Generic marketing campaigns don’t pack the required punch. B2B marketers must pivot towards the right gears- data-driven marketing strategies.
The explosive growth of media channels and platforms has only magnified the opportunities for brands to leverage this and offer more value to their customers.
This has spun a data-driven decision-making culture.
Businesses have recognized data’s potential and continue to invest a significant amount of effort in it. This has boosted the demand for personalized and interactive engagement.
Customers actually expect it- a kind of interaction only data-driven marketing can afford.
But with this widespread recognition, a fundamental knowledge gap persists-
Which datasets can actually help solve which marketing problems, and how can they be applied to guide the buyers down to the conversion stage?
There are multiple approaches to how customer and company data can help marketers.
We dive into three fundamental data-driven marketing examples- ones that have proven effective and profitable across the B2B landscape and helped brands instill long-term impact.
Example 1: Personalizing user journey.
Looking at the marketing field, personalizing isn’t as unidirectional as it is thought to be. While some marketers employ personalization across their products, others execute it across a broader segment of their marketing efforts.
In this respect, personalization can be broken down into three common approaches:
- Mass: All buyers receive the same offerings
- Segment-based: Different groups of buyers with homogenous preferences are identified, and the marketing mix is personalized similarly for customers in a segment.
- Individual-level: Each account receives personalized offerings according to interests and online behavior.
Access to individual-level customer data does not mean that businesses should personalize at the very granular level. But instead choose a level that each element of the marketing mix demands and what’s most optimal for the brand and its offerings.
Overall, personalizing the entire customer journey is crucial, and that entails both content and your comms strategy. Because 76% of buyers expect personalization, and when they don’t find it, it leads to frustration.
The result is always a negative customer experience that ultimately damages the brand reputation.
Personalization, in today’s age, transcends inserting someone’s name into your templated email. In B2B, for over 67% of buyers, personalization means giving them relevant service recommendations. While it’s simpler for B2C, it’s rather more difficult to appease the diverse stakeholders of a buying committee.
Think of how Amazon recommends products based on your purchasing history and search behavior. And Netflix curates a “Suggested for you” category depending on your viewing habits.
Personalization in B2B takes a different approach.
A visitor from a finance firm might see a different homepage than one from the manufacturing industry. But it goes beyond stagnant segmentation and leverages intent signals, firmographic data, demographics, and stage in the funnel to undertake account-level targeting.
This is what B2B personalization really entails.
Let’s take Monday.com as an example.
These are Monday.com‘s homepage. As you can observe in the images, the browser has selected two different options- the first is “design” and the second is “marketing.”
And surprisingly enough, Monday.com transforms the aesthetic and image as you select different options on the homepage. The brand is prompting users to imagine why they wish to leverage the solution and for which business function.
Once the user chooses the desired option, the “Get Started” button and the visuals behind it light up in relation to that segment.
This is quite an innovative approach to leveraging zero-party data.
It’s not about just converting the aesthetic and making the visuals appealing to the user. The fun little aesthetic change will grasp the user’s attention, but for them to stay a bit longer on your website, there must be more.
It also means personalizing the landing page and the rest of the website after they choose “marketing” or “design.” This shows how you’re personalizing experiences by curating distinct messages and aesthetics for different customer segments.
In a way to showcase- “we have a little something for everyone,” while demonstrating the versatility of their solution. It’s a win-win situation for the business to establish its value and for customers to pinpoint their search.
The conclusion? For Monday.com, segment-based personalization drives the action.
Example 2: Sharing and analyzing data across different channels and touchpoints.
In a marketing age where an omnichannel marketing strategy has become the go-to, data silos can hinder a brand’s success.
B2B marketers are aware that their customers interact with brands across multiple channels and devices. That’s why cohesion and consistency have become imperative for marketing to deploy.
Sharing data from multiple channels not only helps you curate a unified marketing strategy but also helps unify the customer profiles. This is your single source of truth.
A. Elevating brand recognition
Someone who interacted with your service post on LinkedIn should be able to find the same service on your website. Or how specific prospects interact across your landing page can inform your social media strategy, i.e., outlining which topics or solutions they are leaning more towards?
Comparing and analyzing these data from different touchpoints can help you create marketing campaigns with consistent storytelling. The keywords that lead to higher conversion rates in your PPC campaigns can inform your content creation. Even your social media team can develop posts that target the same audience.
