B2B Marketing Data: The Buzzwords To Pay Attention To

Every industry has its buzzwords – and marketing is no different. But people tend to be wary of buzzwords: they’re often seen as clichés or meaningless jargon. And sometimes they are. You hear them reiterated by company after company and they end up not meaning anything. In fact, Jon Keegan of The Wall Street Journal created this “Business Buzzwords Generator” to poke fun at the whole concept.

However, when it comes to B2B marketing data, there are some buzzwords that it’s well worth adding to your vocabulary. They do mean something. These are the words with substance; that correlate with real actions, which will help to drive your business forward.

Data-driven marketing

Like it says on the tin, data-driven marketing is about using your B2B data to guide your marketing decisions. After all, why would you want to invest precious time and resources crafting and honing your marketing campaigns, only for them to fall flat because you’ve targeted the wrong people, in the wrong way, at the wrong time?

Writing for CIO, Tom Kaneshige says: “Once considered a mysterious black art, marketing is now a quantifiable, data-based function.”

Data can serve a number of purposes, from helping you to identify your best customers, to working out who you shouldn’t contact. Your database is one of your most valuable resources, so it’s important to keep it squeaky clean and up-to-date. Why not read our post, 3 reasons you should make marketing data a priority for your business, for more information on this topic.

Growth hacking

This is the practice of increasing your number of customers by experimental methods – that is, marketing strategies that are different from those you usually implement. These methods are cost-effective, utilised across different channels and, of course, acutely focused on growth.

Writing for Wordstream, Megan Marrs says: “Growth hackers experiment, test, and are always pushing limits with unconventional acquisition strategies. Growth hackers are often dancing with the devil, frolicking in grey hat territory where more established companies tend not to wander. They aren’t afraid to work around the system, hence the title ‘hacker’.”

B2B data plays a key role in growth hacking, because it tells you the things you need to know about your customers, in order to formulate new ways of engaging with them and others like them. Creating online content is one of the best ways to develop relationships without needing a big spend – for example, blog posts and eBooks. And social media is also key – for instance, if you have a large audience on Twitter, you might promote a particular hashtag or set up a live Q&A session to solve people’s problems and promote your brand.

Account-based marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing (ABM), also known as key account marketing, is a strategy whereby you target and engage with specific individuals and businesses that you really want to connect with. For example, you might analyse your current database to find your best customers and then reach out to more businesses in the same vein. And you don’t have to simply focus on one employee – you can spread your efforts across an organisation for maximum impact.

Writing for Marketing Land, Rachel Balik says: “To many of us, ABM means big enterprise companies targeting a few standout key accounts with a high-touch, expensive, siloed process. Today, ABM has the potential to be much bigger than that, thanks to technology that helps us automate and scale.”

ABM essentially involves identifying the key accounts you want to target, marketing to them and measuring your results – and then starting the process again, armed with your newly-discovered insights. Of course, there are many complexities within this process – but you already have the marketing skills to meet them head on. It’s simply a case of putting them to use.

Millennials

Millennials, also known as Generation Y, are people born between the early 1980s and around the year 2000. When it comes to B2B marketing, they are an important generation – and a unique one. Generally, millennials are familiar with technology, their lives are defined by change and less economic security than previous generations, and they often value experiences over things.

Millennials often get called narcissistic, childish or lazy – but they are the future and that means you simply can’t dismiss them. Instead, you need to understand them. So look at your B2B database, identify the millennials and engage with them. And if you find they’re thin on the ground, think about how you can change that.

Omnichannel

To see the best return on investment, B2B marketers need to adopt an omnichannel approach; to engage with people through multiple channels and devices – for instance, through your website, on social media and over the phone. Furthermore, this has to be a seamless process that reflects your audience’s needs and expectations.

Formulating an omnichannel approach can feel like navigating a minefield but, once again, this is where data can help. How do people interact with different platforms? Is there a channel in which they are more active? Which channels are the most important at different stages of the buyer’s journey? These are all crucial insights that will help you.

And one more thing…

As we established at the start of this post, sometimes buzzwords get a bad rap. To prevent eyes rolling, the key is to only use words that mean something tangible – that you can evidence through your B2B marketing actions.