The Importance of Marketing Reports and Data Analysis in B2B

With the rise of digitization, the quality of data is central to a company's success. They map your target audience in the CRM and guide the company in its strategic direction. However, many B2B companies are not at all aware of the importance of their data. As a result, they miss out on opportunities for increased sales, cost savings and future market share.

For marketing, the digital world offers an almost inexhaustible variety of possibilities for collecting data. But what is the best way to deal with the ever-increasing flood of data, which in reality is more like a tsunami? At the latest, when the marketing department looks haphazardly at dashboards where key figures and data sets no longer allow any interpretations, a company must rethink its data management strategy. A new era has dawned for B2B marketing and sales

In the future, the quality of the data will be a decisive factor in the success of the company.

Only those who successfully generate qualified leads without losing sight of efficiency will be able to survive in the market. High-quality data is the foundation on which the company stands. They shape the customer relationship, the number of customers and the effectiveness of the marketing automation systems used

• Data quality determines the success of a company

• Marketing is data-driven

• Quantity and quality of data are prerequisites for the use of intelligent systems

It's All About Data

Successful B2B companies focus on their customers and present them with an individual and engaging customer experience from the very first minute of contact. But where does a company find its customers in the first place? And what does the ideal customer look like? In connection with data collection, marketing is confronted with questions upon questions. For this purpose, marketing collects leads, enriches them, qualifies them and finally passes them on as Sales Qualified Leads to the sales department, which ideally bags the deal right away. So much for the theory

In practice, these relevant processes are often extremely problematic. Lack of data quality and prioritization make sales efforts come to naught and blame is passed back and forth between departments. Yet the solution to the problem is quite simple. The significance of data quality and a strategy for handling data must be implemented in the company. Working in silos is therefore a thing of the past. Marketing and sales pursue common goals and are responsible for the quality of the data in teamwork.

Data Quality

- why is there no successful way around it?

High-quality data is the basis for decision-making when it comes to developing new marketing and sales strategies. The goal of action is to increase sales and expand market share. The tremendous importance of marketing data analytics and online marketing reporting is clear according to Dun & Bradstreet's recently released 7th. Annual B2B Sales and Marketing Data Report has not yet reached all companies.

While many companies have invested in data quality, the mechanisms that lead to competitive advantage are not yet well understood

Instead, mishandling data leads to chaos, while the real potential of high-quality data lies fallow or withers lonely on an island of data

A Good B2B Marketer Is Data-Driven!

Marketing has changed. The days of spray and pray are definitely over and with modern methods such as online marketing reporting and marketing data analytics, it is possible to identify potential customers even in niche areas and to adapt the communication to each lead individually. With data-driven marketing, you derive measures from your data that are fully focused on the customer (customer centricity).

Increasingly, marketing automation systems and analytic tools are taking over the evaluation and helping to qualify the data. In marketing and sales, no one has to rely on their gut feeling anymore. The basis for decision-making is quality data that underpins relevant processes such as the identification of potential customers or targeted campaign planning

Benefits of Data-Driven Marketing at a Glance:

1. Data identifies your target audience and your buyer persona

To make sure you're not talking past your ideal customer, you need to have a clear idea of who they are. With an analysis of data, you create meaningful customer profiles.

2. Data is the basis for qualified leads

Leads need to reach a certain quality for the marketing-to-sales handover and signal a willingness to buy. Data is the basis for determining which leads are ready for the sales team

3. Create compelling content with data

With qualified data, you can create content that's right for your target audience and motivate your leads to buy.

4. Data is the foundation of effective campaigns

Let your data inspire you to launch marketing campaigns that excite your target audience. Continuously optimize your campaign based on your marketing KPIs.

5. Keep enriching your data with information

Customer needs change and need to be incorporated into the data.

Data Analysis in the B2B Context

Every data strategy starts with an assessment to get an overview of the current status of the available data in the first place. The following phases are run through during data analysis in the company:

• Determination of the ACTUAL state and the objective

• Determination of strategy and methods

• Planning and implementation of the data analysis

• Success control

• Online marketing reporting and improvements

Survey the Status Quo and Build on It

Every marketing analysis begins with a review of your own data and a general inventory. You analyze which data sources exist, how they are prepared and what important information they contain. After defining goals and methods, the information is merged from different sources by means of data blending in order to achieve a common data basis. Specially developed software is recommended for the preparation of the data

In order to ultimately generate high-quality data, data enrichment takes place, whereby the existing data is supplemented with additional information such as turnover or employee numbers. High data quality is then the starting point for all types of analyses with reliable results for business decisions

Always up to Date with Online Marketing Reporting

On average, it takes 6 touchpoints on different channels to win a customer. Marketing reports facilitate an overview of the data generated by the company's traffic channels. In addition, marketing reports identify whether the traffic channels interact with each other, what the relationship between costs and benefits looks like and whether enough conversions are actually generated

In order to continuously improve data quality, regular marketing reports should be an integral part of projects and campaigns

For example, a monthly marketing report includes reports and analysis on KPIs defined for specific objectives. In the following article, we have listed the seven most important B2B marketing KPIs

Which KPIs you ultimately evaluate, however, depends entirely on your goals and methods. In content marketing, for example, you are particularly interested in qualitative metrics such as dwell time and number of conversions. In performance marketing, on the other hand, you'll want to focus on metrics like clicks and CPS. In general, it can be said for all demand generation and caption measures that you absolutely have to monitor the conversion rates

Tips for Good Online Marketing Reporting:

• Choosing appropriate KPIs in marketing reports

• Regular marketing reports to ensure that targets are met

• Break down KPIs by source

• Use the automatic marketing reports in analysis tools

• Interpretation of graphs

• Online marketing reporting as an important part of the sales strategy

Successful or Not?

Either you win or you learn - the old saying is especially true for marketing. There are many reasons why your marketing activities have not brought the desired success. But that is no reason to throw in the towel right away

It is therefore all the more important that you know where and what you need to improve. At the end of the day, you want to know if your marketing activities were worth the money. The ROI (return on investment) tells you whether your investment was worth it. So you know which activities you can continue to rely on in the future and which are obviously less suitable

Getting the Best out of Your Data

We already stressed the importance of your data at the beginning: good data quality is essential in marketing. To make your data work for you, here are some important rules to follow

• The company focuses on data quality

• One employee is responsible for data quality

• Process optimization during data capture

• Validation of newly captured contact data

• Standardization of data for better comparability

• Avoiding duplicate data records

• Integration of marketing and sales data

• Regular review of the database

The Future lies in Artificial Intelligence

Estimates show a doubling of the data volume every 3 years. Mastering this amount of data will be a central competence of all marketing and sales employees in the future. A look into the near future is already enough to determine where the direction is heading. A professional Customer Data Platform (CDP) ideally leads to the centralization of data quality and serves as the basis for customer assets, marketing strategies and business analytics. Data quality is thus crucial for the successful use of forward-looking systems such as AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning, which will determine everyday sales in the future

Conclusion: The Quality of Your Data Is Fundamentally Important for Your Company's Success

More and more B2B companies are coming to this important realization and smart entrepreneurs are putting a high focus on data quality early on to position themselves well in the market in the future

The data quality in a company reflects the relevance and correctness of the information and is considered part of the company's value

In times of Big Data and Industry 4.0, strategic decisions will continue to be based on the evaluation of high-quality data and will massively change the work processes in companies. Don't miss the boat and lay the foundation for future technologies in your company by focusing on marketing data analytics.