Role of Customer Data Platforms (CDP) in B2B Marketing scenario
Data is the oil, fueling several businesses.
But on one hand, where oil is essential and a lifesaver for billions of people, it is, on the other hand, dangerous as well. If the oil is not managed with the care it catches fire and can destroy everything.
The same is true with the data. Data is running numerous businesses and making things better for this world, but data also raises the cost ladder if you are not an ace in handling it.
The top data managers around the world are not so confident over the accuracy of the data they are handling. Only 12% of Data managers accepted that their management of data was accurate and 84% of B2B Marketers are finding accuracy of data as their one of the top 5 weaknesses.
Data is the pain point of businesses.
The ailment to this pain point is Customer Data Platforms (CDP).
What is CDP?
According to the CDP Institute, “A Customer Data Platform is packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.”
CDP is a software that helps you to build a unified and updated picture of an individual customer, based on his or her interactions with different platforms, devices, and channels across the internet.
Now, this updated picture of the customer is used by the marketing and sales department of the company to easily target them and ultimately convert them from prospects to loyal customers.
Why does a business need CDP?
Imagine a scenario where you need to buy a smartphone for yourself. One of your friends has a shop that sells the same smartphone that you need. So, what will you do? Will you buy the smartphone from your friend’s shop or from some random shop, you have no idea about?
The answer is obvious, from your friend’s shop.
But do you know why you bought the smartphone from your friend’s shop?
Because you know them.
In this digital world, customers buy things only from the people they know. Trust is a crucial factor. Thus knowing your customers plays a major role in marketing and sales for the businesses.
A study by research space says that one third (31%) of marketers cited “access to data” as a major problem in making personalization as the priority in their organizations
Knowing your customer so closely leads to the Personalization. The 21st century is the century of personalization. Everything around the globe is getting personalized. You need personalized data packages, gifts, and offers.
CDP collects 1st party customer data including transactional, behavioural, and demographic, and creates a complete picture of the customer. That means it helps you know your customer’s likes, dislikes, and needs.
Now. you can reach out to your prospects with tailored messages and offers through various platforms to make them feel special and ultimately turning them into your loyal customer.
Why is CDP needed for B2B marketing?
The scenario for B2B marketing is different as compared to B2C. B2B marketers don’t have millions of prospects to target. They only have hundreds and thousands of prospects. For a B2B company, the customers are the small and big organizations, having a complicated buying process, involving a number of people and departments.
Each individual has different platform preferences, different experiences, and different responses for the same marketing messages. And the toughest part is that you need to convince almost everyone to sell your services or product.
Thus, your marketing campaign and understanding of each individual need to be laser-focused. You need to reach out to the decision-makers with the right tailored message. To make this task even complex the data of these customers are incomplete and scattered among different platforms.
A CDP provides the solutions to all the above problems of B2B marketers.
A CDP allows the B2B marketers to cut through the complexity of the buying process in such organizations by providing a unified picture of each individual. A CDP helps you orchestrate hyper-personalized, omnichannel campaigns, resulting in more targeted, effective B2B marketing.
A survey report by Forbes says that 44% of organizations that took part in the survey reported that a customer data platform is helping them in driving customer loyalty.
How CDP can help B2B marketers?
CDP is one of the most emerging technologies. A report of a survey by Forbes says that a total of 78% of the companies surveyed, either have or are developing, a customer data platform.
Here are 5 advantages that a CDP provides to the marketers –
1. Data complexity – Marketers have a large chunk of data. Multiple channels, platforms, devices with different buyer’s journeys, and omnichannel customer interactions make the process of data handling and segregations a tough task. Thus you need a single platform to digest such large and different data to segregate, analyze and enrich the customer experience. CDP is the solution.
2. Data Privacy – In various Industries such as Healthcare, legal, Finance etc, data privacy plays an important role. You need updated and real-time data of the prospect along with maintaining the data privacy concerns, thus CDP provides the most robust and secure way to maintain data privacy for your prospects and customers.
3. Customer-Centric Experience – CDP enables you to track the interactions of your prospects. It helps the marketers to make a clear and better understanding of the prospect. As a result, prospects get the highly relevant offers, products, services to satisfy his or her requirements, creating a highly customer-centric experience.
4. Improved Marketing Campaigns – The customer’s behaviour and needs are changing every day. CDP helps you to keep updated with the changing behaviours of the customers. It works as a feedback loop and constantly keeps the marketers updated through AI and analytics to know what is working and whatnot. Ultimately helping you to create highly efficient marketing campaigns.
5. High ROI – CDP helps the ureters to create highly efficient marketing campaigns by constantly updating the campaign using AI and analytics ultimately removing the ROI for the marketers. Having large chunks of customer data is not sufficient but using it in an efficient way can help you make and save millions of dollars.
Do you know that alone in the US, Poor data Management is costing $3 Trillion Per Year? If you are still not using Customer Data Platforms to make the best use out of your data then you are missing the biggest marketing rally in the market.
Data can change the way this world works and now is your turn to use it. Yes, right now, just find out the way you can leverage the most valuable fuel of the decade, the Data. There are many chances that some of you have already started using it. Did you? How has been data for your business?
Contact Team Biz|Anekdotes to know more ..