Getting Your Business the Right Business to Business Data (B2B Data)

The financial state of the UK economy over the last few years has undoubtedly affected the quality of your prospect data. Businesses have closed, redundancies and restructuring has made it increasing difficult to keep track of the correct contact details of the decision makers you need to get in touch with to promote your products and services.

The quickest way to get up to date business to business data (B2B Data) is to purchase it and there are lots of cheap bulk data deals on the market, but are they really great value?

From my experience as a key account manager with KMB, when dealing with data on behalf of my clients I find that unfortunately, it may not necessarily be always relevant to their business, meaning a lot of the data could be wasted or never contacted due to the sheer volume.

Know Your Customers

5 Top Tips for Purchasing B2B Data

So here are my 5 top tips to think about ahead of purchasing data;

1. Are all of the industries, locations, size of businesses relevant to my business?
   
2. Do I need the head offices, single sites of businesses only or every division, branch?
   
3. It is not quantity you need, it’s quality data that gets positive campaign results
   
4. Do you have personal email addresses or general sales@ or info@?
   
5. Have you measured past results and refined your target criteria?

Keep Ahead of the Competition

To keep ahead of your competitors and to be confident you are not wasting money on mail shots or telemarketing campaigns that are still not hitting the sweet spot, you will need to invest more time to refine your data further. Taking this time and attention to detail may seem tedious but ensures a more targeted way to market the prospects you want as your customer and a greater return on your marketing investment. As the old adage says;

“If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail”

Research Your Data

Another way to update your data is to undertake your own research via the telephone, email survey, or even internet searching for company news and updates via newsletters, case studies and social media. This is an excellent way to obtain valuable business intelligence such as

• Contract renewal dates
• Latest projects and clients won
• Competitors used

Keep Your Data Clean!

Whichever approach you choose, the evidence is clear - Ultimately will you not only waste valuable marketing budget on the wrong prospects but you will also generate less sales, so keep your data clean and up to date!

Lindsey Goodger is an Account Manager for KMB Multichannel. Lindsey is passionate about managing her customer accounts and uses her personal experiences at KMB to ensure that her clients receive the best possible customer service and return of investment.

Outside of work, Lindsey likes to spend time with her friends and family, typically eating out, cinema, live music and comedy.

Lindsey is a main influencer in the overall performance and success of multichannel marketing campaigns.

To follow Lindsey please click here uk.linkedin.com/in/lindseygoodger/

10 Amazing Facts You Didn’t Know About LinkedIn in the UK

LinkedIn at the Centre of Your Marketing Universe

Are you using LinkedIn for your business or social? Or sales and marketing? In my role as LinkedIn Lead To Revenue Specialist at KMB, I have had the pleasure of working with some of the UK’s most powerful turnaround professionals and during our training sessions recently and they just could not believe how little they knew and how little they actually used their profiles on LinkedIn. 

You just don’t know, what you don’t know.

Here are 10 amazing facts about the UK’s 3^rd most visited website.

319,659 UK people visit LinkedIn every day

So far in June 2013 alone uk.linkedin.com (the UK version of LinkedIn) received 3.5 million visits from people all over the world, by people looking to see what the big deal is. It is a huge amount traffic you just can’t ignore and you have the potential in receiving referral traffic from. Are you happy with what these people look at when they visit your LinkedIn profile or company LinkedIn page? Figures come from Quantcast.

LinkedIn is a free cloud-based CRM

Last month (May 2013) LinkedIn upgraded their contacts functionality to include sophisticated CRM capability. Not only can you record all your connections contact details, but there are a new communications history thread and a powerful contact search facility available for free.

There are over 11 million users from the UK alone on LinkedIn, and 39.8% of them in the 35-54 range.  

Decision maker contacts are using LinkedIn to expand their networks and promote their business. An optimised profile will help get noticed and give you the confidence to contact them.

61% of social media users primarily use LinkedIn for professional networking, compared to 22% for Facebook, and 4% for Twitter

I know it sounds obvious, but it is worth mentioning the fact that this activity is going on the internet, and that by getting involved you may just pick up some business or a new business lead to say the least

22% of male UK internet users have active LinkedIn profiles, compared to 13% of females

A recent study by social media agency Umpf, confirms that not all profiles are active and that due to duplication, empty or fake profiles and procrastination. In fact ADOPTION is the big issue here. To make the most of your presence on LinkedIn you do need to exercise your networking muscles by regular visits to the site and connecting with new people every day.

