The 2024 B2B Data Buyer’s Guide For Marketing Leaders

Welcome to 2024! The year has just started, and like every year so far in the 2020s, it’s on track to be a challenging and unique experience in marketing. 

B2B data providers have become a standard addition to any tech stack as the rise in job changes and layoffs continue into the year, which is rapidly aging data used for GTM campaigns and effective targeting. Even major companies like Google are laying off hundreds of employees. Not to mention the difficulty of breaking through the constant ad and inbox noise everyone faces daily. 

Accurate, fresh data is more essential than ever for running successful marketing campaigns.

The Unique Situation of 2024

We’ve been observing swift developments in data, analytics, and AI that have influenced how organizations function as we look back on the past year. AI has continued to break into the mainstream conversation as more and more companies are harnessing massive databases for productivity.

Big data, analytics, and artificial intelligence will continue to grow in scope in 2025, presenting organizations with new opportunities and complexities.

As companies reduce employee numbers, everyone will be working to do more with less. Accurate data is essential for productivity and powering new AI platforms.

Why You Need Actionable Data

Businesses produce enormous amounts of data. Making sense of this data is essential for marketing teams. A company may have access to mountains of data, but until that data has been analyzed and understood, it isn’t useful. That’s where a B2B data provider comes in. For data to be useful, it has to be actionable.

“Actionable data” refers to insights being presented in a way that can be immediately used to inform business decisions whether by people or AI. The information must be accurately presented, displayed in the right context, and positioned where those who need to see it can access it. Businesses can use this information to inform better decisions, whether it’s maximizing productivity or optimizing marketing campaigns. 

Let’s go over a couple of examples. 

Actionable data can be a decision-maker’s mobile number allowing sales to call the same day a decision-maker clicked on several sent email links. Or, actionable data could be Buyer Intent data letting your marketing team know that a specific company is in the market for your product or service. You see the high buying intent for the company in your data platform. Next, you pull up the company and email decision-makers with content relevant to their role or industry.

What Makes Data Actionable – ZoomInfo vs SalesIntel

When evaluating B2B data providers, you need to consider the data quality you’re using. Actionable data is accurate. To be considered actionable, your B2B data has to be correct. 

Obviously, incorrect data shouldn’t be used to drive insights. If garbage is going in, garbage is going to come out. 

As a competitor to ZoomInfo, we consistently hear the woes of former customers who were not satisfied with the data they were receiving. Sometimes it was out-of-date or missing a necessary field for marketers: an email address. You’re asking for high bounce rates, high unsubscribe numbers, and a lower domain reputation. 

We’ll ensure you’re talking to the right people. A key differentiator of SalesIntel is our accuracy. At SalesIntel, our combination of automation and a human research team allows us to reach ~95% data accuracy.  

But it’s not just correct phone numbers and email addresses that drive your campaigns. Having quality account data will steer your entire GTM strategy in the right direction. Our quality company firmographics and technographics will help you to identify and profile your ideal customers. SalesIntel has comprehensive, detailed account and contact data that, when used in tandem, allows you to define, quantify, and target your ICP efficiently – the foundation for launching a successful ABM campaign and driving quality lead volume.

Knowing who’s currently shopping for your solution also makes a considerable difference. SalesIntel’s intent data will provide you with valuable insights into where accounts are in the buying process, enabling you to know what actions to take next. Intent data, layered on top of your ICP, tells you which accounts are in-market now, enabling your team to generate specific creative and offers appropriate for them. 

How Does Actionable Data Help You?

A modern marketing tech stack depends on rapid response and automation. The first company to reach a prospect and make an impression has a better chance of making the sale.

If businesses want to remain competitive in 2024, they cannot solely rely on traditional, lagging data. To ensure business agility, inform effective decision-making, and keep your customers connected and engaged at every touchpoint, you must establish a strategy to utilize real-time data and insights. 

Increase Paid Ad ROI

Marketing’s #1 focus is to drive qualified leads. The easiest way is to pay for advertising in places like Meta (Facebook), Google, and LinkedIn, or use DSPs (demand side platforms) that place ads on various websites and mobile apps (e.g. CNN, WebMD, mobile games). 

Unfortunately, most marketing teams struggle to make the economics work. The money they spend does not result in enough closed-won business to justify the spending.

With SalesIntel, teams have seen up to 5x improvement in their paid ad efficiency in as soon as six months, with significant improvements to their targeting efforts. SalesIntel allows marketing leaders to have the functionality to target their ICP accounts “in-market” using intent data and the ability to test new channels and creative ideas quickly to unlock scale faster. 

Optimize Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is an increasingly essential way to improve lead-to-S1 (opportunity) efficiency. It’s done primarily by email marketing using marketing automation platforms (MAPs) like Hubspot and Marketo. AI automation requires the same high-level of data accuracy.

As a marketing leader, you have the responsibility of finding leads cost-effectively with great content, webinars, events, and offers. Then you nurture them to the point that they convert on their own or are ready for a BDR or AE to reach out to them directly (e.g. become an MQL).

By running tests of ads and content against your ideal customer profile coupled with intent, you can create proven messages that reach target audiences through testing and validation – increasing the return from marketing automation. The net effect is to reduce the number of outbound contacts needed to reach your target for inbound marketing qualified leads.

Plan Targeted ABM Campaigns

Highly targeted outbound/account-based marketing (ABM) is the current go-to-market approach due to the increasing difficulty in generating enough inbound leads cost-effectively. 

By integrating intent data with account firmographic and technographic reports, SalesIntel makes it easy to find prospects for ABM/ABX-based marketing. SalesIntel makes it possible to both test ABM/ABX approaches and deploy a program quickly. 

Best of all – our Research on Demand feature allows us to fill any outstanding contact gaps for specific ABM company targets. If you’re paying for data, you should be able to get data on the companies you want. 

Deliver Effective Content

Many small companies rely solely on organic leads as their inbound lead source. These teams often focus on building a great website, creating compelling content, and leveraging search engine optimization (SEO) to help drive leads without having to pay for them via advertising. 

If you have an effective SEO strategy and are highly targeted in your approach, inbound content can be the most cost-efficient way of driving traffic and, ultimately, leads. 

By using SalesIntel, you can utilize a combination of an ICP definition plus intent data to create a profile of your target market. Validate your ICP against SalesIntel’s validated buyer profiles. You can also combine your ICP definition with logs of marketing activity to create useful, repeatable rules for MQL identification and promotion.

Building a strong, tested content foundation reduces the need for sales teams to create and deploy their own content. The same test approach can help marketing teams validate and leverage sales-generated content.

Actionable Data for Marketing in 2024

All in all, you need data. Actionable, accurate data. The B2B data provider you choose should be able to deliver on those promises. 

At SalesIntel, we’re confident in our ability to provide actionable insights to your marketing team. Whether it’s through our quality company firmographics, technographics, and intent data or our human-verified contacts, we know you’ll see a difference in your marketing campaigns. 

Go ahead. Take us for a test drive.