Many B2B organizations have scattered data that fails to provide any actionable insights to sales teams. In 2020, sales teams cannot function or make decisions based on gut feeling or guesswork. And data is the only way to provide sales teams with the kind of analytics that are needed. Here are 4 effective ways data can help to drive B2B customer acquisition.
1. Lead generation
Don’t rely on gut feeling alone to define your target market. Allow data to guide your creation of buyer personas by using customer databases to provide insights into the qualities and behaviors of your most profitable customers. Develop a scoring model to identify the characteristics of your top buyers and use your evaluation for customer acquisition.
Direct your B2B lead generation systems at acquiring potential buyers that match your data-driven profiles. Without good quality lead data, your sales team will be wasting time cold calling decision-makers who have changed roles or even left the company. They’ll be prospecting to too many industries, or to those who have no interest in your product or service.
2. Content creation
Data is knowledge. The more you know about your ideal customer, the more convincing your content will be. As you build up your buyer personas, you’ll discover what drives them. What are the problems that keep them awake at night? You can then create B2B content that shows your ideal buyers how you can solve their problems. You can show them how your product fits their everyday lives and makes things easier if they make that purchase. Because you know your customers that well, you can plan content that addresses them directly.
3. Nurturing the pipeline
Data insights help you confirm which marketing and sales strategies work in lead nurturing. Typical CRM programs offer substantial sales funnel data that helps you look at the big pipeline picture for your organization as well. See how many prospects you have at each stage of the selling cycle and identify potential bottlenecks where your sales team needs to focus efforts, or where training is needed to help team members perform better at that stage.
4. Evaluating campaign performance
Every aspect of every campaign generates more data. You can use this data to evaluate what works and what doesn’t. You’ll create a feedback loop, allowing you to make changes and optimizations faster than ever before. Track the campaigns and communication strategies that help you meet your objectives. Using data to evaluate campaign effectiveness helps you minimize waste in approaches that don’t pay off so that you can spend your euros on ads that optimize your B2B lead generation activities.
A data-driven approach provides sales teams an accurate picture of each step of the sales funnel. With the help of key metrics, sales teams can determine the acquisition rates of each opportunity they are processing.
The real benefit of the data-driven approach is of course an insight into the sales funnel. The sales funnel is the best source to determine which prospects or potential clients to contact and which channels to use. Data can reveal how much revenue can be earned, and even predict which leads will eventually become clients.
Aiming for higher results in customer acquisition?
InlineInsight is a sales and marketing alignment platform that includes Full-funnel Analytics, Advanced Campaign Analytics, and Predictive Deal Scoring. In case you are interested in hearing more about our solution and it could benefit your business, book a demo meeting with our expert.
