There’s plenty to keep B2B marketers up at night: complex technologies, shrinking budgets, internal silos. But poor data quality may be their biggest nightmare of all.
According to “The B2B Marketing Data Report 2016” by Dun & Bradstreet, 75% of the more than 500 B2B marketers surveyed say accurate and complete data is critical for achieving their marketing objectives for this year; yet many respondents have neither. Thirty percent of respondents say data quality is their biggest hurdle in terms of leveraging marketing databases to support in-market activities. In fact, many of the 695 million records analyzed for this report were missing crucial pieces of information, such as revenue (87%), employee (86%), and industry (77%) information.
Having inconsistent data across technologies can cause marketers to toss and turn, too. More than 40% of respondents say it’s one of their biggest obstacles to maximizing marketing technology ROI.
B2B marketers who would rather count conversions than sheep have found a number of ways to use data to enhance their marketing initiatives. Nearly two thirds (62%) of respondents use demographic and firmographic data to create personas that drive content creation; and 58% of respondents use this information to model their best customers and identify top segments.
Tired of not being able to effectively leverage data within your organization? Check out the infographic below to see B2B marketers’ biggest pain points and how they intend to use data to enhance their targeting.
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