We all thought that B2B contact database business is history when linkedin got popular. That did not turn out to be true. Rise of Marketing Automation led to demand of insights on B2B company data. Software products, IT services, and consultancies are the first adopters of marketing automation.
Marketing automation requires money. Advertisement requires money. Why should one target all contacts on google adwords, linkedin ad campaign and end up spending tons of dollars ?
Marketing spend is increasing dramatically and leads are not coming. Hence, marketers (smart people) started analyzing accounts in their B2B contact database and people to target. Analysis required data enrichment. Hence, inbound and outbound data enrichment has become popular. It has become a necessity.
Real Time Contact Data Enrichment?
Cut throat competition in the market has pushed the need to enrich the data. A marketer asked me the other day if we can enrich the data in real time ? Life of a lead has become short it does mean. Marketer would want to move the lead to sales as quickly as possible.
This is another sign that marketers are being driven by revenue. Sales and marketing are probably coming closer.
B2B contact database industry is going through a revolution. ZoomInfo is still the brand everyone knows. Datafox, EverString, OceanFrogs are generating insights and feeding to ABM and data driven platforms. Firmographics, technographics, job postings, psychology attributes have all become a necessary part of the offering. BANT’s lead score have got friends and foes. CRM management has become a separate field.
Technology, analytics is working hard to bring leads to the marketer. Is Marketer getting leads ? You are not going to get a good answer to that.
Use technology, use data and build relationships. Referral, relationships will go a long way.