Regardless of your niche, data is the key to your company’s survival, especially in a business-to-business (B2B) environment. Without the right data, you cannot hope to improve your lead generation, perfect your marketing strategies, or boost sales revenues.
Still, despite the fact that we generate about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day, high-quality data is challenging to come by. You need reliable sources that can give you access to fresh, real-time information whenever you need it if you want to outperform your competitors.
Take a look at what insights you can draw from quality data and how B2B data companies can help you.
What you need to know about B2B data
Let’s start with the basics – what is B2B data? Put plainly – it’s relevant information on businesses that fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). It contains information on company names, the number of employees, estimated revenue, target customers, and more.
After all, just like business-to-consumer (B2C) companies need to collect information on their target audiences, so do B2B companies. The process is slightly more complicated, however. You’ll need to collect and analyze more data and learn as much as possible about each client you want to approach.
Main types of B2B data
Considering the sheer volume of data you’ll need to go through, it’s helpful to divide it into different categories. It does the job of identifying the types of B2B data relevant to your needs. Look at the main B2B data types you can receive from your business data providers.
Demographic data
B2B demographic data is very similar to B2C demographic data – you’ll need to collect personal information on the individual you’ll be in contact with. You’ll need names, email addresses, phone numbers, ages, genders, locations, skills, employment history, and more.
This information can be exceptionally useful for spotting trends, modifying your sales approach, and adjusting your marketing campaigns to ensure greater effectiveness.
Chronographic data
Relevant chronographic data concerns recent, relevant changes within the company you’re targeting. Depending on your niche and unique needs, you might want to learn about any changes in management, recent mergers and acquisitions (M&As), newly-appointed CEOs, recently adopted technologies and even new job postings.
Keeping a close eye on chronographic data (and ensuring that you have access to real-time data) can help you spot the best time to approach the target in question.
Firmographic data
Firmographic data refers to the unique company characteristics that help you separate your target clients into more easily manageable categories. Most commonly, you’ll distinguish your ideal clients by their industry and niche, size, revenue, location, and even their own target audiences.
Using this information, you could have a unique segment for sports apparel companies in California with up to 200 employees and another for small fashion boutiques in Florida with up to 10 employees.
Segmenting your target markets with firmographic data allows you to create compelling campaigns that resonate with each company within the category.
Account data
As the name suggests, this type of data helps you target specific companies/accounts. Most commonly, account data will be an amalgamation of structured and unstructured data, including company names, names and backgrounds of CEOs, average website traffic, funding, recent publications, news releases, and more.
Account data helps you gain deeper insights into your qualified leads and allows you to distinguish whether they are a good target or not.
Contact data
It goes without saying that collecting contact data is critical in B2B environments. You cannot simply contact any random employee within your target company. You need to find the right person who has the power to decide whether they want to work with you or not.
Contact data should include regular phone numbers and email addresses, but it’s also beneficial to have insight into the person’s position at the company and their skill levels.
Engagement data
Engagement data refers to all interactions and points of contact between your target client and your business. You should have well-organized information on every target that’s visited your website, read your blog post, interacted with your social media posts, or even downloaded a PDF from one of your pages.
This data can tell you when’s the best time to strike. It’s also exceptionally helpful if you need to retarget old leads and contacts that haven’t interacted with your business in a while.
Intent data
Finally, intent data informs you about the intent to purchase. You can collect behavioral data to see what a contact does on your website, how long they stay on each page, what types of products or services they’re looking for, and even whether they’ve visited any of your competitors.
You’ll collect buying signals that will help you prioritize accounts and reach out to the most qualified leads.
The importance of choosing reliable B2B data sources
Collecting and analyzing all these different types of data can be an overwhelming process. That’s precisely why those in B2B environments turn to third-party B2B data companies.
Reliable B2B data companies can give unique insights into your target markets, providing relevant real-time data when needed.
Third-party B2B database sources can help you filter through unnecessary information and identify the most critical data points that improve your lead generation, marketing, and sales and ultimately help you outperform competitors.
Final thoughts
Accuracy in B2B data collection is the key to understanding your target markets and gaining a competitive edge. By choosing reliable B2B data companies, you can unlock access to valuable insights that help you nurture better, more lucrative relationships with your prospects.
