Archive for Business Data
Business Data for Fast Pain Relief
B2B marketing managers today live in a data-driven world – a business data driven world to be exact. Information age technologies like the internet, data warehousing, business intelligence and analytics have evolved B2B marketing into a complex and exciting combination of science and art.
Much of the science revolves around the gathering and analysis of business data; then turning the analysis of that business data into compelling value propositions, messages, campaigns and face-to-face conversations.
Finding the triggers in business data
There are only two reasons a B2B company will respond to your marketing: to relieve pain or increase pleasure. In the B2B world it’s usually pain relief.
Business data is the key to success because a rich set of data helps you understand your prospects’ and customer’s business environments; and a rich set of business data is also the key to uncovering your prospects’ and customers’ pain points.
An accurate picture of your customers’ pain points is essential to building a compelling value proposition. In the B2B arena the value proposition is king, and in the next few BLOG posts we’re going to discuss how to collect and use business data to build compelling value propositions, successful campaigns and engaging face-to-face conversations.
About value propositions and audience segmentation
A value proposition is built around pain points, their negative impact, what capabilities your product or service brings to the table to alleviate the pain, and what value that creates. To do that effectively you need a deep understanding of your customer and their business, and the key to that understanding is business data.
In addition, unlike B2C marketing and sales where typically the buying authority is only one or two people (like a husband and wife or parent and child), in a B2B situation, especially with big ticket items or services, you have a complex buying authority. So, in addition to segmenting your target company list, you must also segment the buying authority within each company.
Typically the buying authority in a B2B situation can be segmented into:
- the technical buyer(s)
- the financial buyer(s)
- the end user buyer(s)
A value proposition must be developed for each because while there may be some common pain points across all three disciplines, each will have some pain points of their own that must be addressed in their language.
The more you can tailor your marketing messages and value proposition to a company and the individual disciplines within the buying authority, the more effective your business marketing campaigns and face-to-face conversations will be.
Here’s where business data comes into play in the above scenario. First of all, you need to be able to segment the companies in your business marketing list. If your business data list just contains names, addresses, phone number and e-mail addresses, at a minimum you’ll need to get SIC Codes appended to your business data list so that you can at least segment people by industry. Other business data like number of employees, number and location of offices will give you insight into the size of the company, and a data field for job title will help you segment the buying authorities.
In addition, a good marketing data services partner can provide you with data from off-line data services like public records, market research, government surveys, etc. This will give you information into a company’s operations and needs that will help you uncover pain points. For example, one could make inferences about potential pain points of companies among those that recently applied for construction permits, or companies that just purchased land, or companies that indicated they had open RFPs for IT projects in a market research survey.
At The V12 Group we provide a full range of business data services for business marketing managers. Our multi-channel business database combines postal, email, and phone data, as well as more than 15+ selectors to improve targeting. This includes firmagraphic and contact level demographic business data. Our business database has been DPV confirmed to have 99% deliverable addresses. We also can append business data from a wide range of additional on-line and off-line data resources.
Click here to contact us for more information on the power of business data in B2B marketing.
Your business data, when appended and cleansed by The V12 Group, will become a high-performance marketing tool.
Use our business data to reach your customers more efficiently. The V12 Group’s Database is a hybrid file built from compiled and proprietary data sources and combines postal, email, and phone data, as well as more than 20+ selects to improve targeting. This includes firmagraphic and contact level demographic data.
Contact us to get the most powerful business data for your next campaign.
Making Your Business Data More Robust
In a previous BLOG post we discussed the role of a rich set of business data in B2B marketing, in particular the importance of business data in building accurate and compelling value propositions.
In this BLOG post we’ll discuss how to expand the breadth and depth of the business data in your business marketing list.
Some sources for business data may be within the halls of your company and others can be found with external marketing business data providers.
First, let’s take a look down the hall. If your company maintains separate databases for marketing, sales and customer service, a good source of data on your customers is their existing transaction data. In addition, if you’re in a business that has a customer support function, your customer support records may provide a treasure trove of data that will give you insight into their pain points. Once you’ve exhausted your internal business data resources, you’ll want to take a look at data appending services from an external marketing data service provider with expertise in providing business data.
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Data appending for better business data
Data appending is an easy way to increase the value of your existing business marketing list. It’s the simple process of adding more business data to your existing marketing list from an external data resource. In the old days marketing data services providers were basically list brokers who would license data from various sources like major retailers, publishers, etc. repackage it and then rent it to marketers.
Today, information technology has enabled a wide range of value added marketing data services. For example, combining data from offline resources with on-line data to build comprehensive industry and company profiles will vastly improve your audience segmentation, the accuracy of your value propositions and the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. There’s an incredible amount of rich data out there in on-line and offline resources.
The V12 Group has unique sources and can append our offline, “real world” demographic, firmographic and other business data into your business data lists
Armed with a rich set of business data you’ll not only be better able to define, segment and communicate with your audience, but also be able to take a multi-channel approach to communicate with your prospects and customers. In this way, you can surround them with messages, allowing them to communicate with you through the channels of their choice. If you have a CRM system, you’ll also be able to implement one-to-one marketing campaigns based on your knowledge of individual customers, and lead nurturing programs using the accumulated business data to tailor chain of communications to a prospect or customer based on their behavior and reactions to previous communications/offers in the chain.
Multi-channel B2B marketing campaigns driven by business data have proven to provide higher response rates and higher return on marketing investment (ROMI) than single channel campaigns. B2B companies implementing one-to-one direct marketing campaigns to customers based on customer profile data in their CRM systems are getting truly astounding response rates. For example, one major printer manufacturer using data on which printers their customers have purchased, combined with their duty cycles, achieves response rates approaching 38- 40% on direct mail campaigns for printer perishables. And finally, lead nurturing campaigns driven by business data have proven to both improve response rates and shrink the sales cycle.
