While some tried and true marketing methods are still effective, look to the future, and you’ll see nothing but big data marketing.
Unfortunately, many marketers aren’t making the most of their data.
It’s not about having the flashiest tools and most modern automation. It’s about how you harness that data to connect with your buyers.
How to Improve Your Bottom Line with the Power of Big Data Marketing
Big data is here to stay – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t intimidating or frustrating for marketers.
Chinese company Huawei recently revealed a processor chip for servers that manages mass amounts of data from smartphones, video services, and more as part of its intelligence computing product lineup.
Every major technology company understands the value of data for marketing, but what good is all that data if you can’t use it to its full potential? The tips below can help you nail down some big data marketing strategies, so you don’t feel overwhelmed or get left behind.
Start with Specific Goals
Ask any B2B marketer what they’re focused on right now, and they’ll probably tell you “personalization.” That’s a great start. However, broad concepts like “personalization” or “content marketing” aren’t specific enough.
Start by segmenting your audience into different groups based on their locations, company roles, behavior, and buyer stage. Once you nail down some general groups, you can look for weak areas to improve.
For example, you may find that executives make up a large segment of your audience, but you’re currently creating content mostly for sales. Now you have a content marketing goal: create highly personalized and in-depth content for higher-ups.
Before you create the content, you could turn to data for help: should you create videos, podcasts, or authoritative blog posts? What types of content do they consume and how are they finding that content?
Getting hyper-specific like this with goals will help you make sense of your data and how to use it.
Check Your Inbox
You may feel overwhelmed with data already and think you don’t need anymore, but checking your archived emails is a great place to start an investigation and create your own data sets.
One study found that B2Bs can use their inbox to identify business data “clusters” and use the information to identify future trends and develop marketing strategies.
Data from your email inbox takes personalization to a new level because it provides real-life interactions with potential buyers and professionals. Once you cluster some of the information, you can use your intuitive insight to create content that solves buyer problems at every stage of the process and relates to them on a human level.
Expand Your Research
You may not market your product or services to consumers, but many of your B2B buyers may work in B2C. If you want your B2B buyers to think of you as a partner rather than a vendor, you need to familiarize yourself with their market.
One study found that B2Bs who engaged with their prospects’ consumer market (without creating competition) were better at innovating and responding to hot marketing opportunities.
Maybe you don’t feel comfortable or prepared to create a marketing strategy for this right away – that’s totally fine. However, you can still conduct some research on your B2Bs’ market as part of your big data marketing strategy.
Put yourself in their shoes, and your own personalization efforts will improve.
Nail Down Retargeting
B2B lead nurturing is a long and arduous process. How you engage with leads who have dropped off or cooled down makes all the difference.
Look at the data to figure out why your leads have run dry and use that information to create retargeting content. Maybe they switched roles or went with a competitor. Look at your insights and analytics in real-time to create hyper-specific campaigns on social media or in email.
If you find some gaps, surveys are great for nailing down missing data.
Even if they’ve chosen a competitor, this doesn’t mean you can’ provide them with valuable blog posts and emails about relevant industry insights. Use your data to continue creating personalized content while adjusting the CTAs accordingly.
Leverage Big Data Marketing to Its Full Potential
If you can learn how to manage and leverage your data, you can improve each buyer’s experience and see an ROI improvement in no time.
That said, B2B lead generation and nurturing is a long road. Hushly can help you harness data to improve lead generation by 51% and create personalized content at every stage.
Check out our Use Cases to learn how!
