How to fix customer acquisition; data, relevance and content

My experience is mostly in B2B marketing, so my perspective may be biased, but perhaps some of the points I make could apply to B2C.

Data: The sheer volume and depth of B2B data is a challenge. Prospect and customer data needs checking. The average CRM will be 10-15% out of date within 12 months if it's not regularly cleaned.

It's one of your most valuable assets, so why do some firms employ staff on minimum wage to check such an important marketing tool? And why are few sales people incentivised through commission to keep it up to date?

Many companies are tempted to 'dump' poor quality prospect data into their CRM in order to boost their numbers and market reach, and are then amazed at poor response rates. Keep your prospect data manageable and clean.

Relevance: In the UK we are bombarded by between 600 to 2,500 messages per day (depending on which research you believe). A message is either editorial or advertising.

As a result, we need to filter messages - and our filter is set to high. Irrelevant messages are ignored. Worse, we unsubscribe, unfollow and refuse to take calls from firms that continue to send messages that do not meet our current needs.

Good segmentation of prospect data can help, and analysing the content they have viewed will give further clues on what they believe is relevant.

Content: Typically, this is a white paper, report, infographic, webinar or similar. The value exchange is that you deliver knowledge and in return the prospect gives you their contact details... and permission to send them more marketing messages. Basically, you just generated a sales lead.

The challenge is producing sufficient original content on subjects of interest. Content needs to be backed by evidence, insight and authority. All of which takes time.

Most marketing departments struggle to produce quality content in volume, but creating poor quality content to hit artificial 'production quotas' will back-fire and ultimately damage your reputation. So build a content marketing programme that is realistic and don't be bullied into hitting quotas.

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For further advice please check my blog post '10 tips: Must-know facts for improving customer acquisition' or view the 2 minute DMA video on LinkedIn 'The biggest challenges in customer acquisition'