41% of small business owners says that LinkedIn has the most potential to help their companies, versus other social networks.

LinkedIn is really made for business communications, it is a logical place to express your company values and product or service information. It’s professional, straight-forward, and you can direct real, targeted and profitable business communications to your specific market place.

More than 3 million companies have created LinkedIn company pages so far.

Why not you? It’s free, relatively easy and helps to broadcast your brand message with your connections. Your contacts effectively become advocates through their profiles every time you update the page. Product or Service recommendations will spread virally through your networks.

The average LinkedIn user’s 2nd-degree network connects them to over 6,000 companies and 9,000 people.

That’s a huge network for both companies and individuals to access as a database! You can easily access the sort of brands and connections you need do business with, to get a new assignment, find employees, associates to collaborate with or start a group discussion about topics you may need to know more about.

LinkedIn is a trusted website by 82% of those polled, compared to other social media sites.

Unlike Facebook which comes up with new privacy policies all the time, or Twitter which is a Catherine Wheel of information exploding in random colours, LinkedIn provides the professionalism that other social media sites lack. It is actually their mission "To create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce." And in this process has now become the No.1 source for relevant business information. What does this mean for my company? Click through rates on news posts and advertising have seen an increase of 55% versus traditional display marketing.

55% of UK businesses allow the use of LinkedIn in the workplace, compared to 47% for Facebook

If you are going to promote your business on a social network, UK business are more likely to allow their employees on LinkedIn.

To find out more and talk to us about we can help turn your LinkedIn profile into a powerful tool to promote your business call KMB on 01527 518373 or email info@kmb.org.uk

3 Top Tips to avoid CRM Frustration

CRM Adoption…. Two words that epitomize frustration for many businesses...

At KMB, I manage our own CRM and we adopt many of our clients CRM systems for the marketing campaigns we produce, from modifying and updating data directly in their system to creating opportunities that can be tracked through the sales process.

I’m sure most people would agree - CRM is brilliant – you can track and forecast sales as well as easily analysing in detail your lead sources with the endless reporting available, as well as lots of other invaluable functionality – the list goes on and on!

When CRM isn’t brilliant, this is normally due to the lack of adoption of your system from your team. Typical scenarios I come across are when opportunities are created but they're not updated quickly - or not at all! In many cases sales are lost or on hold but no reasons are given, and nurturing future follow up tasks are not being created to name just a few examples.

Do any of these examples sound familiar? I am asked many times; How can we change this?

Here are my top 3 adoption tips –

 1. User-friendly interface and applications - Choose a system that is easy to use and doesn’t have lots of pages and steps to create / modify things, your employees will want a more productive way to work and will be hesitant to use a system that they believe will slow them down.

  2.  Training - Your CRM provider may give your employees training on how to input a task and create an opportunity, but do your employees know when they should be creating a task in their sales process? Do they know what they should do in the CRM when they win or lose an opportunity? Do they have a guide at hand to tell them what they need to do? Create dummy process guides for every department to make it as easy as possible for your employees to do their job – the clearer you are in how you want your employees to use the system, the more likely your employees are to use it.

3.  Monitoring and leading by example - It’s day 11,423 in the big brother house……..No-one likes to be big brother, but unless you are consistently monitoring your employees input in the CRM, as well as reminding your team what the process is and why you have that process to begin with, you will find that some employees won’t bother using the CRM - simply because they can get away with not using it. Why would your employees change the way they have always done things when they are not being reprimanded, particularly if you are not following the processes yourself?

I have come across many clients where they have invested huge amounts of money in an all singing and dancing CRM system that they cannot use properly as their employees do not use it, so before your head goes through the table from banging it or throwing out CRM completely, remember there are lots of other businesses in the same situation and by putting yourself in your employees shoes, and making things as easy as possible for them, you will soon see they will follow your lead.

Contact us to find out how we can help you with your CRM call us 01527 518373 or email info@kmb.org.uk