B2B

Building Your B-to-B Marketing Database

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By Ruth P. Stevens

The single most important tool in B-to-B is, arguably, the marketing database. Without a robust collection of contact information, firmographic and transactional data about customers and prospects, you are at sea when it comes to customer segmentation, analytics and marketing communications of all sorts, whether for acquiring new customers or to expand the value of existing customers. In fact, you might call the database the “recorded history of the customer relationship.” So what goes into a marketing database? Plenty.

First, let’s look at the special characteristics of B-to-B databases, which differ from consumer in several important ways:

  1. In consumer purchasing, the decision-maker and the buyer are usually the same person—a one-man (or, more likely, woman) show.
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Headshot of Ruth P. Stevens

Ruth P. Stevens

Ruth P. Stevens consults on customer acquisition and retention, and teaches marketing at companies and business schools around the world. She is past chair of the DMA Business-to-Business Council, and past president of the Direct Marketing Club of New York. Ruth was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Marketing by Crain's BtoB magazine, and one of 20 Women to Watch by the Sales Lead Management Association. She is the author of Maximizing Lead Generation: The Complete Guide for B2B Marketers, and Trade Show and Event Marketing. Ruth serves as a director of Edmund Optics, Inc. She has held senior marketing positions at Time Warner, Ziff-Davis, and IBM and holds an MBA from Columbia University.

Ruth is a guest blogger at Biznology, the digital marketing blog. Email Ruth at ruth@ruthstevens.com, follow her on Twitter at @RuthPStevens, or visit her website, www.ruthstevens.com.

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