Media and Technology

So you’ve created the perfect campaign with great creatives and an unbeatable offer. You deploy the campaign and sit on the edge of your seat waiting for all the leads to flood in. After a couple of days, you notice a couple of responses but nowhere near the volume of what you were hoping for, and you’re stuck asking yourself “why?” Here are a couple of hypotheses: 1.) the people you reached out to aren’t the right audience so they don’t care about your offer, or 2.) your target audience didn’t see your efforts because you used the wrong channel. The process of finding new business customers can be expensive and sometimes unpredictable, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are 3 tips to help improve your prospecting efforts: Tip #1: Define your ideal customer One of the most fundamental ways you can help grow your current customer base is to have a clear understanding of what they actually look like (or defining what they should look like). What’s their job title? What are their biggest business challenges? Are they web savvy? How do they prefer to get industry news? Addressing discovery questions like these allows you to better understand who you’re talking to and how to talk to them. Additionally, you’ll be able to use this profile to help you mimic your best customers and target look-a-likes.   Tip #2: Target new businesses Get your products/services in front of new businesses before your competitors. Not surprisingly, many marketers overlook targeting new businesses because of the lack of data -- how do you know a new company is in business? How do you know if they’re the right business for you to even target? Fortunately, there are many services in today's market that can help fill in the gaps. Using something like Experian’s US Business Database, which is a database of more than 16 million active U.S. companies, can help you discover new businesses sooner and beat out your competitors to reach them first.  Tip #3: Find the decision-makers Identifying the right businesses to target is important, but ensuring that your offer gets in front of the right person – the decision maker – is even better. By finding the decision maker and directing your marketing efforts towards them, you can rest assure that your message lands in the hands of the person that matters most. Want to take it one step further? Once you know who you’re talking to, you can tailor the message and offer to be more relevant for that specific audience, which ultimately helps increase your chances of getting a response.      Finding and reaching new business customers can be a daunting and expensive tasks, especially if you don’t target your prospecting efforts. Be sure to keep these tips in mind when approaching your marketing strategy and don’t let today’s data challenges hold you back. Learn more about Experian's US Business Database or our other marketing capabilities.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Kelly DeBoer recently. She is a Product Manager at Experian working in Business Information Services. Kelly leads product strategy for our business marketing products. In this Business Q&A we talk about B2B marketing trends and how Experian is helping business clients get the most out of their marketing initiatives. Gary: B2B marketing has changed significantly in the last five years. What are some of the important trends that you're seeing? Kelly: What we're seeing in the B2B space is really what we've seen in the B2C space for years, and that is, our clients are really trying to gain as much insight into their not only existing clients but potential clients as well? So you know additional firmographic information, credit information, anything that gives them a fuller picture of their clients, and then not only how to retain their existing clients and cross-sell, but also in terms of prospecting, how to best reach these targets once we've identified them what's the best channels to reach those prospects to get the best response. Gary: Kelly, most of our clients think of Experian Business Information Services as firstly business data and credit risk management. So how are we helping clients with their marketing initiatives? Kelly: With regard to B2B marketing, Experian has a tremendous amount of marketing assets including not only our U.S. Business Database which has over 16 million businesses. We also overlay that with our credit information, so clients can come and tap into this this huge resource to help them with their targeting in terms of selecting by firmographics, employee size, sales volume, as well as credit attributes, UCC filings, bankruptcies, information that can be translated to marketing campaigns. It can be utilized for direct marketing, for telemarketing, for digital applications - social media, email campaigns, analytical solutions, modeling. So it's a vast amount of resources that we can tap into to help with marketing campaigns. Gary: Can you share about some B2B marketing solutions we can look forward to from Experian? Kelly: Experian has a lot on the horizon with regard to B2B marketing. But one thing I'm particularly excited about is our new B2C linkage business to consumer linkage. Ultimately our clients have been coming to us saying you know, we're looking for a way to link our consumer records to any businesses that they may be associated with. So we create a customized linkage system that allows us to take in those consumer records, match them to our commercial repositories, and then provide back information that allows our clients to then not only target that consumer at their residential address but also their business address. So it gives them a chance to cross-sell and up-sell commercial offers as well as their consumer offers. Experian Business Marketing Solutions

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), small businesses account for 99.7 percent of U.S. employer firms and 64 percent of new private-sector jobs. So it stands to reason that the way small businesses go, the economy probably follows suit. One of the biggest challenges for small businesses, however, is the ability to access capital. In order for them to grow, they need money. Many of these smaller firms have limited to no credit history on file. For that reason, it is imperative for lenders and trade creditors to leverage comprehensive data sources (both financial and non-financial), enabling them to make smarter business decisions and help small businesses access credit. It is Experian’s core belief that an open and secure data sharing program is crucial to helping small businesses get the credit they deserve, and it's Small Business Credit Share® program is at the center of this ideal. Small Business Credit Share℠ is a Credit Data Sharing "Club" Small Business Credit Share℠ (SBCS) is a consortium of banks, credit card companies, leasing agencies and other companies that have agreed to provide financial and non-financial data in exchange for exclusive access to data from other contributors. By gaining access to this database, lenders and trade creditors can make more informed decisions, while also promoting financial inclusion and spurring growth within the small business segment. Currently, six of the nation's top ten financial institutions are members, as well as several telecommunications and utilities companies. Small Business Credit Share℠ offers more aggregates (data elements) than any other service of its type. Whereas many lenders rely primarily on summary data (e.g., a credit score and reports of missed payments over the past year), Small Business Credit Share reports include a vast array of detailed credit, financial and non-financial data. As a requirement of membership, members must contribute at least 10 pieces of data on each small business account, such as account types, highest credit utilized, total account balance and payment history profiles. Together, these aggregates provide a much deeper, more meaningful view of a small business than was ever possible when drawing from just a handful of sources. They have also proven to be a far more accurate predictor of credit risk than any other service Membership Provides Benefits to Financial Institutions and Borrowers Alike Small Business Credit Share℠ provides significant benefits to member institutions as well as to the customers they serve. For example, Small Business Credit Share allows members to see the obligations an applicant already has to other lenders. With this knowledge, a lender can make sure an applicant does not become overextended and thus jeopardize their ability to pay back the loans already outstanding. A lender can also generate reports that, when shared with a customer, help ensure that paying back that lender becomes a priority so as to strengthen their credit score. Small Business Credit Share can also help members achieve SBA compliance, as the SBA mandates reporting to "bureaus" for all SBA-backed loans (SOP 50 57). To Get More, Give More As in life, what you can get out of the Small Business Credit Share℠ tends to be directly proportional to what you put into it. The more data members share, the clearer the picture of their small business borrowers becomes, and the smarter credit decisions they are able to make. Watch our Small Business Credit Share Program Overview Video We're encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive reception the Small Business Credit Share has received from the financial industry as a whole and from our member companies in particular. We remain committed to the idea that financial inclusion provides a strong value proposition to the Financial Services community, and believe Small Business Credit Share aligns with that ideal. Small Business Credit Share