How up to date is your marketing data?

We swear by a ‘data driven marketing’ methodology. But, what does that mean?

As business owners & managers we have all identified what our best customer looks like – where they are based, how big they are and what industries they are in; so why bother marketing to anyone else?

By driving your marketing activity to well curated lists of prospects, you can ensure that your message is only read by the most appropriate potential customers. Your marketing spend and sales efforts aren’t wasted on chasing down the wrong businesses either.

Where to start?

1. How big is my market? – Look to the ONS (The Office of National Statistics). The ONS are the only accurate source that will openly (and free of charge!) share reports that will help you identify the number of businesses by geography, by size and by industry. These numbers will be critical to your marketing planning

2. Where do I get the contact details? – There are countless sources of data – even in this post GDPR world, there are always options to identify and pool together prospective customers. Your preferred marketing partner should support you in sourcing data (we supply & clean data for all of our clients!), or you can turn to a traditional data house (although they do definitely have their limitations in this day & age), or you can scrape it yourself by cherry picking contacts from LinkedIn or industry associations websites

3. Get cleaning! – It can be a time consuming and very laborious task, but essential in making sure you really do have the right firms, contact details and names to feed into your marketing engine

4. Profile – Before you begin marketing & selling to the pool of prospective customers you have identified – you need to learn about them; vet their size, structure, relationships with incumbent suppliers, contracts, needs and business pain points

Spreadsheets doing your eyes in?

We’d love to help. We spend all day every day supporting technology service businesses with their sales & marketing challenges – from writing copy and designing artwork to engaging prospects.

If you are an MSP, ISP, SaaS provider or distributor, and if you are looking where to turn to push your sales or marketing activity, please book in some time with us for a chat.