Your leads are subjected to a barrage of buying messages from your competition. Even in B2B sales, the exhortations to buy are constant. In the cacophony of advertising messages your competition creates around your potential customers, what can you do to cut through the noise? Your best hope is to provide the message your lead actually wants to hear – not just a generic ad, but a personalized message that solves that professional’s specific problem.
Personalizing a message through data enhancement and tailoring marketing messages to make them uniquely relevant to the people receiving them gives you the power to get past what your competition is doing. The more closely you can align yourself with what your customer wants, the more likely you are to be heard.
Creating Reciprocity
All of business is predicated on giving value for value. Data now has significant value, so the best way marketers can gather primary data is to offer something valuable in exchange for it. If you offer useful content, enhanced services, or an unmatched opportunity, leads will reciprocate by sharing their information with you. In turn, that information gives you the insight you need to start the data enrichment process and serve that prospect better.
Building Trust, Earning Information
Why is data so valuable? It’s the key to building the kind of personalized, relevant marketing that makes a difference for them and their customers. Leads know their information has value too, and they’re careful about how they share it. The first step in building a lasting relationship with a buyer is earning that potential customer’s trust. Here’s how to earn your leads’ trust and learn more about them:
- Offer a fair deal. If your pricing is competitive, you’ve already got their interest. Even leads who aren’t particularly price-sensitive comparison-shop to ensure that they get a competitive price.
- Deliver on what your brand promises. What do you offer that no one else can, and how do you package that? Once you know, you’re able to provide that to your leads.
- Make it clear that you’ll guard their information and protect it as zealously as they do. One major reason customers are reticent about offering their data is that they’re concerned about data security – and rightly so. Be up-front about any information you share and use proper protocols for data safety such as encrypted connections for data transmission.
Data Enrichment
Data is a puzzle. As you fit more pieces of it together, the picture of your customer becomes increasingly cohesive. After earning primary data (name, company, and email address, for instance), you can leverage the data you have to discover more about your lead through data enhancement.
Data enhancement processes hand you more pieces of the puzzle by figuring out what fits with the ones you already have. If your lead has given you the name “Jim Smith,” you can compare Jim Smith’s records against a master database to see if additional data for James Smith, James M. Smith, Jimmy Smith, and other possible combinations match. Enhancement can tell you more about the company Jim Smith works for, his role within it, and the degree of saturation you have within the organization (e.g., whether Jim is your first contact there or one of a group of customers from that company). You get a clearer picture of his behavior and buying history.
Enriching the data you already have on Jim Smith lets you customize future experiences with him. When he goes to your website now, he sees not a generic front page but one designed with his job title in mind. Email communications with him now address concerns specific to him and his unique profile.
Combining the information your lead shares with you directly and the knowledge you gain indirectly from data enhancement, you’re able to gain a personal perspective on your lead and transform the customer experience.
© Reach Marketing LLC 2016 All Rights Reserved.
