A majority of the businesses find data quality investments enhance their sales and marketing process
With the advancements of data and analytics, it has been smooth for businesses to target
prospects and customers. And for B2B brands, the data utilization has remained handy for
their success, claims the latest research study from Dun and Bradstreet. The company
surveyed around 500 B2B marketing and sales decision-makers across the US, Canada, and the UK for its 7th Annual B2B Marketing Data Report. The report titled, “THE DICHOTOMY OF DATA” reveals the opportunity area for businesses in these unprecedented times.
Nearly 73% of the surveyed respondents said that they had improved their investment in
data quality and analytics. As per the study, B2B companies that had increased the
investment in data quality, all (100%) experienced overall performance increase. Another
94% of organizations noted that their marketing and sales performance has improved than
before.
Marketing Data Matters Much More than the Campaign Performance
As mentioned by Michael Bird, President of Sales and Marketing at Dun & Bradstreet, in the report, “Companies haven’t connected the value quality data can bring to the more
advanced marketing approaches necessary in today’s digital world, organizations need to
move quickly beyond basic use cases to fully realize the value of their efforts.” All the
companies that reduced the investment in data quality, each of them, found no improvement in their sales or marketing performance, and nearly 75% saw a decline in
performance. Another 35% noticed an overall performance decline. For the rest of the year,
about 18% of B2B companies expect to augment their investment in analytics and data
usage. Around 75% of companies are projecting a surge in some business aspects; however, only 1% indicated that they expect their investment will go down.
It is essential to understand that data is an equalizer – regardless of the business size,
industry, or location – to sustain in this digital era. The quality of marketing and sales data is extremely important due to the company’s effectiveness (94%), sales or marketing effectiveness (93%), team’s effectiveness (93%), and campaign targeting (92%).
As mentioned in the report, “When asked to rank the most important element of data
quality, the overwhelming majority – at a rate of 2-to-1 against all other categories –
indicated that data accuracy was most important. 68% ranked data accuracy as one of their top three choices. Other category choices were companies they care about, contacts they care about, consistent data structure, as well as current data and complete data…Overall, marketing is more likely than sales to say that data quality improved in the last year, at 77% vs. 68% respectively.”
Still, many marketers are yet to leverage data to its full extent – however, most of them do
agree about the value of data quality. The study shows that sales and marketing
professionals consider that quality data can notably do well to their effectiveness. Nearly
94% of those who increased investment agreed to the same, and surprisingly, about 80% of B2B organizations that have not, for some reasons, have also aligned!
