B2B marketers need a new marketing mix

What priority does data quality have in your marketing strategy? Recently, Shimon Ben Ayoun interviewed Kees Henniphof, Senior Manager New Customers at ServiceNow. Kees is one of the speakers at the B2B Marketing Forum this year. According to Kees data should be a top priority. Only by using the right data you can accelerate a lead in the buying process. When you know who is looking for what, where and when, you can better tailor your content to the buyer’s needs. But let’s be honest, this is not easy.

Someone who says that B2B marketing today is different from before is not lying. We see far more channels and systems where we can find and follow leads. We gather a lot more insights and this alone offers us more possibilities, and we see more touchpoints to interact with our leads and because of this data and data quality become more important. Not only data we gather throughout the buying process but also data we gather beforehand should get priority in our plans, according to Kees.

The buying process is not getting any easier

The buyer journey hasn’t become less complex over the years. DMU’s, target audiences, decisions to be made; everything seems to be more and more complex. Marketers face bigger challenges because of this, the business buyer is more elusive than before, according to Kees. New marketing channels offer new opportunities to marketers but at the same they cause a more complex lead generation and sales acceleration process.

When a lead enters our systems, marketers must be aware that we need to follow up right away and try to find out what type of person and what type of engagement he is looking at. In other words ‘How relevant is this lead to sales?’ As we need to move away from batch and blast emails, we need to learn how to guide a lead throughout the buying process.

Kees: “I’m convinced that when we use the right data in the right way, we can deliver the right message at the right time. Only this way we can deliver quality leads to sales. And if we don’t, we will face a bigger chance of not having a good relationship with sales. We end up executing batch and blast campaigns again, as there are no further options.”

Why is data so important?

• Good data offers us a the possibility to map our content to the buying process
• Sales becomes more effective as they receive more qualitative leads
• Marketing and Sales will now work together more effectively
• The marketing department can now show it’s added value

Do you also want to nurture leads by delivering the right message at the right time? And thus increase the quality of leads? Please contact us for more information. We will be pleased to help you.