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Big data brought about a data arms race: CIOs were pressured by their CEOs to acquire as much of it as possible. The problem was that the data was underutilized. There was just too much to sort through. Mountains of data were unstructured and disorganized, which ushered in the next era: mining the data. Cue AI, which is able to efficiently comb through and tag data so that it can be categorized and more efficiently exploited. Data is unquestionably a difference-maker, but in the case of B2B marketers, the best strategy can be not overrelying on data. Here are three reasons for that:
Fewer Touch Points In B2B
Consumer brands benefit from having thousands, or even millions, of touch points. Consumer brands are able to mine that high volume of touch points in order to build detailed pictures of their consumers. Seasonal data. Geographic data. Consumer sentiment. Life cycle. So on and so forth. They can test different methods and vehicles of distribution. Not only can consumer marketers build sophisticated models from all of this data and optimize their sales marketing strategies, but they’re also able to adjust their campaigns as they go.
B2B marketers don’t have that luxury. They have fewer touch points, which means they have much less data on which to base their sales marketing decisions. That’s not to say that B2B marketers should dismiss data altogether, but it does mean they have much less to base themselves. As such, they must take a different approach and lean less heavily on data.
Less Visibility
B2B marketers also have much less visibility into purchasing decisions than consumer marketers. Consumer marketers sometimes have hundreds, even thousands, of data points for an individual consumer. As such, they can develop very thorough consumer profiles that enable them not only to effectively target but also anticipate, and even influence, behavior.
The challenge for B2B marketers is that they don’t know who they’re selling to, or when they’re selling to them. They know which companies they’re selling to, sure, but there is always someone (several people, actually) who holds the purse strings. Several stakeholders and decision-makers within a company have a hand in a purchase. It’s impossible to know when a particular stakeholder is involved or how much influence they have since it varies from company to company. This limited visibility requires more organizational knowledge, which cannot be accomplished by mining data. It requires a combination of knowledge and intuition.
Less Data, Longer Sales Cycle
Data should still be an important tool in a B2B marketer’s toolkit, but a B2B marketer must be leery of relying too much on data. It’s harder to come by in a B2B sales environment, as mentioned above, and can be especially harmful given the prolonged B2B sales cycles. If you spend too much time trying to gather data about your buyers and gleaning insights from that data before developing a plan, you could very well find your sales marketing in paralysis. Make no mistake: B2B marketers should use data. Conduct research to find out what motivates your stakeholders. But data cannot be your guiding light.
Trust Logic And Intuition
You know your industry. Use your knowledge and your insights. If you’re selling a product or service, understand who in the organization is responsible for purchase and who will actually be using it. It may be that the technology department purchases your product, but the marketing department actually uses it. Those are two different messages to be conveyed at different points in the sales cycle. Your message can be parsed in many different ways to many different stakeholders. Gather data, but make sure to give it a gut check.
