According to a Gartner survey, just 24% of CMOs have the essential marketing budget to implement the strategy set for the current year. The challenge facing marketers, according to Gartner, is doing more with less. Marketers, amidst such critical budget constraints, can still make the most of their budgets and achieve efficiency. Gartner recommends decision-making based on data, segmentation of target audience, and optimization of marketing channels for maximized efficiency.
Data collection and analysis has served as a powerful marketing tool for long to ensure a better customer service. But what has changed, according to a Harvard Business Review article, is the volume of data and the sheer speed of its processing.
Modern technologies, including cloud and inter-connected systems have made it possible for companies to glean relevant customer data from multiple touch points. From personal information to insights on buyer location, search preferences, and content consumption behaviors, a range of data is now available for businesses to act upon.
Given the rising significance of data in marketing, demand generation cannot remain immune to the impact. Constant challenges, including management demands for tangible results, market uncertainties, and technology revolution, compel B2B marketers to develop agile marketing practices that yield sustained outcomes.
With data-driven demand generation, marketers position their strategies to greater advantage as there is high precision in targeting buyers and understanding their behaviors.
So, how does data prepare your demand generation for greater performance?
Developing your demand generation strategy without any deep connections with your buyers is often derailing. With data, marketers stay more attuned to ground realities, which enables them to overcome demand-gen ambiguities such as shifting buyer behaviors and evolving engagement expectations.
Data reveals buyer pain points, their buying preferences, and the way they like to be engaged. Metric monitoring and analysis reveal high-performance channels and latent opportunities. These powerful insights enable marketers to create tailored experiences for buyers throughout their purchase journey.
86% CMOs in the B2B sector agree that customer experience will be a critical element for businesses in the future (Source: Via Finances Online). Data-empowered demand-gen campaigns are a powerful way to enhance buyer experiences and define your differential factor.
ABM or account-based marketing is a powerful marketing technique that channels dedicated resources to a predetermined group of audience. Well-devised ABM strategies have been known to deliver up to 50% of a firm’s total revenue in leading B2B companies.
But assimilating the components demanded by high-performing ABM programs is not easy. The process needs accurate data on buyers. A firm’s chief buying committee, and its content and engagement preferences, are key insights to escalate your solutions to the right people with the right message at the right time. Data delivers this accuracy of reach and timing.
A huge volume of disparate data, including firmographic, demographic, and technographic, is derived from multiple sources. This data is processed for elimination of mismatches, duplicates, errors, and other inaccuracies. Data is then formatted for simplicity, efficiency, and understanding. The derived data is analyzed to understand each buyer’s intent, preference, and expectations. These insights are used to adjust campaigns for maximized reach and impact.
Manual expertise and automation tools are key to delivering actionable ABM intelligence. This intelligence fuels your entire ABM campaign, enabling you to segment your audience at a nano-level with high precision, and micro-personalize your outreach.
With 45% of marketers looking to implement or test ABM this year, the significance of data grows manifold.
Marketers perform lead scoring to segment and prioritize sales-ready leads for further engagement by your sales teams. Traditional data-less lead scoring methods analyze buyer behaviors such as asset downloads and subscription requests in isolation. Prospects that exhibit predetermined behaviors for a specific count are prioritized and directed to the sales team.
This model can lead to low-quality leads as behaviors are analyzed in silos and not on the basis of interconnected data.
With strong data support, lead scoring becomes highly efficient. Data, including real-time, is analyzed at critical touch points and compared with earlier data to identify purchase patterns. As actions are analyzed as they happen, insights drawn are more accurate, which strengthens lead scoring.
Automation technology is key to capturing data on buyer actions, in a rapid-fast, objective, and accurate manner.
Segmenting your buyers accurately is only the first step. These priority accounts need to be engaged with relevant content that addresses their existing and evolving needs. Data, with its ability to infuse transparency into the buyer purchase process, unfolds buyers’ needs for you to act on. With reliable insights, you can personalize content without causing content fatigue or overload.
Timing is critical in demand generation. Data, coupled with marketing automation, helps deliver hyper-personalized content to accounts with accuracy and swiftness.
Yes, data drives your demand generation campaigns to greater performance. With about 7 out of 10 renowned marketers saying that their firms utilize data for decision-making at every level, the data secret is no more exclusive but a mainstream leverage. The secret though is the value that the data brings to your business.
Well-assorted and well-formatted data offers powerful insights for personalizing and enhancing buyer experience. Data needs to be continuously value-enhancing for your business to achieve a competitive edge. This is where FinalFunnel’s b2b demand generation solutions help address the gap.
As a seasoned b2b demand generation solutions company, we understand the table stakes. Our data-driven solutions, in combination with our future-oriented tech stack, enable you to elevate your strategy internally while maintaining your agility to changing market conditions.
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