Data-driven decision-making and results are important for the commercial real estate industry, but how do you interpret data? Many B2B organizations are happy to sell you bottomless spreadsheets of data or lead lists, but how do you act upon the data that you collect?
Data enrichment for CRE is about making your B2B business development strategies run more efficiently by interpreting, evaluating, and cleaning up raw and existing data. Biscred’s business model, for example, blends machine learning with human curation to create a database of company and people data unlike any other. Some of our clients use our data to discover new opportunities, while others export the data to enhance their own contact data in their CRMs.
If, for example, your organization is interested in CRE firms in the southwestern United States, you’ll find lists of thousands of firms. This is your raw data. But what if you’re only interested in private equity firms? Or firms with retail asset classes? This is where data enrichment is beneficial. You can narrow your search and even find new insights about the data en masse. If you’d like to see it in action, contact Biscred to schedule a demo.
Let’s explore more about how your organization may use data enrichment and what B2B data enrichment can do for your business.
What is Data Enrichment?
Data enrichment is about turning raw swathes of data into more specific, accurate, and relevant data. For B2B CRE enrichment, this is usually about marketing, as you can target segments of your audience that are more likely to do business with your company.
Some key parts of data enrichment include:
Removing data you don’t need
Verifying the data you keep is relevant
Finding missing data
Supplementing missing data with new data
The other key part of data enrichment is frequently updating it. The first time that you enrich your raw data could be messy, so track the process to understand what is and isn’t working. Many data enrichment services help you determine the customer criteria and then enrich multiple segments of raw data.
Biscred updates our data weekly, and our clients set up alerts so they know when new data drops that fit within their parameters.
You may also use your existing customer data to understand more about your customer base. This raw data can be especially messy, so it’s even more important to use data enrichment to comb through and interpret this data for you.
What Does B2B Data Enrichment Mean?
In B2B marketing, you’re specifically trying to paint a more accurate picture of your customers, typically using existing customer data. This means that your firm has to spend some time understanding the criteria for an ideal customer. When you enrich your customer data, you’ll be comparing potential leads to this ideal customer.
For example:
When do customers make purchases?
What kind of firms do you do business with?
Where are these firms located?
What specific industries do these firms work in?
What CRE asset classes do you commonly deal with?
Who are the key individuals you usually communicate with?
This is just a brief snapshot of the questions that data enrichment helps you answer. When you plan a LinkedIn Ads marketing campaign, for instance, you’ll specify the types of professionals you want to target. Identify the types of roles that are key decision-makers, and your LinkedIn campaign will be far more effective.
Data Enrichment Strategies for CRE
The success of data enrichment hinges on your organization already having raw data to sort through. So how do you collect raw data?
Lead generation forms
As leads become more interested in your organization, you can gate certain information like guides or reports behind a form that requires job title, location, and other company information. However, be cautious about gathering information through longer forms like this. If you ask for too much information too early, this may dissuade the lead from using your site. Only collect information from prospects who are further along in your sales funnel.
Surveys
Surveys are usually issued through email marketing or on your website. This data is easier to sort through as you receive the results for each question. Surveys are entirely voluntary and sent to an audience that you’ve already engaged with in some way. Because of this, prospects and customers may need some incentive to fill out a survey.
One-On-One
Another option for understanding the qualitative needs of your audience is to reach out to them directly. This can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, but unlike forms and surveys, you may find something out that you didn’t even know about your customers. As with surveys, it’s easiest to do a one-on-one with an existing customer.
Use a B2B data enrichment tool
Data enrichment tools streamline the enrichment process by providing you with higher-quality, enriched data. These tools also have ways to interpret and sort data for a more efficient overall process.
Looking for a CRE B2B data enrichment tool? Biscred’s approach to data combines machine learning and artificial intelligence to sort large swathes of data by relevant indicators like asset class, CRE role, and more. Sixteen years of real estate data are contained within Biscred’s database, and our analysts are updating it and cleaning it continuously. Learn more about how Biscred collects data and ensures it’s accurate.