But brand consistency, i.e., building that harmony, isn’t as simple as copy-pasting the same messages across every channel. You’ve to primarily gauge the performance of each channel, for which you require accurate performance metrics.
This is where regular audits and cross-platform checks are conducted.
Only with the correct data can you draw accurate comparisons and gauge insights about improvements and overall brand performance.
It will also support you in leveraging newer marketing channels to boost your messages across additional customer segments and scale your services.
B. Amplifying audience reach
It is taxing to move beyond channels that work for your marketing campaigns. But elevating audience reach also demands testing new channels.
For example, your SaaS marketing-centric efforts significantly offer precedence to website and email marketing channels. But you also wish to expand your brand’s social media presence.
This means your team must start from scratch. But how far can intuitive decisions and guesswork drive your campaigns?
This is where predictive and prescriptive data analytics can become your saving grace.
Without starting from scratch, what you essentially do is tap into market trends and forecasts. A marketing ROI dashboard can help you complete the job.
Historical and present campaign data and customer data can help you build a broader and granular purview of upcoming market trends:
- Which are the top and least performing social media channels?
- On which social media platform do our customer segments interact the most?
- Which channels are your competitors using? And on which of them do they have a strong and loyal following base?
- Which social media channels can we execute in our campaigns?
The answers to such critical questions will outline your next plethora of actions.
The bottom line?
With this data-driven marketing strategy, you amplify the performance of your strongest marketing channels and affix additional touchpoints. You are basically increasing the possibility of your marketing messages being noticed.
Example 3: Using data to curate email campaigns, from strategy to execution.
Data-driven marketing allows B2B marketers to lean towards what customers value most. From behavioral and engagement patterns to purchasing history, you get one crucial step closer to understanding what your potential buyers are in-market for. And how you can engage them.
This data-driven marketing use case has been at the nucleus of revamped email marketing campaigns.
Previously, email marketing was about sending generic email blasts to a lengthy list of ICPs and hoping for fewer responses. Even though for the majority of professionals, the preferred channel of business communications was email, most of these went unnoticed or unopened.
One of the fundamental reasons for this was unsolicited emails.
It was because either your emails were reaching prospects at the most improper time or not reaching them at all.
Even today, the average email open rate has gone up 42.35%. But the suspicion remains: are they being seen by the right prospects?
This is where targeted email campaigns make a huge difference.
They not just ensure the relevant accounts receive the email, but also take the desired action. This can be strategically carried out by analyzing behavioral data. And that’s what most B2B marketers are galloping towards.
For example, your team has created a targeted email that focuses on helping prospects spotlight the business problems they are facing. And what they can do to act on it. If the email strategy is used within the context, then you might be reaching the correct set of prospects- ones at the top of the funnel, still figuring out what your brand can do for them.
And if you’re a business operating from the US, and wish to send emails to accounts in the UK, then email marketing automation tools can help you do just that. They help with optimizing the content, timing, and performance with respect to your target audience.
You’re now reaching the relevant accounts at the right time- timing that works for your prospective buyers. You can track open rates, CTRs, bounce rates, and unsubscribes, among other metrics.
But there’s an added layer-
With informed execution, a data-driven marketing strategy can also help re-engage your prospects.
Imagine that after coming across your email, they go on to sign up for your newsletter or fill in the brand’s contact page for further communication. But halfway through the process, they stop or drop off.
With the combined power of data analytics and automation tools, you can send a personalized email prompting the user to complete the process. And illustrate what they’re missing on if they don’t do so.
Basically, what happened was that your software flagged customer behavior and analyzed what the user meant to do. Accordingly, it sent them a reminder to complete their action.
This overall helps marketers with faster lead nurturing and conversion. And prompting your brand to remain on top of mind.
Data-driven marketing strategies are the key to revamping your marketing campaigns.
With data at the nexus of your marketing strategies, you don’t just expect all the different elements to come together. To make a lasting impact, the story requires a foundation.
Data is the foundation for your modern marketing campaigns. It puts together every nitty-gritty of a campaign- from creative assets to roadmaps and performance analysis in a neat package.
Every intricate facet is driven by strategy and purpose, such that all your decision-making while developing a campaign remains informed.
Data-driven marketing doesn’t transform your brand overnight. But when combined with the right tech and creative insight, it can connect your customers with your brand.
And deliver success at every step of the customer’s journey.