Contact V12 Group to find out more about how you can take advantage of appending business data to increase the value and power of your B2B marketing lists.
When your marketing business data is appended with our consumer or business data, it becomes much more robust.
We add much more information to your existing business data using any combination of our 260+ data fields including geographic, demographic, lifestyle, interest and behavioral information.
Contact us to make your business data a much more powerful marketing tool.
Smarter Business Data for Smarter Marketing
Data-rich business marketing records can make a huge difference in the success of your B2B campaigns. Compare your own lists to the information we cover in this blog post to see if they measure up. If not, contact the V12 Group to find out how to make your business data smarter.
How many selects do your records have?
The V12 Group’s multi-channel business database is built with 20 selects (specific data fields) that make zeroing in on your best prospective business marketing targets very precise. Here’s a partial list of selects that come with our business data:
- Company
- Contact Name
- Contact Title
- Contact Email Address
- Number of Employees
- Sales Volume
- Phone Number
- SIC Code
- Contact Address
- Contact Gender
- URL
What are the sources of your business data?
Data from the V12 Group is compiled from many rich data sources including, but not limited to:
- Seminar or Trade Show Attendees
- City/State/Federal Agencies or Boards
- SEC Filings
- Professional or Industry Associations
- Websites
- White/Yellow Pages and other online directories
Size of the database and Channels
Now, factor in the size of our database and you’ll begin to see the possibilities for reaching your specific targets. It’s incredible how powerful your direct marketing can become when using smarter data to target specific parts of this large list.
- 16 million distinct companies
- 35 million individual postal addresses
- 18 million records with email address and matching postal address
- 34 million records with business phone numbers
- 28 million records with individual business title
Starting with a large number of records is critical if you’re doing highly-targeted business to business marketing. As you’ll see in this example, our selects allow you to zero in. As you zero in, those companies you really don’t need to reach drop off the list, saving you a great deal of marketing money. Also, those who remain can be even more precisely targeted with your creative messaging.
A brief example or the power of smart business data
Imagine you own and company which makes high-end, expensive trade show booth graphics. You would typically want to target an executive in marketing, perhaps the marketing director.
- Cut the list down to only those with the word “Marketing” in their job title.
You want to talk to larger companies who can afford your high-end graphics capabilities, so you decide to target only companies of 100 or more employees.
- Cut list down number of employees
You don’t want to waste money on those companies who never attend trade shows.
- Cut list down to only those who have previously attended a trade show.
You could cut the list down even further by looking at specific professional or industry associations like pharmaceutical companies or travel-related companies, both of which depend on high-quality show graphics.
Our multi-channel Business Database is a hybrid file built from compiled and proprietary data sources and combines postal, email, and phone data, as well as more than 20+ selects to improve targeting. This includes firmagraphic and contact level demographic data.
Contact the V12 Group today to learn more about using our smarter business data.
Merge your proprietary business data with The V12 Group’s huge national business database.
Enhance your business data with The V12 Groups’ 17 million distinct companies, 42 million individual postal addresses, 14 million records with email address and matching postal address, 40 million records with business phone numbers, 33 million records with individual business title.
Companies who work with The V12 Group to enrich their business data experience much better ROI
Business Data Generates and Nurtures Leads Effectively
In a previous post, we discussed how the foundation of any good B2B marketing campaign is an accurate, data-rich business marketing list because in order to get in the door you need to get your communications into the hands of the right people. And, if you’re selling a big ticket item there may be a whole group of people, crossing multiple functional areas that you need to target and move down the sales funnel. But, unlike a lot of B2C scenarios, in many B2B marketing situations getting a positive response to the first communication, i.e. getting an appointment, is just the first step. Once you’re in the door you have to earn the right to propose, put together a winning proposal, get on the short list, close the deal, and then grow your business with that customer.
This is where data-rich business marketing list, an effective email marketing program, and a good spread of quality collateral come in handy. A lead nurturing campaign designed to help move prospects from one phase of the funnel to the next can shorten the sales cycle and improve your chances of winning the deal. You should start by appending as much relevant data on your prospects as you can get into your business data file so you can better target your communications. In the early “getting to know you,” “earn the right to propose” and “education” phases of the funnel, you can push communications like “10 top reasons why,” industry research, white papers, and company brochures out to your prospects. In the “get on the short list” phase, white papers, ROI calculators, case studies, and analyst reports become extremely helpful.
Comprehensive business data is essential for effective lead nurturing
For effective lead nurturing, it’s important that you have a comprehensive set of data for each person in the buying authority because the more you know about each person, the better you can segment the list, and the better you be able to both select what collateral to push out to the prospect and tailor your value proposition for each discipline in the buying authority. This is where data appending for business marketing lists comes in handy.
Data appending will significantly increase the value and power of any business marketing list. With a robust, business marketing list you will be able to do more granular segmentation which will enable:
- Higher response rates on lead generation campaigns
- Lead nurturing which will shrink the sales cycle and increase close rates
- Cross-media campaigns that drive customers to micro sites and on-line communities of customers and prospects with similar issues, which will increase close rates, improve customer retention, and, depending on what business you’re in, may even lower customer support costs
Building a robust business marketing list is a complex task. You can’t do it alone. You need a partner like V12 Group with large, up-to-date data resources, extensive domain knowledge and the willingness to share best practices with you.
At v12 Group we provide a full range of data services for business marketing managers. Our multi-channel business database combines postal, email, and phone data, as well as more than 15+ selectors to improve targeting. This includes firmagraphic and contact level demographic data. The database has been DPV confirmed to have 99% deliverable addresses.
Contact the V12 Group to get start taking advantage of robust business data for more effective business marketing.