One of the biggest tech buzzwords of the past few years has been “big data,” which refers to the vast amounts of data that enterprises and small businesses collect on a daily basis. And for B2B marketers, all that data can be a real goldmine. Here are just a few of the ways that big data can transform your marketing campaign.
#1: New customer insights
The No. 1 rule of marketing is “know your customer,” and that’s exactly what big data enables. You’re collecting a rich set of data every time a customer interacts with you during the B2B buyer’s journey. Think about it – you have data about how long they are spending on your website, which pages they visit, and how they spend time on your website. And, if they follow you on social media, you have just opened up a vast new trove of data that you can use to build better customer persona models.
#2: More personalized experiences
The goal of all that data should be to deliver highly personalized, highly customized experiences. For example, say that you know a certain customer has opened an email recently and clicked on a certain link. That gives you an idea of what the customer is looking for. The next time you interact with that prospect, you are able to deliver a much more personalized experience.
#3: Better lead nurturing
And all of that personalization is able to vastly improve your lead nurturing process. For example, say that you know – based on all the data you’ve been collecting – that certain steps of the B2B buyer’s journey is especially problematic. From there, you can narrow down the problem and fix what’s broken. What if prospects seem to drop off after receiving your email newsletters? That could be a clue that you need to examine these newsletters to see what’s working.
#4: Higher lifetime customer value
If you think about the average lifetime of a customer, you want to be able to move the customer to higher-end offerings. And that’s where big data can play an important role. By examining past behaviors, and comparing them with the behaviors of similar types of customers, you will have better insight into when a customer might be ready for an upgrade.
#5: Enhanced analytics
Once you’ve collected enough data, that’s when you can really put your analytics team to work. In a best-case scenario, you actually would like to be able to predict in advance how a prospect or customer is going to act. How are they going to respond to certain marketing messages? When are they most likely to be receptive to new information about your company. The ultimate goal, of course, is to offer the right information, at the right time, to the right customer. And big data helps you to do that.
Those are just five of the ways that big data can help to transform your B2B marketing campaign. It’s all about making you smarter and more informed at each stage of any campaign.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.