5 benefits of data-driven B2B marketing

As a business leader, you’ve probably heard a lot about data-driven marketing. Maybe you’re not sure how important it really is or how to make a change to become more data-driven.

But in almost any industry today, B2B marketing has to become more data-driven to win over more clients, minimize costs, and streamline your organization. If your B2B marketing strategy isn’t data-driven, it’s going to fall behind.

It might seem like a big shift for traditional marketers, but embracing B2B data-driven marketing isn’t all that difficult. In this article, you’ll learn what data-driven B2B marketing means, why it’s so beneficial, and how you can get started.

What is data-driven marketing (for B2B brands)?

Data-driven marketing is the practice of using quantifiable measures to optimize your marketing campaigns. Data-driven marketing for B2B companies, specifically, takes an evidence-based approach to optimize your client outreach.

Data-driven marketing enables B2B marketers to:

• Target the right accounts for account-based marketing (ABM)
• Predict what customers will do next
• Personalize B2B campaigns
• Connect the right lead with the right content at the right time
• Maximize marketing ROI

While you might think you make data-driven decisions already, a shocking 95% of purchasing decisions are emotional (rather than rational). You need to make plans for your campaigns based on real data, not how you feel things should be. With a data-driven approach, you can see what’s going well, what isn’t, and what you need to do to course correct.

Benefits of data-driven marketing for B2B teams

Thanks to digitization, it’s possible to get visibility into the entire B2B marketing process. This new approach means you can collect data on just about every aspect of your various marketing campaigns.

Teams that switch to a data-driven B2B marketing approach enjoy five significant benefits.

1. Identify and understand your target audience

As a B2B marketer, your brand isn’t for everyone. You want to go narrow and deep with your audience targeting, and that’s precisely what you can do with a data-driven approach.

With the right data, you can better understand your target audience. More than 80% of businesses say better personas improved their value proposition, and 71% of companies that exceed their revenue goals use buyer personas. After all, it’s much easier selling your services if you know your audience and what they want.

Data-driven B2B marketing will help you:

• Create an ideal customer profile (ICP). You aren’t targeting every company on the planet. If your team does ABM, you can use audience data to build better ICPs. This makes it much easier to home in on potential accounts that will sign a contract.
• Build personas. While your ICP details the businesses you want to target, your personas profile the individual people you want to target. With audience data on your side, you can create better, more realistic personas that paint an accurate picture of your buyers.
• Segment contacts into target audiences. Data-driven marketers segment contacts using a variety of data sources, including online behavior, shopping history, social media activity, and more. This allows you to craft more personalized messaging that turns leads into sales.

2. Improve the quality of your leads

Data makes it easier to nurture leads at scale — and since nurtured leads generate 50% more sales at 33% lower costs, data can be a huge boon to your bottom line.

You’re already off to a better start thanks to your detailed target audiences. But data-driven B2B marketing can also boost lead quality through better segmentation and the personalization that comes with it. This way, you can focus your prospecting efforts on the right opportunities.

Lead scoring can take this even further. With the right platform, you can measure how engaged a lead is. The system will automatically push the right content to a lead based on how they interact with your company. Once they achieve a certain score, sales will reach out to the lead with a relevant offer that’s much more likely to pique their interest.

3. Design a truly engaging user experience

Yes, user experience (UX) matters in B2B. In fact, every $1 invested in UX returns $100 to your business. Data supports the optimization of several elements of good UX, including:

• Content. When you know more about your customers, you’ll know exactly what they want to see, where, and in what medium. Instead of creating general content that no one consumes, you can focus on material that your leads will actually engage with.
• Personalization. Data-driven B2B marketing allows for hyper-personalized content at scale. In fact, personalized campaigns can lead to as much as a 20% increase in revenue, so B2B leads are clearly more receptive to this approach.
• Cross-channel marketing. Do you want to reach leads across digital channels like email, social media, and ads? Data-driven marketing allows you to deliver consistent messaging across all of these channels, no matter where leads first connect with you.

4. Build each campaign better than the last

Data-driven marketing helps you gather intelligence on campaign performance so you don’t repeat the same mistake twice. It can also help you pinpoint what went well so you can enjoy repeated success again and again. When you analyze the data from each campaign, you’ll quickly spot trends in the data. Whether it’s PPC, A/B testing, or social media, the data will tell you what works.

5. Report clear, meaningful KPIs

Every marketing executive knows the value of clear, actionable metrics and reporting. In fact, marketing teams that set strong goals are 377% more successful. Key performance indicators (KPIs) tell you how well your B2B marketing campaigns are performing. Instead of relying on qualitative measures, you can consult the KPIs to see your success in black and white.

How B2Bs can get started with data-driven marketing

As a marketing leader, data should inform and back up all of your decisions. But how do you switch to data-driven B2B marketing? Follow these three steps to get your team on board with a data-driven approach.

Step 1 — get buy-in

If data-driven marketing is a new approach for your organization, you’ll need leadership to approve it. Remember, data-driven marketing isn’t a fad. It’s a long-term change, and that means all leaders and teams need to commit to it wholeheartedly.

Everyone has to be on board, including the C-suite and non-marketing departments. Since marketing requires data from IT, accounting, sales, and customer service, all departments need to agree on the new approach.

Step 2 — set goals

As with any marketing initiative, you want to start with the end goal in mind. Remember, data itself isn’t the goal — it’s the means to an end. How are you using this data? Why?

Not all data is of equal importance. For example, if your goal is to maximize customer retention, that’s going to require a different approach than a business that wants to source new customers.

Step 3 — find the right platform

There are a lot of options on the market to help you become a data-driven company. However, Adobe Marketo Engage is the most robust option out there, helping you:

• Bring sales and marketing together
• Support ABM strategies
• Create meaningful reports
• Govern data according to compliance standards

You can’t do data-driven B2B marketing without a framework for the data. Marketo Engage makes it possible for enterprises to use B2B data in a thoughtful way that boosts the bottom line.

Get data-driven marketing results

Data-driven marketing is a must for B2B brands. In addition to breaking down silos and boosting sales, this approach helps B2B brands:

• Understand their audience
• Improve lead quality
• Design better UX
• Create better campaigns
• Track meaningful KPIs

When it’s time to go all-in on data-driven B2B marketing, go with Adobe. Marketo Engage specializes in customer engagement for complex B2B buying journeys. As a complete solution for lead management, it brings marketing and sales together to nurture leads, orchestrate personalized experiences, optimize content, and measure business impact across every channel.

Build engaging, personalized experiences at scale and prove impact with Adobe Marketo Engage.

Once you have Marketo Engage in your corner, it’s time to take the next steps:

• Get buy-in from internal teams
• Set clear goals
• Build your campaigns in a structured platform

Learn how Adobe can help you do data-driven B2B marketing.