Our recent 2024 B2B Marketing Outlook report found that there is some good news for B2B marketers this year. Nearly a third - 31% - expect a significant budget increase in 2024, up by about double from last year’s research. That is great news but let’s talk about those marketers with high confidence in their data, this group stands out among our survey responses. Those marketers who responded as extremely confident in their data strategy were more likely to expect budget increases at 46% compared to only 15% of all other marketers. They had a lot of other positives as well: they tended to report more significant increases in revenue and have more resources to try new innovations and achieve their campaign goals.
The marketers that were confident in their data strategy were not only higher performers, they were more passionate about connecting authentically with their customers. Three quarters of marketers with high confidence in their data strategy greatly consider authenticity when creating brand messaging. In other words, balancing the human side of marketing with the technical, data-driven side is very important to high-performing marketers.
As a company founded in B2B data excellence, it is heartening to see how data-focused marketers view other important strategic elements of good marketing such as creating human connections. Seeing that the two actually tend to overlap, and that they both tend to be associated with higher performance shows just how important it is for marketers to have what they need to connect to their customers both technically and emotionally.
One foundational element to this holistic marketing success is data. Overall, marketers noted that data quality was both their top priority and their top challenge this year. Having a quality data foundation is critical to every step, from identifying opportunities to determining the right message at the right time. Quality data helps marketers become more accurate, more effective and, ultimately as the results come in, more confident.
Confidence matters - in our study, whenever marketers were confident in their use of a certain type of data such as intent data, or a certain marketing strategy such as personalization, their reported performance and their results tended to go up. Where you start - quality data - is often an indication of where you’ll end up.
