Why You Need Consumer Data for B2B Sales

Being successful in sales means knowing your target audience. Traditional B2B sales have focused on reaching out to decision-makers in their professional roles and through their business channels. Sales cycles are long, and decision-makers are often hard to reach and slow to respond.

Today’s savvy B2B sales folks know there is a better way to break through the marketing noise bottleneck and close the deals: consumer data.

The line between B2B and B2C has blurred

There is no longer a clear division between Margaret Smith, CFO of Widgets, Inc., and Maggie Smith, millennial mom, pet goods purchaser, Facebook user, and YouTube watcher. They are the same person, and now, in the new normal – where a huge percentage of tech workers are working from home – there is even less of a division.

There is no longer a separation of Ms. Smith’s consumer role, which is normally separated from her 9-5 workday, and her work role in an office. B2B marketers need to reach out to Ms. Smith where she is online. Not just her work email and phone, but on her social media profiles and other digital channels, from mobile ads on her phone to display ads on her favorite sites.

This is where consumer data enhancement comes in.

Consumer data fills in the blanks

Enhancing data sets with additional consumer data means B2B marketers can layer consumer data onto the business data they already have. Sales and marketing teams can get a better view of Ms. Smith and decision-makers like her.

By having data about where prospects spend their time online, and demographic details about a consumer’s lifestyle or purchasing activity, marketers can efficiently use their marketing dollars, target their messages to the most ideal audience, and provide a full omnichannel marketing blitz.

Consumer data will also help B2B salespeople and marketers develop content that resonates with sales targets. Instead of generic ad campaigns blasted to a sterile list of names, marketers can create content specific to the platforms specific decision-makers use and content that reflects what they care about and respond to.

B2B marketers might develop short video case studies that can be used on Facebook or YouTube, rather than spending time and resources on PDF case studies that are less frequently read by consumers in a certain age group. But first, they must know the average age, gender, and other demographic information about their targets. This can only be found out by layering consumer data on business data on targets.

The future is B2B2C

In 2021, sales professionals are facing an entirely new landscape. This is increasingly true for B2B sales professionals, who need to be as efficient as possible in filling their funnel and supercharging the pipeline.

Now, to stay ahead of the game and to close critical B2B deals, they need consumer data at their fingertips. A consumer data enhancement tool such as Versium REACH is one of the most powerful tools they can use to accelerate that pipeline and bring in happy customers and the big sales that go with them. Gone are the days of using pure business contact data to reach all of a sales teams’ potential customers.