In sales and marketing circles there has always been a temptation to think that when it comes to
prospect databases, big is beautiful. More data, more potential customers, and more sales: what’s not to love?
Using data
As personalisation has become more important in consumer sales and marketing, it has also become key to effective business to business marketing. Our personal data is precious, and marketers now understand that building trust and rapport with a receptive, respectful community is only made possible by our meticulous use of data. Conversely, poor use of data causes poor customer experience and untold brand damage. In fact, organisations in the UK have been hit by over 10,000 data breaches since GDPR in May 2018, a study finds.
Data selection
In B2B telemarketing terms, size definitely matters when it comes to the database. It’s not how big but how small that really makes a difference to successful outcomes. At Blue Donkey we’re convinced that a simple selection of homogeneous, well targeted, segmented prospect records is mission critical to the success of B2B telemarketing, because only then can each call and communication be uniquely designed around the needs of the individual buyer and their organisational objectives.
For example, a medical device manufacturer has an innovation for a particular type of procedure; let’s say a cosmetic treatment. The innovation is available to purchase from a dozen distributors in major towns. Good B2B telemarketing practice would be to select and purchase a slice of test data within a given drivetime of each distributor, to research the data, (in this case beauty clinics) and establish decision makers names. We’d then carefully implement a program to call them, engage them about the innovation, carefully record metrics and anecdotal information, then use the insight gathered to adapt or scale up. This process of plan, act, reflect, and adjust helps to optimise the chance of a successful outcome with buyers for whom the innovation could be important. In other words we take care to create a great customer experience.
Build trust
The DMA’s customer engagement survey ‘How to win trust and loyalty’ maintains that whilst the nature of customer loyalty is shifting against the tide of faster information and more accessible media, customers still have brands they love and respect. So, the notion of customer loyalty is more complex and counter-intuitive than ever. They tell us “For marketers, the message remains the same: add value to your customer’s lives and stay relevant to their interests, or risk losing their business altogether”.
Taking the time and trouble to plan, target and test allows us to gather and use only the data that’s relevant to a project, and that which has obtained the appropriate consent. If as marketers, we are careful to ensure that each connection made does a good job of sounding like the important single call made that day, we’ll be far more likely to build trust, rapport and generate goodwill.
Talk to Blue Donkey about data cleaning, lead generation, or market research to help you maximise your sales and marketing efforts.