses with data enrichment and management. By leveraging data appending services companies can supplement their existing information with additional data for prospecting.
Businesses can avail of pre-determined data packages or customized databases by choosing data points relevant to them and initiating data-driven marketing for better ROI.
Access to comprehensive B2B data is a make-it-or-break-it situation for businesses. Besides enabling data–driven marketing, B2B data impacts the productivity, growth, and success of an enterprise’s marketing and sales teams.
Businesses can harness B2B data for lead generation. Marketing teams can leverage B2B data to identify relevant prospects, and sales can pursue these leads. With quality data in hand, businesses can target suitable candidates. With numerous lead generation methods like email marketing, cold calling, and content marketing, they will have a greater chance of turning them into leads.
Businesses can generate market demand for their product or services through data-driven marketing. B2B data can be utilized to share valuable information about their offering and build trust with prospects. By leveraging B2B data, business owners can understand their audience’s pain points and position themselves as the solution provider, thus sparking engagement and demand for the product.
With B2B data, businesses can comprehend the correct source of the lead, whether the information is ready to purchase their product or service, its location, etc., and categorize it appropriately and effectively convert it to customer.
The segmented database that B2B data providers offer has versatile data points. Businesses can assign values to each data point, understand if the lead is sales-ready, and efficiently channel their efforts to close the sale.
Businesses can utilize B2B data to analyze risks, competition, and market growth. For instance, a business offering software can analyze technographics to understand its competitors and price and pitch its offering accordingly.
Besides optimizing lead generation and helping in analytics, B2B data allows businesses to take up account-based marketing. With accurate and verified B2B data, sales and marketing teams can zero in on high-value accounts and target them across channels with value proposals custom-made for key decision-makers or professionals, improving the likelihood of closing deals and accelerating sales cycles.
With B2B data at their behest, sales teams can segment prospect information into different categories and pursue them quickly. Various data points in the marketing databases help the teams gain valuable insights about audience persona and formulate relevant questions for understanding their needs and pain points. By understanding the pain points, businesses can adjust their services or offerings and sell them better.
Businesses can use B2B data to get accurate insights and improve their performance efficiency by aligning their sales, marketing, and customer success initiatives around consistent goals.
With B2B data, businesses can reduce the time to track a prospect’s contact information and focus efforts on sales initiatives. It helps enterprises to create invoices quickly and handle payments efficiently, making way for positive cash flows.
The B2B data landscape is ever-evolving. As enterprises want to stay relevant and drive business through data–driven marketing, creating adaptive systems based on AI, hyper-automation, and digital scalability will be the future of B2B data. Some of the key trends include;
The B2B marketing ecosystem is a highly competitive space. Hence, businesses can only survive and thrive through a sustainable ROI by communicating the correct message to the target audience. B2B data will let enterprises achieve this by ensuring their sales pipeline is filled with genuine leads that can be converted to customers and their revenue growth is always up.
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