Digital processes are constantly changing and require regular up-to-date analytics. But how do you develop an integrative B2B Data Strategy that brings your marketing to life? We show you how data influences your business growth and what it reveals about your customers.
How to Turn B2B Records into a Strategy
Satisfied customers come back. But how do you make sure your customers are satisfied in the first place? If you only look at the last action of the contact (i.e. purchase), you won't get it right. To find out why a customer chose an offer, you need to look at the entire customer journey to find out which content and touchpoints were particularly important
At first glance, it seems tiring to deal with eternally long tables and statistical data. However, nothing is more important for a sophisticated business and marketing strategy. Only those who know what customers really want can also fulfill the wishes
The better you know your target group, the more effectively you can assist your B2B contacts with their problems.
Especially in the B2B area, you should know for whom your products are suitable. Everyone knows the problem that customer and product just don't match. You spend weeks trying to convince your customers of new features, benefits and practical applications, but their interest has long since faded. What if you knew what your customer is really looking for?
This is exactly where Data Strategy comes in. You can only recognize a concrete purchase intention if you keep an eye on your customer's wishes. In order to prevent the first sale from becoming a fluke, you should therefore look at the most important data that will bring you forward.
The Huge Importance of Data in Marketing.
Everyone agrees that data is important in marketing, ...,
... but few actually put it into practice. It's scary: a Harvard Business School publication on "Data Growth" shows that around 60% of all decision-makers are heavily focused on investing in data analytics. What sounds good at first glance, however, reveals a full 40 percent who have done little in the area of big data so far.
Only in one third of all companies has marketing automation in conjunction with the development of a new data strategy led to any further hiring at all. This clearly shows that many companies are still trying to simply "go along with" their data management. However, in such a broad field, depth of content is essential to understand all the details.
Especially with regard to customer relations, companies have had very positive experiences with their data analyses in the past.
60 % see the greatest potential in improving the relationship with their own customers. The development of new regular customers and the increase of active recommendations also makes the data strategy an important basis.
The fact that a comprehensive data strategy is important for the company has already been recognized by 96 % of all marketers in the B2B area. It is therefore often convenience and current successes that make a change in strategy so difficult and prevent the introduction of new methods.
However, if you want to actively pursue growth marketing yourself, you will not be successful without innovative strategies and digital marketing processes
You gain the trust of your customers through knowledge, and it is precisely this knowledge that comes from the analyses within the framework of the data strategy. So what are you waiting for when it comes to digitizing your customer management?
Why Is a Data Strategy so Important?
Data plays an important role not only directly in sales. Processes must be kept as lean and simple as possible in order to focus on the product or service. For this reason, the data strategy also becomes significant in other departments. For example, in accounting, design, customer management and support, purchasing or directly in marketing.
Each department has different sources for new data due to its contact with the customer. However, data that accounting or marketing have determined can also be helpful in customer management. In this respect, the data strategy manages to collect all data, analyze it in detail, prepare it for each department and provide the necessary information. Therefore, always keep in mind the following reasons for creating an innovative data strategy:
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More knowledge about your customers
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Clear subdivision of all channels
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Clear presentation of complex situations
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Anonymized evaluation of all actions
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Clear measurement of success for projects
While the data management of different departments is often still separated by data silos, this makes the preparation of data much more difficult. In most cases, the data silos lead to significantly slower processes, as a wide variety of source data is distributed across several teams and departments. In this way, far too much time passes until real insights are developed from the customer data.
However, if you want to be convincing in direct contact with your customer, you don't have two or three weeks. When you have implemented your data strategy, you make sure that you have all the information you need in a few seconds. This way, you are automatically prepared for every customer conversation.
How Do I Develop a Meaningful Data Strategy Myself?
But how exactly do you design a data strategy that works? And, best of all, automatically and without long decision chains. The following four approaches make up your data strategy and ensure that your unorganized mountain of data takes shape:
1. Always define clear responsibilities
Your customers expect a simple and fully automated process from you, which makes the simple purchase an experience. Clear responsibilities are necessary for this. Who processes the customer data? Who organizes it in detail? Data analysts offer good support here.
2. Structure data for your sales process
Sheer volumes of data won't get you anywhere. For a sustainable data strategy, you need a clear division that makes your data usable. Only then will the various departments know more about your customers after analysis and respond to every request.
3. See yourself as a lever within the customer journey
A company should know at which stage of the customer journey a lead is. That's why we recommend that you define which data should be collected by whom at each stage of the customer journey
4. Analyze your data constantly
With every action, the customer data also changes. You should keep an eye on this. Here, too, marketing automation helps you in the best possible way to always clean and replace outdated data. Up-to-date data thus ensures constant growth.
The Data Structure as an Element for Customer Retention
A custom-fit data strategy becomes the best means for you to learn more about your customers and increase your sales. Both the acquisition of new customers and the nurturing of the existing ones can be combined within the framework of an innovative data strategy.
Consistency is the most important quality at this point in order to ensure the development of a long-term strategy with your own data audit
Once this strategy is in place, you won't have to spend much time or other resources
A successful marketing automation relieves you of the constant effort of data maintenance and provides you with valuable customer data.
Conclusion: Good Data Strategies Are More Than Just a Free Skate
Good data strategies are now mandatory for modern businesses if they want to grow. It also gives you a decisive advantage in getting to know your customers better. In this way, you can identify exactly what binds the customer to you and where the previous weaknesses of the processes lie.
If used correctly, you can expect not only vast amounts of raw material, but clear correlations that can be used by every department. The better you make these usable for you and your company, the easier you will be able to react to your customers' wishes in the future!
