How to Collect and Use Data Better for Your B2B Enterprise

Collecting data is vital for B2B businesses, but what do you do with all that information once you’ve gathered it? Follow these pointers, and try these new and better ways to collect and use data for your B2B enterprise.

#1 What Data Should You Collect for Your B2B Enterprise?

Before working with an agency or purchasing software to help collect data, you need to understand what type of data is important for your company. Since you’ll be approaching other enterprises, first define your clients’ pain points, how your products or services meet those needs, and what types of data prove you can meet those needs. This could be metrics like improved efficiency, cost savings, or anything else that proves your offerings are worth it.

#2 How Do You Collect Data?

What type of data you collect depends on your industry, your products and services, and what types of clients you want to reach. For example, a company that offers software as a service to generate leads and facilitates sales would want to show how many new customers their software has generated for other clients and how many of those consumers went on to make purchases.

Customer records, contact information, website activity, and social media activity are some of the most commonly harvested sources of data for all types of business. This type of data may not be relevant to your business, though. Look for ways to track meaningful metrics about the results of your products and services, whether it’s customer satisfaction, time savings, or audience retention. Companies often invest in data-tracking software to collect this type of information.

#3 What’s the Best Way to Present Your Data?

The best way to present your data depends on the complexity of the information and how you communicate with your clients. These are a few methods you can use:

• Presentations and emails: If your data is simple enough, you can present it succinctly and articulately in an email or use it as a talking point in a presentation to explain your business’s effectiveness.
• Charts, graphs, and patterns: Visual aids such as line graphs and pie charts are a great way to present data memorable. The types of charts and graphs you can use depends on what kind of data you’ve collected. For example, demographic information can often be shown in a pie chart.
• Infographics: Infographics combine text and visual materials like charts, graphs, and illustrations in a way that no other content can. This option is best when you want to tell a story with your data or when you’ve got lots of information that can be more clearly presented using a combination of text and visual aids.

Data is invaluable for showing why clients should work with your B2B business. But it’s not enough to just collect lots of information, even if that data proves that your company is worth investing in. Presenting the data clearly, whether through succinct and accurate descriptions or with the help of an infographic, helps readers process the info and can make it easier to convince clients that you’re a company worth working with.

What are you doing to collect data for your B2B Enterprise?