B2B Marketing
The aggressive interest rate hikes instituted by the Federal Reserve over the past year and a half may have achieved the desired goal. Easing inflation (3.2% in October) and strong GDP growth (4.9% in Q3) are some of the first indications that the economy may experience the “soft landing” hoped for instead of a recession. The consistently strong labor market produced low unemployment and increasing wages, enabling personal spending to increase. However, while spending continues to grow, the growth rate is on a downward trend. The high rate of spending has been driven by consumers digging into savings and borrowing more. As savings dwindle and the cost to borrow increases, it is likely that consumers will retreat and the pull-back will likely hit discretionary categories first. What I am watching: Heading into the holiday season, consumer spending is still strong but how long will it last? The National Retail Federation is projecting that November and December retail sales will grow 3-4% which is in line with the 3.6% average increase from 2010-2019 but lower than the past three years. People are already dipping into savings and borrowing more to continue their consumption but that well will run dry at some point. In addition, 36% of consumers cite December is a month for seasonal financial distress, according to PYMNTS. While consumers may continue spending through the holiday season, the tide may turn in early 2024 when bills hit with higher interest rates. Download Full Report Download the latest version of the Commercial Pulse Report here. Better yet, subscribe so you'll get it in your inbox every time it releases, or once a month as you choose.
If you want to get the most out of your marketing campaigns, it's important that they are tailored for a specific audience. We invited Tony Romero on Business Chat to talk about part two of his three-part Sip and Solve webinar series focused on B2B marketing where he explains how segmentation and targeting can make all aspects (landing page or email) more effective by using industry SIC as well as NAICS codes. Look-a-like analysis CMO's challenged with restricted budgets Analyzing portfolio diversity and targeting minority-led, women-led businesses Profiling prospects with limited data attributes Watch Our Interview What follows is a lightly edited transcription of our talk. [Gary Stockton]: So in our last chat, we talked about maintaining robust marketing data to power effective campaigns and how clean data really helps businesses conduct effective marketing campaigns. This week, we switch gears to discuss the power of segmentation and targeting using industry SIC and NAICS codes to optimize your marketing budgets. So let's dive in. In our previous chat, we spoke about the changes that tech companies have enacted to make the job of targeting business prospects harder, but it's not game over for marketers. [Tony Romero]: No, definitely not. You know, it's really important to know that there's still a lot of a wealth of data out there that can be used to identify and segment target customers. You know, the first-party data obviously is really key, as well as being able to take information that may be spotty. If, for example, you only have a name or address, you can be able to through services like ours, be able to get a full, comprehensive set of data on that customer, both firmographic, demographic, and credit information, and then be able to use that to promote to customers. [Gary Stockton]: So can you share some examples of how Experian data can help marketers hone in on their target customer, for example, how SICs and NAICS codes can help? [Tony Romero]: Yeah, Gary, you're right. SIC and NAICS codes provide information about what industry the business is in. And so, by knowing that, you're able to target those consumers. So again, as I mentioned before, you can take a look at your existing customer base and find out who's your ideal target customer. And from that, then you can compare that to prospective businesses that look just like that. And that's what's called a lookalike analysis. And by using SIC and NAICS codes, you're able to use that to segment the market and then be able to promote effectively. And Gary, you also mentioned that with the economic state, CMOs have to watch their budgets and be as efficient as possible these days. So again, by doing very good segmenting of your target audience, you are making sure that your finance and financial output to a campaign are as efficient as possible. [Gary Stockton]: Excellent, regulators, they're focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion. How can Experian help clients in that effort? [Tony Romero]: You know? Yeah. That's a very key point and definitely more than ever. It's important to focus on identifying your existing portfolio and seeing how many customers in your portfolio are minority-led or women-led businesses. So you can do benchmarking, you can see how you fare against other businesses in your market space. And that helps you to determine how much more do you need to market to these minority or women-led businesses. So what's number one is the benchmarking, but secondly, you need to be able to go out and look at your prospective target list and find out who are minority-led or women-led. And there, getting an indicator about a Woman-led or Minority-led business allows you to promote specifically to those types of businesses to help increase your portfolio. [Gary Stockton]: That's good. So if all I have is a name and an email address, and in a lot of cases, you know, if we're driving a newsletter, can I still profile this contact? Or are there other ways to do that with minimal info? [Tony Romero]: Yes, there is. You know, even just having a name and address is enough data to go through our type of service and be able to append all of the other information that we talked about, whether it's firmographic with SIC or NAICS codes, it could be demographic information where we look at the business and find out who the consumers that are tied to that business are? So that's called a B2C linkage. And from that now, you know who the actual individual is and go target those specific individuals. So that's also another key point to bring out [Gary Stockton]: Excellent stuff, Tony. Well, folks, if you enjoyed this chat and want to go a level deeper, don't miss Tony's campaign targeting Sip and Solve webinar - Fine Tuning B2b Campaign Targeting. He goes into greater detail on targeting B2B prospects, just click the image to be taken over to the recording.
We're talking B2B marketing data hygiene with Tony Romero from our product team today on Business Chat.
Experian can be your trusted provider to supercharge B2B marketing campaigns with powerful data, analytics and consulting services.
As data privacy regulations become more strict and tech firms implement change, we share how marketers can remain effective while remaining compliant.
Experian Business Information Services recently introduced a powerful new marketing platform called Business TargetIQ. Product Manager, Kelly DeBoer answered a few questions about the product and described use cases that promote greater collaboration between credit and marketing departments. What does Business TargetIQ do? Business TargetIQ is our new marketing platform so it's a B2B marketing platform where clients can access data for marketing applications. How is it different from other business marketing platforms? It is unique in that it not only includes your standard or core firmagraphic information but also includes Experian's credit attributes. Does it have credit data? What does that mean to marketing or collaboration? Typically marketing data and credit data are housed in separate silos of information. With this tool the information will be combined together which will allow the tool not only to be used in traditional marketing applications for targeting but can also be in that risk factor which applies to different divisions within our client's applications or use cases of the data. Who would most benefit from Business TargetIQ? The thing about Business TargetIQ is it truly applies to all different verticals, as well as all different contacts within the company. So whether it's a financial vertical or a trade vertical, retail, just across the board all clients can utilize this. Anybody that's doing marketing can utilize this platform. What core problems does Business TargetIQ solve? It solves a lot of different problems, so, the most common client issues that are brought to our attention are gaps in data, as well as in the marketing initiatives. So they may have data in-house but they have holes within the data. Our tool will allow them to not only upload their client records and fill in a lot of those gaps that they may have, whether it be contact information, or firmagraphics or address information. It will standardize that data and fill in those gaps. But will also provide the means to again use that data. Our business database which has over 16 million records. They can then utilize that information for prospecting, for data append, for analytics, for research applications, so it solves a lot of problems with regard to marketing and data concerns. How does credit data help with prospecting? So what we find is clients come to us and they may say you know I have an idea of what our clients look like, they're in this SIC or in this industry code, or they have this sales volume or employee size, but what they may not know is on the back end which really helps identify and target those businesses is the credit attributes, so the risk factors around those. So do they have delinquencies in their payments? Have they filed bankruptcies? Do they have UCC filings? So it allows them to take it that next step and not only really define what their clients look like, but identify clients that look like that. Learn More About Business TargetIQ
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
