Why Improving Data Quality Is Essential for Your B2B Company

Every B2B company knows that improving their marketing needs to be a constant priority. The vast majority of industries have just become far too competitive to let marketing fall by the wayside.

What most B2B companies don’t understand, though, is that improving data quality is an essential step on the path to better marketing. Let the quality of your data suffer and your marketing is sure to follow.

Data Quality Is the New Market Research

No one would disagree that market research is essential to the success of any business. It might be even more valuable to B2B companies, though, as their prospects tend to understand exactly what they want and the products/services they need to achieve it.

While market research is still important, data has become just as vital.

It can even be understood as a subcategory of market research. One important difference, though, would be that data can reflect real-time conditions.

For example, you can immediately pull data to see how many people viewed your website today or opened an email.

Market research usually looks at trends over the course of a year or more.

3 Ways Improving Data Quality Will Improve Your B2B Marketing

The main reason that improving data quality will also improve your B2B marketing is fairly obvious. It’s the same reason market research is worthwhile.

In short, the more you understand your audience, the easier it is to market to them.

Still, there are three other reasons you should make data quality a permanent priority.

1. It’s Still a Massive Competitive Edge

Assuming you’re successful, improving data quality will give your company a huge edge over many of your competitors. Currently, only one-in-two B2B professionals have confidence that they are working with high-quality data. Of course, the number of companies working with bad data could actually be much higher.

However, even if just 50% of your competitors are building their marketing strategies on dubious figures, imagine how far behind you could leave them by improving your data quality.

You’ll want to hurry to take advantage of this opening, though. 62% of marketers seem to be aware of this problem and are committed to improving their marketing data quality.

2. Customers Are Demanding It

Your market may not be directly calling for B2B companies to improve their data quality, but they definitely want the results.

Specifically, customers want personalization.

We’re long past the days when a well-organized website was enough. Instead, prospects now want you to cater to them.

That said, personalization is also no longer sufficient to move the needle like it once did. It’s become so commonplace that most prospects have already grown to expect more from B2B companies that want their business.

As Accenture 2017 Accenture Strategy Global Consumer Pulse Research discovered personalization works best when prospects trust your efforts. Earning this trust requires that you:

• Show a commitment to meeting their needs
• Have the ability to utilize data to deliver on promises
• Are able to prove you have their best interests at heart

None of these goals are possible without high-quality data about your market.

3. Poor Quality Leads to Big Costs

As we already touched on, the more you know about your market, the more you can market to them. Therefore, it “costs” you not to have high-quality data.

However, there’s a very real cost tied to poor data, as well.

Every invalid email, duplicate contact, incomplete lead, or flat-out false attribute goes into your database. Eventually, you use that database to inform decisions about your B2B company’s marketing strategy.

At the very least, you’ll waste money targeting individuals and companies based on low-quality data. In the worst-case scenario, though, your entire strategy could be thrown off because you’re fueling it with bad data.

Perhaps, worst of all, bad data is often a “silent killer,” meaning you may make all kinds of changes to your marketing strategy – at great cost – until you realize the true culprit.

Improving Data Quality Isn’t Enough

With all this said, improving data quality is only possible when you have sufficient information about your prospects, to begin with.

That’s one reason so many companies use Hushly.

Our platform offers content previews to your website’s visitors. If they decide they want to keep reading, we request their information – and verify it – before offering them the rest of the content. This doesn’t just fill your funnel with leads. It will also give you the information you need to improve your funnel and, over time, the quality of your data.

CHECK OUT OUR EBOOK ON DATA QUALITY

Request a free demo today and see for yourself how our user-friendly platform will empower your B2B marketing strategy.