SMBs (small and mid-sized businesses) represent about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide, and those figures are even higher in North America and the UK. As any company selling B2B solutions knows, it’s an enormous market.
Most financial providers and insurers view the SMB market as a huge opportunity, and it’s at the top of their priority list. However, it’s also a very complex market to track. Businesses open, close, grow, and decline at breakneck speed – and to make matters worse, their data is scattered across multiple sources. Historically, it’s been very difficult for service providers to get enough data to ascertain if an SMB meets their ideal customer profile (ICP), let alone if they’re ready to buy.
Accurate, actionable SMB data is a sales team’s equivalent of a unicorn – everyone wants to see it, but no one ever really has.
Up until now, there have been two common ways to get information about SMBs.
The first thing you could do is buy a list from a B2B list vendor. However, the information you get can often be outdated or, worse yet, already processed by your competitor. And even if it is current, it’s still static. It doesn’t provide you with any insight into whether a business is showing signs of growth or undergoing any significant change.
The second, more painstaking approach you could take is to do your own research. You have to find a prospective customer, analyze their website, investigate their social media, and complete a thorough online search. Then, once you’ve finished your research, you need to try and determine:
- If they match your ideal customer profile (ICP), and
- If it’s the right time for you to approach them with your offering.
Neither approach is ideal. Purchasing a B2B list gives you quantity without insight, and finding and researching prospects one at a time involves significant effort with no guarantee of success.
But that was then, this is now. There’s a third approach you can take – harnessing the power of dynamic data.
Dynamic SMB data: a unicorn in real life
Dynamic data is an exciting new way to grow share and increase customer lifetime value in the SMB market. Dynamic data lets you know when businesses are growing or struggling, hiring, dealing with new industry developments, or facing other challenges.
With access to a continuous stream of accurate data, you can:
- Uncover growing businesses that match your ICP,
- Identify their needs, and
- Proactively offer tailored solutions to help them grow profitably and sustainably.
Not only that, but you don’t have to do the legwork yourself.
Sound too good to be true? Happily, it’s not. There is one company who can provide you with dynamic data on an ongoing basis.
With the Tarci continuous intelligence engine, you can get accurate, actionable data you can use to identify ICPs who are at the right stage to buy your offering.
How Tarci generates dynamic SMB data
So, how does Tarci do it?
Step 1: Processing data and applying tags
To begin, we process huge amounts of SMB raw data collected from multiple diverse sources (more than 7 billion data sets!) on an ongoing basis. Our AI engine validates, cleanses, and normalizes the data. We then apply industry-specific “tags” to identify and segment the data.
Tags tell you what particular technologies, assets, features, services, or structures an SMB does (or doesn’t) have.
Step 2: Monitoring data on an ongoing basis to detect events and change
But the real unicorn magic comes in as that data, which by now is highly accurate, becomes dynamic data. Our continuous intelligence engine continues to collect data for the same SMBs, and monitors it on an ongoing basis for event- or change-based triggers. If a trigger is present, an “event” notification is applied to the business.
Events help you identify businesses right when they are most likely to need a new solution.
The end result is dynamic SMB data that you can use to create smart, targeted marketing campaigns at the right time to the right targets.
SMB marketing campaigns that use tags and events
Let’s look at some examples of how you could use tags and events to find SMBs who match your ICP and are at the right stage for your offering.
1) International payments campaign
In this example, let’s say you’re a financial services provider who wants to market international payment solutions to online retailers who are just starting to grow beyond their domestic market in the UK.
You select the location and industry:
Location
United Kingdom
Industry
Retail
Your ICP is already selling online in the UK, so they should have existing shopping cart and payment processing functionality.
You add the following tags:
Location
United Kingdom
Industry
Retail
Tags
- eCommerce
- Known shopping cart
- Known payment provider
You want to focus on retailers who are just starting to expand internationally. If they just kept their existing payment processing arrangement by default, you may have a more cost-effective solution to currency conversion and international processing. It’s a good time to reach out and see if their new, more complex needs are being met.
You add the following events:
Location
United Kingdom
Industry
retail
Tags
- eCommerce
- Known shopping cart
- Known payment provider
Events
- Accepting new currency
- International expansion
- Shipping to multiple countries – added
Now that you’ve set all of those parameters in Tarci, you activate the list.
According to the continuous intelligence engine, you can anticipate getting information about approximately 275 businesses per month that meet your highly targeted campaign.
2) Group life insurance campaign
In this example, let’s say you’re an insurer who wants to run a targeted campaign to sell group life insurance to small businesses in the construction industry in California.
You select the location and industry:
Location
United States > California
Industry
Construction > Tradespeople
Your ICP understands the importance of good customer service, and embraces technology (both signs of businesses with potential longevity and good decision making!).
You add the following tags:
Location
United States > California
Industry
Construction > Tradespeople
Tags
- Known review management software
- Accepting credit card payments
- Accepting online payments
Of companies that meet those requirements, you want to find businesses that are in a growth phase and are currently hiring. The timing is right to offer them group life insurance as a tool to attract and retain talented workers.
You add the following events:
Location
United States > California
Industry
Construction > Tradespeople
Tags
- Known review management software
- Accepting credit card payments
- Accepting online payments
Events
- Business growth
- Growth in hiring
- Growth in number of employees
And finally, your ICP for group life insurance would have at least 15 employees.
You add a company size filter:
Location
United States > California
Industry
Construction > Tradespeople
Tags
- Known review management software
- Accepting credit card payments
- Accepting online payments
Tags
- Known review management software
- Accepting credit card payments
- Accepting online payments
Company Size
≥ 15 employees
Now that you’ve set all of those parameters in Tarci, you activate the list.
According to the continuous intelligence engine, you can anticipate getting information about approximately 95 businesses per month that meet your highly targeted campaign.
Hundreds of tags and events resulting in granular, dynamic data
Those are two examples of how you could use tags and events to construct highly targeted marketing campaigns, but they by no means capture all of the possibilities.
Tarci applies hundreds of tags and events, giving financial services and insurance providers access to comprehensive SMB data and insight into a wide variety of potential sales triggers. New locations, new product or service offerings, license applications, changes in management or in routes to market – whatever the event, odds are good that Tarci will capture it.
Dynamic SMB data is within your reach. Just imagine what you could do with it.
To learn more, please contact us. We would love to help you create accurate, actionable target lists so that you can get your offering to the right businesses at the right time.
