Unlike B2C marketing there are numerous data variables available for B2B marketing to choose from. When I first studied for a marketing degree in the late 70’s I was introduced to a subject called ‘sources of statistics’ and with it the fact that business data was captured by various Government departments and it then all seemed very structured and simple. Businesses had to register a Standard Industrial classification code (SIC code) when they set up, as they do now and has to submit a number of performance statistics as part of their annual filing but these days there is so much more data available and so many new sources too. What would appear to be a simple task of appending new streams of data to existing data has become a task that is undertaken by a Data Scientist and the very process of matching business data is a skill as well as a process. Knowing how to create match keys to avoid the complexities of mis heard consonants or duplicated letters in names that may contain for example a double S is one of the many tricks of the trade. Data capture and processing is very much still reliant on the spoken work albeit these days thankfully, the hand written content is largely gone from modern data capture.
The advantages of working with new data sources
The exciting part of B2B data driven marketing today, are the many new data overlays and processing that is done to establish propensity modelling for things like energy use.
Working with a major financial and credit scoring partner has been an eye opener in the sense that, they have negotiated to be able to use a number of additional data streams that are generally not accessible. Their data is primarily used for financial purposes but in conjunction with other more traditional marketing contact information, there are many new possibilities to help refine a data search to better identify suitable target prospects for future business.
The key components or variables that usually determine a prospect file include the following:
- Industry Sectors (SIC)
- Contact Type
- Geographic Location
- Site Type, Size and Usage
- Size of Organsiation
- In-depth financial breakdowns
- Telecoms requirement
- Energy Usage
- Fleet Usage
- Business Health Score
Data appending, cross matching and building a prospect file
Processing and using data in this way alongside digital marketing techniques is very similar to military intelligence activity relying on known information and building up a picture to help establish a marketing campaign to fulfil the objectives of the business. The process is very similar in its construction as the Intelligence cycle used by the military throughout the world consists of the following stages: direction; collection; collation; interpretation and dissemination. A marketing director or manager can review and refine their data needs to fill intelligence gaps and that may include appending data variables to an existing database by cross matching existing customer and prospect data from our databases. The objective is to find businesses where we hold information that they don’t so we can add it or appending it. Much like looking up a telephone number in a directory except we hold directories of vary many variables from email addresses to mobile phone number to branch or HQ addresses.
We can then report on the quality of a database ( data audit) before we go to perhaps correct or enhance what they already hold or supply data about ‘look-alikes’ from them to target in future.
To see find out how we then use that data see our article about digital marketing.