Data Types to Supercharge your Marketing

An Ever-changing Data Ecosystem

B2B marketing has been transforming for well over a decade—probably into two decades at this point. That said, the last five years or so really have seen this monumental shift in several areas. First, there’s never been as much data available for better targeting, segmentation, personalization, and analytics. The increased use of first-party data, the growing privacy regulations around it, and new approaches to data governance: are all part of the day in the life of a modern marketer and modern CMO, which was not true five to ten years ago—certainly not ten years ago.

B2B marketing has been undergoing a decades-long transformation where the focus has shifted from traditional channels to a digitally-led domain. A result of this transformation is that traditional channels are not enough to drive your message, as now there are additional insights to consider to make decisions around which channel, message, and strategy are going to position your brand on top.

Many companies already have a relatively complete view of the customer. But they reside in discrete pockets across the company. This digital transformation which has been facilitated by the ubiquitousness of the internet has exacerbated the discreet nature of these different data points where the combination of first and third-party data that drive high-octane campaigns, nurtures and personalization aren't as consistently accessible as a marketer needs. 

Introducing Data Types

So let's take a look at those data types, both Leadspace and first-party types, that are ostensibly available to your marketing team, so you can get started to use most of what’s available.

From Snowflake, a leading data warehouse and analytics company:

First-party data

The customer data sets a business collects from customer or audience transactions and interactions. This is data a business holds as proprietary information about its markets. It is user-consented information that can come from a variety of sources -- websites, apps, customer relationship systems (CRM), point-of-sale (POS) systems, transactions (ERP or accounting systems), or even IoT systems in some cases. 

First-party data allows for hyper-targeted, consented marketing and sales motions where the customer, company, or prospect has provided explicit consent to connect with them directly based on their behavior. First-party data is also more accurate and relevant than third-party data, as it comes directly from a business’s operations and customers. Brands can develop strategies based on how their audiences engage with them and their products and services. 

Third-party Data

Data sets are collected and managed by organizations that do not directly interact with customers or the business data consumer. Third-party data can include data sets that are "stitched" from various sources or even from governmental, non-profit, or academic sources (for example, weather data, and public demographic data). Third-party data is often shared or bought and sold on data marketplaces or exchanges.

Third-party data becomes useful to B2B marketing and sales because, with third-party data, organizations are obtaining aggregated datasets from other companies, giving them a significant amount of data about a significant number of people. This helps businesses reduce the time and resources they would otherwise need to invest in the data collection process themselves. Third-party data tends to be less accurate as well where various aggregated sources pool information at scale, inevitably leading to some false assumptions and lower precision and recall for any person or company. 

Third-Party Data

Firmographic

• Definition 
  • • Firmographic data is information about a company, such as its size, industry, location, and revenue. This type of data is typically captured through business directories, website forms, and third-party data providers
• Utility 
  • • Firmographic data shifts the focus to organizations — or firms — to collect and analyze key information about the operation of enterprises themselves
      • For example, if your ideal customer is a small business in the healthcare industry, you can use firmographic data to target your marketing and sales efforts at companies with similar demographics
• Key Leadspace Data Fields
  • • LS Company Industry— From healthcare to bioscience to financial services, industry type is a key vector for segmentation. This represents the Company's primary business industry
    • LS Company Size— How big is the organization, both in terms of physical location and staff size? What’s the exact company size versus its range?
    • LS Company Revenue—What’s the exact revenue of the company, what about a range? This is the range of annual revenue generated by a company. For example $0-10 Million.
    • LS Company Location— Where is the company headquarters located? How many satellite offices do they have, and where? Leadspace can provide country, state, and address information
    • LS Company Ownership—is the company a Public Company, Privately Held, Partnership, Educational Institution, and Nonprofit? This data point helps identify the type of ownership type and whether it fits into your ICP
• Use Cases
  • • Advanced Segmentation - Firmographic details enable advanced targeting methods. By allowing you to define industry/sub-industry, revenue, and size, you can tailor your motions to ensure you deliver the right message to the most acute audience
    • ABM - Firmographics allows you to hone in on account-level details and ensure you find accounts that align with your ABM strategy supporting turnkey nurturing to companies with the same vectors
    • TAM Development - Precise firmographic details allow you to define a TAM to dissect the total possible demand for your products and services within the confines of accurate company size, revenue, location, and industry data

