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From Data to Decisions

How analytics is transforming B2B marketing

Decisions based on facts are better decisions. This simple sentence summarises the principle behind the success story of data analytics in marketing.

 

Data Analytics has long been established in the consumer sector. And it is also making great strides in B2B marketing. Below we give you an overview of which areas of B2B marketing data analytics is transforming in the most sustainable way.

According to a study, analytics and AI are the top future trend that will have the greatest impact on B2B marketing over the next five years. This offers enormous opportunities for B2B marketing teams, many of whom are currently working in high-pressure environments. Some of the most important challenges they’re seeing is higher competition, economic uncertainty, budget pressure and coordination issues between sales and marketing.

Taking this into consideration, analytics offers critical advantages. More knowledge about the target group and its needs as well as data-driven productivity gains increase the efficiency and effectiveness of measures and campaigns. Analytics also provides a decisive lever for other top trends such as personalisation and automation – and new innovations are constantly being added.

1. Accuracy Thanks to Data-Based Target Group Insights

 

Precision is a value in marketing in itself, for everyone involved. Increasing the accuracy of marketing activities through data analytics not only improves sales opportunities – it also increases the value-add of activities for the customer. After all, they have a vested interest in solutions for their business challenges, as long as the information is actually relevant. Data-driven analyses of target groups and pain points bring these two sides together in terms of communication.

 

 

 

2. Micro Segmentation, Predictive Lead Scoring

 

The trend of micro-segmentation, for example, is moving in this direction. It involves dividing target groups into granular segments in order to address them more precisely. Marketing teams can thus define concise buyer personas for each micro-segment, the basis of which can be provided via data analysis of market surveys, customer data or transaction data, for example. Patterns can be derived from these analyses, resulting in differentiating characteristics for each persona. 

This accuracy can be improved even further by using additional analytics approaches. Predictive lead scoring allows newly acquired leads to be evaluated on the basis of AI algorithms, determining the probability that a particular lead will convert. This way the effectiveness of marketing can be improved by prioritising the highest scorers (lead prioritisation).

Complementary to this, data analyses – not of potential customers, but of former customers (churn analysis) – are also worthwhile. Patterns that show which companies no longer use the B2B solutions being offered, when and, above all, why, are recognised. It is precisely at these critical points that marketing managers can then adjust their measures.  

B2B Marketing Analytics

 

Target Group Insights

Predictive Lead Scoring

Churn Analysis

Dark Funnel

Content Optimisation

Personalisation

Attribution Modeling

Marketing Automation

Report Creation

 

68% of B2B companies and marketing experts see analytics and AI as the top trends in the next five years.

Source: Norvell Jefferson

Manpower steigert Unternehmenseffizienz durch standardisierte CRM-Prozesse

Acht Länder, acht unterschiedliche Marketing-Prozesse – vor dieser Situation steht Manpower. Die Folge: Uneinigkeit darüber, welche Leads Priorität haben, sowie erschwertes Benchmarking und Austausch über Best Practices.

Um internationale Vergleichbarkeit zu schaffen und Lernprozesse im Unternehmen anzuregen, will das nordeuropäische Marketing-Team um Projektleiterin Tina Hingston ein länderübergreifend konsistentes Lead Scoring und Reporting einführen. Dafür holt sie sich Unterstützung des Strategiepartners andweekly.

 

Die Marketing-Landschaft bei Manpower

Von der herausfordernden und zeitaufwendigen Rekrutierung geeigneter Fachkräfte sind Unternehmen in vielen Branchen und Regionen betroffen. Das Ziel von Manpower ist es, dem Personalmangel weltweit mit innovativen Lösungen zu begegnen. Die ManpowerGroup mit Hauptsitz in den USA und Niederlassungen in rund 80 Ländern zählt zu den weltweit führenden Unternehmen in der Personalbranche.

Kerngeschäft ist die Vermittlung von Fachkräften aus zahlreichen Branchen an Unternehmen, die sich nicht mit zeitaufwendigen Rekrutierungsprozessen beschäftigen wollen. Darüber hinaus hilft Manpower, kurzfristige Personalengpässe zu überbrücken und Produktionsspitzen mit geeigneten Human Resources auf Zeit abzufedern. Zum Unternehmen gehören zahlreiche Tochterunternehmen – darunter auch der IT-Dienstleister Experis, den wir bereits bei seiner Marketing-Strategie unterstützt haben.

andweekly-fritz--9832-workshop-1920x1080

Lokale Marketing-Vielfalt bei Manpower birgt Herausforderungen

Die ManpowerGroup unterhält in jedem Land ein eigenes Marketing-Team, das individuelle Ansätze im Online-Marketing verfolgt. Zwar wurde HubSpot als All-in-one-Plattform für Marketing in den meisten Landesgesellschaften etabliert, doch das HubSpot-Knowhow und der hinterlegte Lead-Management-Prozess sind sehr unterschiedlich.


Das Problem bei Manpower: Die uneinheitlichen Marketing-Prozesse der Landesgesellschaften führen zu inkonsistenter Lead-Qualifizierung: Ein Lead, der in einer Landesgesellschaft als Sales Ready eingestuft wird, kann in einer anderen als Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) eingestuft werden.
Daraus ergeben sich für Manpower folgende Herausforderungen:
Mangelnde Vergleichbarkeit. Unterschiedliche Definitionen und Prozesse machen es schwierig, die Leistung und Effektivität von Marketing-Aktivitäten zwischen verschiedenen Landesgesellschaften zu vergleichen. Ohne einheitliche Standards können sie Best Practices nicht identifizieren und erfolgreiche Strategien kaum replizieren.


