Data is paramount for every organization that engages in outreach. In recent years, the amount of data obtained from users has shot through the roof. Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools can extract valuable data that would otherwise go unnoticed. However, this avalanche of data has posed a crucial question: how important is the data’s quality?
The traditional approach for sales or marketing says, the bigger your reach, the more opportunities you can generate. With this mindset, data volume takes the driving spot, and the quality takes the back seat. However, we must take a step back and note that the consistency of our data is now the most critical consideration.
Why is Data Accuracy Important
Data accuracy is paramount due to its significant impact on decision-making and business outcomes. Reliable and precise data ensures informed strategic planning, efficient operations, and effective marketing campaigns. Accurate data enhances the ability to identify trends, make sound predictions, and drive actionable insights. It enables businesses to minimize errors, optimize resources, and make informed decisions that result in improved productivity, customer satisfaction, and overall success.
Why is Accuracy Important in Advertising?
Accuracy is vital in advertising as it ensures effective targeting and message delivery. Precise ad campaigns reach the intended audience, maximizing impact and minimizing wasted resources. Accurate information builds trust, enhances brand reputation, and fosters meaningful connections with customers. By measuring and optimizing for accuracy, advertisers can achieve better campaign outcomes and drive long-term success.
What Happens When Quantity Alone Isn’t Enough
When we evaluate how businesses approach marketing campaigns, we can see that quantity often gets the center stage.
There’s the hunger for traffic which is a positive thing. The value of viral posts is that they attract thousands of page views every hour. The more likes and shares, the better. And the company aims to generate a large number of leads and conversions as a result of all of that traffic and social interest.
When it comes to numbers, quantity does not equally correspond to benefits. Getting a large database isn’t enough. It can muddle the waters and make decision-making more difficult, resulting in higher costs and lower productivity.
According to a recent survey, 91% of businesses with more than 11 employees use CRM software for sales and marketing. Poor data, given that figure, stifles income, sales efficiency, forecasting, and, ultimately, business growth. When bad data enters your CRM, it creates an obstacle to generating B2B leads. Your sales team has trouble building a pipeline, your sales predictions are off, and your estimates are eventually missed.
Even a small error in the data input or management may be magnified and result in massive output errors. Data integration entails collecting and combining data from various sources, which provide valuable, reliable, and timely information for any company data. Gathering “as much information as possible” is not advised unless it can be checked for accuracy and comes from reliable sources. It is more important to ensure data quality than quantity for the data to be used correctly in the future.
How Businesses See It vs. How They Should See It
There are two types of businesses that buy data:
- TYPE A: The first-time buyers
- TYPE B: Businesses who are not satisfied with their existing data provider
When our sales team and account executives ask the type A leads, they often prefer data quantity.
On the other hand, when we ask type B leads, “what are the milestones that you’re looking to track against?” They say, “it’s the accuracy of the data”. They would prefer not having the data to having error in data accuracy because they’ve learned what happens when your data fails you.
Let’s say, you get 50 human-verified contacts that are guaranteed to purchase something with you this year. On the other hand, you are offered 20,000 completely random contacts that may or may not turn into your clients. So, would you take 50 ready-to-buy verified contacts over the 20,000 contacts that you have no visibility into?
The obvious answer would be 50 over 20,000. However, the mindset of a first-time buyer and already-using user differs. A first-time buyer assumes their sales funnel can grab a high percentage, but if you’re pouring junk contacts into your sales engine, you’re going to get terrible results.
Given a necessary data quantity minimum, you should always prefer data accuracy over volume.
Accurate Data Will Lead You To…
Shorter Sales Cycles
A prolonged sales cycle can feel draining, exhausting, and sometimes frustrating like a long and arduous mountain hike.
You may have experienced being overworked, overstressed, and under quota as a result of a drawn-out sales period. Though there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach in sales, effective use of accurate data and analytics tools can significantly reduce the time it takes to close a deal.
Simply put, when you have accurate and complete data, you can reach the right decision-maker in a short time. Additionally, using accurate intent data, you can identify and chase qualified leads and prospects. This way, you can easily shorten the sales cycle and close more deals.
Higher Conversions
Conversion rate is a crucial metric for sales and marketing teams to boost. Most significantly, rising your conversion rate lowers your acquisition costs by increasing revenue per lead.
Accurate data will lead to accurate targeting. Accurate targeting will filter out all the unqualified leads and accounts. A company that can precisely recognize and target its customers is always in a better position than those who can’t.
More Deals in the Pipeline
Accurate data helps you effectively take an account-based selling approach. Keeping all the necessary information handy, you can create a consistent sales pipeline. Using intent data, you can try to close ready-to-buy leads as well as continuing to nurture potential leads and prospects. This way, you can ensure that you have a strong and consistent sales pipeline with a higher win rate.
Lower Cost
Data errors are extremely costly for any business. However, the risk is much greater than simply losing money. Bad data quality could have a detrimental impact on your brand’s reputation, competitiveness, and effectiveness, in addition to draining your financial capital.
In the worst-case scenario, the company’s image will be tarnished, and the vast majority of your prospects will fail to close. The most serious issue with bad data is that one error leads to more errors, and detecting and correcting these errors takes a long time.
Instead of using newly purchased data, you will have to spend time verifying and correcting everything. Accurate data avoids these errors and ultimately lowers the cost.
Better Decision Making
Accurate data ensures that all those who depend on the data for targeting will be confident while making decisions. Users achieve better outputs if their data quality is good.
This improves business performance, lowering the probability of negative outcomes. Businesses can enhance their entire decision-making process and easily mitigate any risks along the way with consistent outputs.
Data Volume is Great, But Accuracy and Efficiency is Key
Every decision taken by business leaders to boost their company’s performance and profitability is based on data. Businesses must ensure that the data they use is complete, reliable, and up-to-date to derive concrete information from company data and ultimately raise profits.
If you just throw spaghetti at the wall, you’re going to end up cleaning a lot off of the floor. At the end of the day, you might get lucky with something sticking. However, if you’re playing darts, even if you don’t get a bullseye, you’re at least hitting close to your targets.
So in sales, don’t throw spaghetti against the wall. You want to always aim at your ideal prospects with a high level of precision. You need to be strategic on how you want to play this game because it’s your time and it’s your revenue.
At SalesIntel, we understand what it takes to close more deals and how crucial access to reliable, up-to-date data is for your entire organization. SalesIntel not only maintains high accuracy – but also avoids data decay by re-verifying our data every 90 days.