Technographic

• Definition
  • • Data on technologies used at companies/organizations, often grouped by categories and subcategories. Simply put, it's the practical application of information about the technology stack used at a targeted company
• Utility 
  • • Effectively used, technographic data can help companies align their product offerings with digital transformation needs and capture client interest
    • Use cases include competitive conquesting campaigns, TAM definition, company prioritization
• Key Leadspace Data Types
  • • LS Person Technologies—Specific technologies a person self-identifies as using within their social profile
    • LS Company Installed Base Technologies - Technologies that a company uses. This data can be valuable for marketing teams, eg. for targeting only companies that have technologies they can integrate with our competitive campaigns
    • LS Company Technologies Categories - Customer’s mapped categories for each mapped product
    • Website Technologies - Website Technologies are technologies that have traces in the company’s website (ie, technologies that can be seen when viewing a page’s source code)
• Use Cases
  • • Improved Segmentation - with accurate data about the use and deployment of technologies within potential customer organizations, you can better define needs
    • Advanced specificity - Technographic data lets sales teams speak to specific problems faced by potential clients and quickly capture their interest
    • Prioritization - Technographic data can help businesses quickly assess which leads are more likely to spend on new solutions and which need more time
    • Tactical Targeting - Technographic data makes it possible for marketing and sales teams to create tactical, targeted campaigns that speak to the real-life issues faced by organizations undergoing digital transformation

Intent Data

• Definition
  • • Intent data is “information that indicates prospects’ level of interest in a particular product or service online." It includes prospects’ web searches and the pages they visit."
• Utility 
  • • The Leadspace Intent Score indicates whether a company has been looking for specific intent keywords recently, and then algorithmically compares companies you care about against an extensive benchmarking system to offer you true, unbiased insight into intent on companies you care about
• Key Leadspace Data Types
  • • • LS Intent Level—With our intent models we will categorize the score into High, Medium, Low, and No Intent.
      • LS Intent Drivers—All the topics that a record is surging on
      • LS New High Intent—When an account is newly surging high (after four weeks of high intent) compared to the previous intent update, this field will be changed to 'Yes', indicating an account has a strong intent signal. This is a great signal to have sales or marketing reach out
• Use Cases
  • • • Customer 360°—identifying and leveraging a vast amount of accounts for account targeting, finding the ideal buyer
      • Staying one step ahead—creating opportunities with potential customers that haven’t directly engaged with sales and marketing teams yet
      • Optimized Media—calculating more effective sales and marketing plans using content consumption
      • Personalized messaging—maintaining and personalizing relationships with prospects or customers
      • Outreach Readiness—knowing which accounts are primed to spend

Read more about leveraging Intent to your Advantage here.

Demographic

• Definition 
  • • Information about an employee who works at that company, such as their name, role, and purchasing power, indicating whether they're the right person to be marketing and speaking to
• Utility 
  • • In a B2B context, user demographic data has much more to do with a person's employment data — like their job role, title, or work email — than their personal life. \
      • • For instance, you might use demographic data to identify the VP of Marketing at a company you're targeting to promote your marketing platform or to contact the data scientist who would love your analytics tool
• Key Leadspace Data Types:
  • • LS Person Department - Person's specialization within the company. For example Administration, Business Development, Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Legal, Management, Marketing, Operations, Product Management, R&D, Sales
    • LS Person Level - Person's position within the company. For example C Level, Board Level, VP Level, Director Level, Manager Level, Consultant, Staff Level
    • LS Person Title - Person’s documented job title
    • LS Person Technologies - Specific technologies used by the company, based on the profile
    • LS Person Verification Status - Indicates whether or not a person was verified as a valid lead by more than one data source. Options include: Verified / Not Verified / Moved
    • LS Person LinkedIn Profile - Personal LinkedIn page
• Use Cases
  • • Hyper Segmentation - Demographic details enable highly targeted segmentation. Title, Department, and especially Job Function facilitates the most granular of audiences that you might not get from Title alone, for instance
    • Personalization - Marketing can automatically personalize emails and recommend content like ebooks, whitepapers, and webinars that are relevant to that person's specific role
    • Funnel Velocity - Refined demographic details allow the fast-tracking of decision-makers through the funnel, circumventing the qualification process and supporting the booking of a meeting directly

First-Party Data

Data from 3rd parties is an important part of our data mix, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice should you exempt first-party data from your marketing ops and campaign motions. See below for some primary first-party elements you should always consider:

• Individual Activity
  • • Definition: This includes web activity on properties you own as well as responses to campaigns and attendance at events (live and digital) and can be used as a proxy for interest, trigger for follow-up, or modeling (persona predictions, Interest scores, etc).  
• Deal Details
  • • Definition: Includes the products/services in consideration and the deal amount, but also includes details like stage and time in the stage as well as people involved (internal and prospect) and is useful for triggering other activities, notifications, or suppression of marketing activities for deals deep in negotiation.  
• Sales Activities
  • • Definition: These are the records of the emails, calls, messages, meetings, etc that are part of the vetting and moving a deal along and can be used to prompt or suppress specific activities, and are also useful analytics
• Products Owned / Entitlements
  • • Definition: Demonstrates what a customer has purchased and can include details such as contract start and end dates etc., which can trigger renewals and onboarding programs, along with supporting upsell motions on account of complementary product/solutions