Is Your B2B Organization Insights-Driven?

Aug 26, 2023

Read time: 2 min

B2B marketing must be led by an insights-driven approach that harnesses data, actionable insights, and continuous learning.

29% of (APAC) B2B marketing decision-makers intend to support organizational growth by using measurements and analytics to drive insights and decision-making.
Data quality, accessibility, and a lack of business insights are the top challenges faced by B2B marketers.
Organizations apply three methods to utilize data: being data-aware, data-driven, or insights-driven. Insight-driven firms are the most impactful. They invest in generating and using insights from integrated and actionable advanced analytics, employees, and customers to drive organizational goals and actions.
Actionable insights result from collecting relevant, high-quality data, systematic processing, analysis, contextual understanding, and actionable conclusions.
Signs of insight gaps include the following: overloaded analytics teams, difficulty interpreting data, concerns about data quality, limited relevant data collection, lack of actionable conclusions from available data, and challenges in defining priorities.
To close insight gaps, organizations should develop analytics capabilities to align strategies with business goals, use a balanced measurement system to measure the right metrics, incorporate processes to take action on insights, and support continuous experimentation and learning.

"B2B marketing decision-makers see data quality, data accessibility, and lack of business insights as their top challenges to achieving their marketing goals."
“You only get insights by collecting relevant, high-quality data; systematically processing, analyzing, and summarizing it to produce high-quality information by applying a solid understanding of business context and practices; and using that intelligence to develop actionable conclusions, guidance, and recommendations.”
"High-quality data is the foundation; business knowledge and processing capabilities are the keys to unlocking the power of that data."
"Data and analytics decision-makers who say that their firms have advanced insights-driven business capabilities are 8.5 times more likely to report that their firm’s annual revenue grew by 20% or more."
"We commonly see advanced insights-driven firms sustain exponential revenue growth because they have operating models that depend on insights implemented in software and strategically invest in data, analytics, and insights."
"[Insights-driven firms] ensure that insights are always actionable and make insights-to-action a team sport… these companies continuously experiment and learn."

Prioritize data quality and accessibility - Strategically invest in improving data collection, storage, and maintenance to produce high data quality and accessibility to ensure reliable insights.
Adopt an insights-driven strategy - Generate and apply actionable insights across all business operations and applications to gain a competitive advantage. Close insight gaps, align analytic strategy with goals and set up structured processes and measurement metrics to ensure compelling insights drive action and decision-making. Promote continuous learning and experimentation.

Zhao, J. (2023, Aug 17). Is Your B2B Organization Insights-Driven? [Web article]. Forrester. (Link)