Back in 2015, Forbes published the results of a survey that indicated data-driven marketing leaders were more than 6 times more likely than those who hadn’t adopted data-driven marketing to report a competitive advantage in increasing profitability and 5 times more likely to report a competitive advantage in customer retention. 

Results like this are hard to ignore, which is why more and more C-suite leaders are recognizing that their companies will be left behind if they don’t modernize and begin to use data to inform their marketing and sales activities.

Data-Driven Marketing Has Changed the Playing Field for Marketers

For much of the modern era, even within the industrial B2B sector, marketing has been considered more of an art form than a science. Marketers used what little demographic data they could gather plus their creative instincts and experience to guide them when crafting a message and creating sales collateral. And that worked when those were the only tools your competitors had. But the game has changed.

Today, the marketers who are getting the most impressive results are those who are using advanced, customer- and prospect-level data gleaned from digital sales enablement tools. 

Because of increasingly sophisticated digital technology, we are now in an era where you can either suffer accusations of marketing fluff or debunk them with data.

The great news is, marketers are now able to produce effective sales content and prove the impact of their materials in ways they never could before. Here’s a look at how things have changed since the rise of data-driven marketing.

No More Anecdotes and Subjective Opinions to See What’s Working

With a digital tool that tracks when the content is being shared by the sales team, how engaged the prospect is with a particular piece of collateral, and when the prospect clicks on an e-mail or digital leave-behind, you get to see what content is working with potential clients and what’s not being used by the sales team at all.

Marketers who are using intuitive, data-gathering technology no longer have to rely on anecdotes and subjective opinions from the sales team to analyze the effectiveness of their content. 

They are able to see hard data about the effectiveness and usage of their content on an analytics dashboard instead of waiting to hear about the meeting from the sales rep when they return to the office.

Reduced Friction and Added Speed Within Current Sales and Marketing Processes

Many organizations have already invested in a CRM and other early tech solutions. The idea of spending more money and more time training the teams on an entirely new solution is understandably not palatable.

Luckily, the best digital sales and marketing tools today are able to reduce friction and speed up current sales and content distribution processes without upending the systems that are already in place. 

Imagine being able to automatically log what was presented, shared, and interacted with by the customer during a sales conversation, then having that information automatically sync with your current CRM. 

The results are less data entry in the field for the sales team and faster, more accurate metrics for the marketing team – all without having to re-engineer processes.

Scarce Resources Focused on Most Effective Content and Tactics

With content engagement and collateral usage data, modern marketing teams become more aligned with what’s working to drive sales conversations in the field. 

Marketers are able to move quicker, make better decisions about messaging and content creation, and focus their limited resources.

Advanced content analytics make it much simpler to prove the ROI of each piece of collateral. 

It’s Time for Marketing to Lead the Way to Improved Profitability

Marketers who recognize the potential impact that data-driven marketing can have at their organization have seen the future. Soon, there won’t be any room left for marketing teams that rely solely on older technology. 

Marketing teams that have advanced levels of data at their fingertips are able to prove their content ROI, streamline their company’s current marketing and sales processes, and become an even more integral part of their company’s strategies for growth and profitability.

To see how StorySlab can help your marketing team lead the way, book a demo with our team today.