Marketing to Businesses using B2B Data – What You Need to Know
Wouldn’t it be great if you knew more about your prospective clients? Well, you can.
B2B data comes in many shapes and sizes. That way, regardless of your industry, if you’re targeting business customers, B2B data could improve your marketing performance.
In most cases, business data is supplied as B2B Data Lists.
What are B2B Data Lists?
B2B Data Lists are marketing lists of business decision makers and relevant information about them and/or their business; depending on what you think you need.
Just like all forms of marketing data, B2B Data can be ruthlessly segmented. That means that no matter how niche your target customer, a marketing list can be created with potential customers.
Where does it come from?
B2B data comes from a variety of sources. These are private and public sources.
Public Sources:
- Social Media – some Business data will be clawed from social media profiles, like LinkedIn and Facebook
- Websites – another source of B2B data is company websites.
Private Sources:
- In-House Lead Generation – These include any marketing tool used to generate the lead. For instance, digital marketing, telephone surveys, and email marketing.
- DaaS Providers – DaaS stands for Data as a Service. Some huge businesses like Oracle and Equifax supply business data that they collect. However, the paywall for these companies are huge.
If you are serious about B2B marketing, you should prioritise business data from private sources. In our experience, this type of data performs far better. Nonetheless, we’ve seen plenty of successful campaigns that have sourced public business data.
What Does It Look Like?
There are two main types of business data; demographic and firmographic. The former specifically targets an individual at a business; whereas, the latter targets a firm.
Demographic includes:
- Name
- Phone
- Location
- Employment History
- Skills
Firmographic includes:
- Name
- Location
- Industry
- Contact Information
- Revenue
- Number of Employees
What Can I Do with It?
The right B2B Data can inform important business marketing decisions. At the same time, it allows a business to develop a direct marketing acquisition strategy. Which is a far more cost-effective alternative to other forms of marketing, like advertising and digital marketing.
Whichever media channel suits your business best, be sure to acquire data that can be utilized for that type of campaign.
For instance, if email marketing is your preferred channel of choice, be certain that your B2B records come with email addresses.
