Small vs. Big Business Data Needs: 4 Steps to Choosing the Right Data Provider

Different tools for different jobs. You wouldn’t use a jackhammer to remove a nail in the wall, and it’s the same for choosing a marketing data provider. What works for some businesses and campaigns won’t work for others. Especially when you consider the needs of small businesses compared to the needs of a large enterprise.

At OMI we’ve built our strong reputation by focusing on SMB data and building one of the largest B2B contact databases in the industry. We serve Fortune 500 customers as well as other businesses that execute large-scale campaigns. We tell our customers that it’s important to know that there are many different data providers out there with databases that range in quality, depth and volume—and many of those providers align with specific business needs.

When determining how to acquire data for your marketing efforts, there are a lot of factors to consider. Here are five essential variables that small- and larger businesses should evaluate before choosing a data provider.

1. Audience Size

If you’re looking to run a large-scale acquisition campaign with contacts in the tens or hundreds of thousands (or more), a larger data provider will have the volume to meet those needs. But small businesses looking for acquisition data may not have campaigns at that scale, and instead are simply looking for contacts based on broader specifications. There are several entry-level data providers that offer very reasonably-priced data to meet these needs. For example, we recently learned about Skrapp, a data subscription service that allows businesses to access a set amount of email contacts per month.

2. Market/Industry

Drilling down even further, it’s important to consider the makeup of your prospective customer: are you looking to reach contacts in a specific industry, like the medical field, or maybe small business decision makers? If so, consider a provider that focuses on those markets or has those specific data segments available.

3. Quality

Quality is obviously an important factor, but more targeted campaigns that rely on data to segment or personalize outreach (like ABM) will be negatively impacted by poor data quality. Blanket email campaigns (those with little personalization beyond a “Hello NAME” in the intro) will also be impacted by poor quality data, as too many bounces can negatively impact an emailer send score, but it won’t have the same level of dramatic impact. Ideally, data providers should offer a data quality guarantee such as 95% validity for the first 30 days.

4. Email vs. Omnichannel Campaigns

Buyers today are more likely to conduct their own research and there are more options, including webinars, social media content, review sites, industry experts and peer recommendations. These various channels mean there are many ways to reach a single prospect—in fact, the number of channels that B2B customers use has doubled in the past five years, according to McKinsey. This can benefit marketers greatly if they have the right data. Businesses executing omnichannel campaigns need data that can reach the right contacts via email, display, social, etc. Additionally, high-quality providers often have even greater depth of detail, including firmographics and technographics that can greatly augment campaigns.  However smaller, less sophisticated data providers typically don’t have the ability to provide this type of data.

So how should a business choose a marketing data provider? The truth is, there is no one-size fits solution. Businesses need to examine their data needs and evaluate data providers accordingly. Smaller, entry-level providers like Skrapp offer a great service to small businesses or startups looking to grow their email marketing outreach. But for larger campaigns with more nuanced, strategic outreach, look for a data provider that has a large volume of records, in the right industry/market to meet your customer needs – one that guarantees data quality and includes data for fueling omnichannel campaigns, like OMI.

5. Intent Monitoring

The use of intent monitoring data is on the rise, especially among larger brands. More than half of the respondents to a recent Ascend2 study expect their intent data spend to increase, with 12% expecting it to rise by more than 10%.

How does it work? We all want to find buyers "in-market" and ready to buy. Digital intent monitoring allows you to do that by combining high-quality business contact data with digital intent signals.

Buyer intent signals can be obtained through monitoring online activities, keyword searches, website visits, content downloads, product reviews and more. But intent data on its own only goes so far, as it primarily uncovers company data. This leaves out the information marketers really need to reach the individual decision makers within those companies.

Here’s where OMI has an answer: As cookies, IP addresses and intent data surge to specific content, OMI maps that data to our B2B contact data. This allows marketers to drill down and get closer to identifying the individual contacts behind the digital behavior – the individuals who potentially hold high promise of becoming a customer. Bringing these two data sets together allows you to identify prospects by company and job function who have done research or engaged with industry-specific content online. Combining intent data with prospect contact data can enable a powerful approach that “closes the loop” in reaching specific, qualified and interested prospects.

This approach can also be used to identify the types of companies that might be looking for your solution or offering. Using a process called audience mirroring, you can zero in on decision makers within businesses that are similar to your current customers. This allows you to create a larger, more qualified list of prospects to target.

Whether your business is big or small, the data decisions you make today will impact the success you have tomorrow. Be sure to map your business needs and budget to the data that you use so that your expectations and outcomes are aligned.

Contact us today if you’re ready to learn more and see how high quality data can transform your B2B marketing.

Over 75 million of OMI’s 80 million manager-level and above contacts are matched to the LiveRamp RampID graph, including 65 million records from our SMB and medical market databases. Contact us today to learn more about building a custom audience.