Businesses these days rely on data to make even the most minute decisions. They end up developing entire strategies revolving around the data they have on their customers. However, the data itself will not be useful if you don’t know how to manage it effectively.
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What is B2B Data Management?
B2B companies have to handle large volumes of customer data. Using this data, they have to do everything from identifying potential customers to planning marketing campaigns. This is where the need for effective data management comes in.
In business, data management refers to the practice of collecting, storing, and using data responsibly. Being responsible in this regard means using the data efficiently and cost-effectively to your business’s benefit.
Another part of B2B data management is updating the data as needed. Data updating and enhancing is a continuous process that needs to be overseen with utmost care. Failing to do so can lead to dire consequences, something we’ll discuss in detail in a later section.
Importance of Proper B2B Data Management
To understand the importance of proper data management, we first need to understand what its absence can do.
Earlier in 2023, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded flights for over three hours. This led to around 9,500 flights across the country being delayed and even canceled. It was later discovered that what led to this chaos was a single database file that was damaged in some way.
Experts who took an interest in this case later pointed out that this incident highlights the importance of three data qualities – cleanliness, reliability, and accuracy, all of which are also the pillars of basic data management strategies.
When you think about it, the B2B sector, too, can be affected in a similar manner if anything goes wrong with the data it uses. Therefore, efficient data management is vital here.
The importance of proper B2B data management is highlighted in the points below:
- Proper B2B data management is essential for businesses to make informed decisions and drive growth.
- Accurate and up-to-date data ensures that businesses have a clear understanding of their target market, customer preferences, and industry trends.
- Effective data management enables businesses to identify and prioritize high-value leads, improving sales and marketing efforts.
- Data quality and integrity are crucial for building and maintaining strong relationships with B2B customers and partners.
- Efficient data management helps streamline business operations, reducing costs and minimizing errors.
- Data-driven insights enable businesses to identify opportunities for innovation and develop tailored solutions for their B2B customers.
- Proper data management fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing within the organization, enhancing overall efficiency and productivity.
The Cost of Negligence in Updating Your B2B Data
Not updating your B2B data is a bad data management practice for several reasons. Here are some of the things that can happen if you neglect to keep your B2B data management strategies up to date:
A Waste of Money
According to Gartner, organizations lose around $13 million every year due to bad data. All this money is wasted on trying to clean, correct, and reorganize the data over time. Neglecting to update your B2B means you have to do all this every time you end up reaching a dead end with your lead generation or prospecting process. The more you neglect to update your data, the more dead ends you come across, and the more money you have to spend on cleaning, correcting, and reorganizing your data.
Marketing Efforts Gone to Waste
MarketingWeek reports that bad data can cause B2B marketers to target the wrong people or companies almost 86 percent of the time. That means, despite having an excellent marketing campaign in mind for a potential target, it’s bound to fail since you’re using it on the wrong target.
Without updating your data, you’re more likely to market to the wrong target group because many of your initial leads might not be interested in what you have to offer anymore. Thus, most of your marketing efforts will have gone to waste that way.
Losing Out on Sales
Suppose some of your customers recently changed their contact information, and you’re aware of it. However, you did not bother to update this information in your B2B database. In such a situation, whenever you want to reach out to them to sell additional services or products, you’ll fail to reach them. That’s because you never updated their contact info as you should have.
Because of this, you’ll lose the opportunity to pitch your sale or offer to them and subsequently miss out on what could’ve been a good sale. The bigger these customers, the more money you’ll lose out on.
Missing Out on Potential New Clients
The same scenario, where you don’t update your customer’s contact info, can prove to be even more costly when you’re working on lead generation and prospecting. Failing to update this information means your pitches will never reach the potential customer in the first place. Thus, you’ll fail to land your potential leads as customers even before they get to know your pitch.
If you fail to update your lead’s data, you won’t be able to turn them into a prospect, and all the hard work you put in trying to capture said lead will have gone to waste.
Dissatisfied Customers
Sometimes, customers opt out of receiving any sales pitch or promotional offers. This, too, needs to be updated by those handling customer data. If that doesn’t happen, you’ll end up sending your pitches and offers to them, completely oblivious to the fact that they’re no longer interested in receiving them. This will definitely annoy your customers, and they might never buy from you again.
Overcoming the Challenges With Blue Valley Marketing.
If staying up to date on B2B data management is getting too hectic for your in-house team, consider outsourcing it to a third-party service provider like Blue Valley Marketing.
When we, at Blue Valley Marketing, handle your B2B customer data, there’s no scope for any negligence. Our lead generation services will make sure that customer data, like lead lists and client lists, are always updated and utilized efficiently. Our agents take personalized approaches to each customer to ensure that your leads turn into sales as efficiently as possible. Blue Valley Marketing does all that and more. All you have to do is contact us and tell us what we can do for your business.
Last Updated on August 26, 2023 by Ronen Ben-Dror