Every marketer knows that a good demand generation strategy must begin with good data. One of the biggest misalignments between enterprise marketing and sales teams is that oftentimes, marketers focus on bringing in the most leads – rather than bringing in the most qualified leads. When sales teams lose faith in the quality of leads that come from marketing, a big problem arises.
The key to bringing in more qualified leads is, of course, using better data to target. All too often, marketers capture only email addresses, which don’t provide enough information about the person behind the email. What is their job title? Where are they located? How big is their company? What is their social handle?
To add to the problem, data is decaying faster than ever in today’s chaotic market. Mass layoffs and company changes amidst COVID-19 have upended nearly every industry, creating a data decay level of between 8-15% per month — compared to pre-crisis levels of 3% per month. Simply put, to create effective demand generation going forward, your data needs a refresh.
A New Era Means New Data Rules
In the past it was never an urgent priority for enterprise marketing teams to constantly revise and refresh their database – it was an afterthought. But the new era of COVID-19 is forcing marketers to apply new rules when it comes to their data.
*Graphic credit to Donato Diorio, Founder & CEO of Data Z, a data think tank specializing in Data Strategy, Proprietary Tools and List Development.
Looking at these data decay statistics, it’s likely that popular data sites such as ZoomInfo and DiscoverData might not be updating their information as quickly as it’s actually changing – especially today. Our advice?
First, every enterprise must make refreshing data a priority and run bounce tests at least once per quarter. In this shaken up market, reviewing your data and testing it just once or twice a year simply won’t cut it anymore.
Second, don’t buy tools to dictate your data strategy; instead, let your data strategy dictate which types of tools you want to invest in. So many enterprises do this the other way around and end up spending a majority of their budgets on tools that don’t actually fit their strategy.
Finally, focus on building a custom audience with data-driven segmentation. Go out of the box to find contacts via social media and websites, and find key industry influencers to target from there. Use a tool like Market ID to help you expand your existing addressable market, and then create custom lists based on your newly expanded database. With a more holistic demand strategy you can launch targeted multi-touch & multi-channel campaigns, and this is where demand generation REALLY starts to work.
Introducing the List Magician
While all the above steps are both useful and necessary to create effective demand generation, let’s face it: They are all way too time-consuming for any marketing or sales team to keep up with. So why not automate these processes?
Our data experts have created List Magician, a groundbreaking tool which automates the process of pulling contacts from your addressable market, allowing you to create a list from an addressable market report in very little time and allow your team to focus on strategies and sales pursuits.
The List Magician tool:
→ Provides you with a database, including social profiles and web pages
→ Finds key influencers in your industry
→ Finds data in social networks that the social networks own search cannot
→ Spits out the contacts in a way that allows you to easily append contact records for multi-touch campaigns.
The data you find can then be fed into your CRM system and used as custom audiences for your demand generation programs. If your enterprise’s sales and marketing teams are losing valuable time figuring out who to focus on, instead of how to engage leads, it’s time to use List Magician. Fill out our assessment form today to see if List Magician is right for your enterprise!
Heather Davison
Chief Strategy Officer, DemandFrontier