Schwierigkeiten bei Zusammenarbeit und Kommunikation. Inkonsistente Definitionen führen immer wieder zu Missverständnissen und Fehlkommunikation zwischen Marketing- und Vertriebsteams, insbesondere wenn diese länderübergreifend zusammenarbeiten.
Verpasste Verkaufschancen. Unterschiedliche und nicht immer optimale Definitionen von MQLs und SQLs bewirken, dass Mitarbeitende bestimmte Leads unter- oder überschätzen. Falsche Prioritäten in der Lead-Bearbeitung kosten wiederum wertvolle Ressourcen.

5 erreichte Projektziele

Standardisierung der Marketing-Automatisierungsprozesse für eine nahtlose Customer Journey in den verschiedenen Manpower-Landesgesellschaften

Entwicklung homogener Dashboards auf globaler Ebene zur einheitlichen Erfassung, Analyse und Vergleich der Performances von Marketing-Kampagnen

Optimierung der CRM-Strategie durch Implementierung von Best Practices für Lead-Erfassung, -Qualifizierung, -Scoring und Reporting mithilfe des HubSpot Marketing Hub

Erzielung von Effizienzgewinnen durch Reduzierung von Inkonsistenzen zwischen den Landesgesellschaften

Erhöhung der Transparenz zwischen den Landesgesellschaften hinsichtlich Lead-Generierung, Lead-Qualität und Marketing-Performance zur Verbesserung der Entscheidungsfindung und Performance

3. A Look into the “Dark Funnel”

 

The broader the data source, the better the results. One particularly interesting tool for additional analytics insights is the dark funnel approach. This helps find out significantly more about potential customer companies, their purchasing intentions and buyer teams by tapping into normally inaccessible data sources – of course, in compliance with data protection and other regulations. 

These include external sources such as data and technology providers, social networks or regulatory institutions. This results in, for example, information on buyer behaviour that indicates what a particular company is looking for. In addition, the ‘illumination’ of this dark funnel provides insights into companies' willingness to buy, technological positioning and economic conditions. Internal data (e.g. from CRM or website traffic) can also be analysed with respect to such signals. 

 

 

 

4. More Effective Content Thanks to Analytics

 

Data analytics takes target group insights to the next level. It transforms the content campaigns that marketing teams use in order to demonstrate thought leadership for their B2B company, strengthen their brand and gain the interest of the target group. Content that is thematically and formally aligned with the target group and their needs is naturally more successful. This is made possible by basing decisions on objective data. 

By relying on data-driven insights, content formats such as blogs and white papers can also be better adapted to the respective phase of the buyer's journey. Analytics can be used to better orchestrate channel mixes. Attribution modelling is also recommended in this context, which involves analysing across which channels and at which touchpoints the most value is generated. This knowledge can be used to optimise the buyer's journey and content orchestration.

 

 

 

5. Personalisation and Optimisation

 

Personalisation has gained tremendous importance in B2B marketing, and analytics also brings great advantages here. On the one hand, through a more precise delivery of content to the right addressees at the right time (for example in the form of personalised email campaigns), and on the other hand through an analysis of the content itself. Technologies such as generative AI (GenAI) can be used to determine how readable a post is, for example. SEO tools can analyse content with regard to meaningful keywords and thus help to improve search engine results. A/B tests are also useful.

Marketing teams should furthermore extend the use of analytics to campaign implementation. Data-based tracking of success with KPIs enables real-time insights and allows content to be adjusted immediately. A regular review cycle ensures continuous optimisation and maximisation of the return on investment (ROI). The metrics themselves should also be regularly reviewed and adjusted, if necessary. 

 

 

 

6. Increase the Degree of Automation, Boost Productivity

 

Tight budgets, a shortage of skilled labour, demanding targets: Marketing teams these days are often under a lot of pressure. Thanks to analytics, they can work even more productively by using data-driven automation. With modern CRM systems, for example, they can automate the sending of emails and define differentiated rules for follow-up emails without having to compromise on personalisation. 

Automation also brings superior efficiency to many other marketing processes. An important option for day-to-day marketing is the automatic creation of reports using appropriate tools which allow analytics analyses to be carried out at the touch of a button. Reporting is now possible virtually in real time, with minimal effort. Performance dashboards, user-friendly data visualisation and individually configured notifications make work easier and boost productivity even further. 

 

 

 

7. Strategy and Implementation

 

The potential use cases for analytics in B2B marketing are as exciting as they are diverse. This presents both enormous opportunities and risks – for example, the danger of getting lost in (too) many individual tools and neglecting integration. 

The key to success is embedding analytics in a holistic strategy, following, for example, the concept of account-based marketing (ABM). ABM involves a customer-centred approach that focuses on the potential of individual companies and thus raises added value. Other prerequisites for analytics in B2B marketing are the availability of the necessary skills in the team, a clean data source and agile implementation that brings iterative improvements and reduces the risk of bad investments. 

Not every company can easily fulfil these requirements. External expertise helps to quickly close these capability gaps and reliably realise growth opportunities through analytics.

 

 

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