Half of B2B Marketers are Failing to Maximize Data Potential

Although B2B marketers have an abundance of data at their fingertips, new research shows that they are not turning to this information to make informed decisions.

Dun and Bradstreet recently commissioned a study by Forrester titled “The B2B Data Activation Priority,” which discovered that only 50 percent of marketing and sales decisions are made using data. In addition, 48 percent of B2B marketers are making decisions based on intuition or personal/company experience, rather than quantitative information and analysis.

About 80 percent of respondents said that they struggle to manage the volume, variety and velocity of their data. Just 49 percent stated that they believe they have customer data that they fully trust to be complete and accurate.

“Taking actions from trusted data and insights to improve marketing and sales outcomes is a complex undertaking. B2B marketing and sales leaders must fight through that complexity, along with their internal and external partners,” wrote the authors of the report. “To remain competitive, they must take iterative, effective steps to implement the technology, processes, and best practices for taking customer-facing actions from data. The bar is that high.”

B2B Marketers’ Struggle with Data Utilization

This is not the first report to hone in on the struggles B2B marketers have had with utilizing data.

According to the “Why Your Data Strategy is Your B2B Growth Strategy” report from the Harvard Business Review, one-third of B2B marketers claim that their company’s data strategy is only “average.” Twenty-one percent stated that it was “below average,” while just 31 percent said that it was “somewhat advanced.”

In terms of identifying the key challenges associated with data and analytics, most marketers (55 percent) cited the inability to merge data from disparate sources in a timely manner (data silos).