The marketing fraternity loses sight of a vital element when they begin proactively prioritising the brand’s strategies and data alone. This critical aspect of marketing deals with data differentiation, without which it is impossible to widen your perspectives. As per a 2016 report conducted amongst B2B marketers, 85% of marketers who stated lead generation as their primary content marketing goal admitted that they failed to generate high-quality leads consistently. Marketers put a lot of effort into the early stages of a customer’s journey. By overlooking the end stages of a buyer's journey, marketers miss out on converting prospects.

As the gap between the sales and marketing teams widens, you must have additional strategies that help your company grow. Since this phenomenon is widespread, a quick fix is needed. You don’t have to look elsewhere for a solution. It is right there in your data. B2B marketers and digital marketing experts need to differentiate their data and understand the intricacies and hidden opportunities. Doing so will help marketers build insights-driven strategies better than the usual trial and error method. One of the benefits of using data strategically is that it helps inform sales and marketing strategies. Marketers must learn to find, cleanse, and manage data to ensure the sustainable growth of their organisations.

The following sections will guide you through differentiating your data for a prosperous business.

Let’s begin.

Fixate on first-party data

Information you get from existing customers is the best way to start. Since it comes directly from the people who buy your products, it allows you to differentiate them from that of your rivals. First-party data includes customer data, including purchase history to searching behaviours. You will be able to gain useful insights by analysing this highly personalised dataset so that you can understand customers’ needs better and project the findings in your ad campaigns.

Remember, the best outcome with customer data is only possible after you segment the data into smaller units. Fragmentation can consider various factors: you can delineate the identity and role of your customer, products, or places to structure more practical and logical targeting. What is important is you must not concentrate on a single segment but compare multiple ones to discover the best targeting opportunities.

Segment your customers’ journey

Conversion is as vital as lead generation. This is where most companies stumble. One of the main reasons for this misstep is their inability to comprehensively understand the buyer’s journey. To convert leads into opportunities, marketers must analyse the journey closer and fragment it into precise phases that include numerous variables. Knowing the buyer's journey has several other benefits too. For instance, if your company keeps getting record leads that do not reflect in the conversion metrics, you may find clues to the problem by jotting down each stage in your customers’ journey. At the end of the analysis, you may be surprised to find the wrong selection of personas for messaging as the villain. Such common mistakes lead to delivering messages to the wrong audience, proving your time and efforts fruitless.

To overcome such a situation, you must approach your data as fragments and holistically. You should consider data representing demographics, behavior, and intent. Simply put, a detailed understanding of the identity and location of your audience, along with their occupation and affinity towards engagement, provides the right direction. Based on the gained knowledge, you can guide content writers to curate compelling content that you can promote to reach marketing goals and business objectives.

Data diversification

Data diversification is critical to know what a particular function means and extracting data from numerous sources. There are several sources for a B2B marketer to gain such distinct data: CRM system, automation, billing, customer care, etc. For marketers to be successful at leveraging datasets, they ought to find possibilities beyond their norm. Strong data differentiation only happens with the unison of various in-house teams. It is high time marketers stop chasing marketing trends and start visualising business holistically. For that, operations and marketing departments have to align the right way.

In today’s standards, a successful B2B marketing professional should be able to pull and analyze data. To achieve this, they must know their customers, understand the nuances of their journey, and have a thought process that helps them step out of the orthodox marketing mentality. Irrespective of the industry you belong to, marketers who weave data strategies will have the upper hand in the coming years.

Good Luck!