“There is no black magic to successfully attracting customers via the web”- Rand Fishkin

In the digital era, markets are more competitive than ever.  Having the best approach for lead generation & nurturing activities are a critical aspect that grows your business. And to succeed in the global market, capitalizing on your data is a smart way to data profiling, which helps in driving quality statistics & define the best outcome for the business. So in this blog, we will discuss lead generation, lead nurturing & data profiling. How is does it help?

The process of generating hot leads for your business & turning them into clients is essential for all businesses. Lead generation comprises various steps & can be collated from various sources based on industry verticals. And this keeps changing on with growing trends in the industry for producing effective results. With proper lead management strategy, collecting & classification of leads have no use. This is where the lead nurturing concept pitch in. Before digging deep into the lead nurturing process, let us understand data profiling.

Ralph Kimball, the well author & Business Intelligence expert describes data profiling as systemic analysis of the content of a data source. In short, it can refer to careful examining of the data available in the source &trying to get better statistics and information.

If a data profiling tool are plugged into a data source. Useful insights about your quality of data can be retrieved. This knowledge is essential for improving the overall health of your data

What are the types of Data profiling is used business analytics?

They are classified are three types of profiling:

• Structure Discovery
• Content Discovery
• Relationship Discovery

Structure Discovery:

Verifying data if it is reliable & can be arranged correctly based on specific format refers to structure discovery.

For instance, US phone numbers must have 10 digits

Content Discovery:

Careful examining of individual data records & discovering error is referred as content discovery

Relationship Discovery:

Understanding the parts of data that are interconnected based on relationship between tables & foreign keys. This highly recommended for understanding deep relationships between different database tables & reusing them.

Benefits of Data Profiling:

• High conversion rate
• Personalized user content
• Building better lead profiles
• Understanding buyers journey
• Boost sales
• Better quality of database is maintained
• Proactive crisis management
• Organized sorting
• Improved Credibility

Data profiling is highly recommended for a variety of reasons. And for companies that generatean enormous amount of data, they must be managed properly along the data quality standards. This is the primary goal of any business as there possibilities of missing our sales opportunities if data is not maintained is not standardized or maintained in proper format.

Data profiling involves following steps in any order based on business needs:

• Collecting & analyzing descriptive statistics such as minimum, maximum, count & more.
• Knowing about data types & identifying the recurring patterns among the data
• Regular performing of data quality assessment & adhering to best techniques
• Get to know about metadata & their accuracy levels
• Identifying functional dependencies, embedded value dependencies & performing inter table analysis.

“It is important to decide on what types of leads you want at the middle & bottom of your sales funnel” – Chris Knipper

Developing & enforcing strong relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel is often referred to as lead nurturing. A successful lead nurturing program must focus on marketing & communication while listening to the needs of prospects. Over the period trust & brand awareness are increased with constant interaction with prospects. With a deep understanding of the lead nurturing process, an effective B2B relationship with customers & prospects can be established.

How lead nurturing start?

Lead generation is a fair core activity to marketing- Chris Brogan

It all starts with procuring a list externally or internally. What is the reliability of the source & cost associated with it while performing clean-up activities? Lead nurturing consist of cross channel communication which combines the content marketing & automation tools that help to build a system to maintain a good relationship with prospects until they become a client.

There are several key components to be taken care of as a part of lead nurturing

Lead Scoring:

With the combined efforts of the sales & marketing team, it is possible to develop a successful lead scoring strategy to identify where the particular lead falls within the brand buying model. This is the primary goal of any lead nurturing system because it gives relevant information to address each buyer with timely verified communication details. Lead scoring differs from brand to brand in order to  include various information such as demographics, firmographics, lead interest, BANT(Budget, Authority, Need, Time)

Content Marketing:

Content marketing is another support system that plays a crucial role in lead scoring. As everyone knows the creating relevant & valuable content is recommended for any brand. And it can be any form of content in your email, website, social media, videos, podcast & more.

Multi-channel distribution:

Having strongly interconnected channels will help reduce duplication and standard information across all channels.

Website:

With a well-optimized website, any visitor would love to share their email address & phone numbers if are really interested in the products & services. And it is an important place to start a conversation with visitors without the need for any verified information.

Benefits of lead nurturing process:

• Helps to maintain consistent communication
• Identify the key area of interest
• Segment opportunities
• Improve Engagement
• Improved referrals
• Establish contact effectively

Data profiling for your lead nurturing efforts can be done in several ways, but one of the most preferred ways is to take web research or cold calling. But both the deals have their own pros & cons. For instance, if the data profiling is done over a web research approach with a powerful tool like Linkedin, you can get a huge volume of data that is scraped not validated. When it comes to web research list suffers quality data hygiene process which fails to meet the pain point of B2B marketers. They always look for the trusted & reliable sources of information through web research.

Alternatively, when it is used via cold calling, you can offer various methods such as surveys, feedbacks, invitation to attend webinars, which can be incredibly useful to compile a structured source of information. These types of methods help in framing an excellent lead nurturing process &accelerate your sales funnel. Lead nurturing & lead scoring is limited to the amount of data you gather. Adding a layer of data profiling can turn data into insights & improve ROI.

Effective data profiling techniques combined with a lead nurturing program can do wonders in the sales funnel. Data profiling plays a major role in optimizing lead nurturing campaigns with strong lead qualification & Sales processes. No matter if your volume of data is increasing exponentially over the years, with well-defined rules &business logic lead nurturing program is expandable &continuedto to evolve in the ever-changing market. Data profiling act as a smart idea to shape the future of your business & forecast various insights as business needs grow. What not required today can be required later as the business evolves.

Always ask what is important for the prospect-based industry vertical you work for. Try to extract contact information about prospects as it can be one of the trusted & verified modes to initiate the conversation with them throughout the sales funnel.

Strategically built relationship with a prospect to get more information over time which will help to lead to score points based on the quality of information you get.

Identify patterns & trends among collected leads to optimize personalized B2B campaigns. It helps to collect build a better user experience.

Build better lead profiles with more detailed customer profiles which help to qualify leads based on developed business logic.

Accelerate buyer’s journey with personalized marketing efforts to gain trust actively focus on leads that need immediate attention on a priority basis.

Understanding a buyer’s journey plays a key role in analyzing what happens before a customer buys, what makes them show interest in your brand & what are the preferences at every stage of the sales funnel.

Conclusion:

With the ever-changing market, data profiling helps to provide useful data that will connect B2B marketers with ideal prospects. It will simultaneously improve website traffic & sales. Need to know more about data profiling or want expert advice on nurturing strategies then we are right here to help you. The essence of lead nurturing strategy is choosing what not to do for your business drastically grows your ROI.