In the high-stakes world of B2B marketing, data isn’t just a tool—it’s the foundation of every decision you make. Yet, many organizations struggle with gaps in their B2B marketing data that sabotage their marketing efforts, lead to poor engagement, and make proving ROI nearly impossible. 

It’s time to confront these challenges head-on. Let’s explore the most common B2B marketing data gaps, how they impact your business, and, most importantly, how to fix them using practical strategies backed by Extu’s solutions. 

1. Inaccurate or Outdated Data 

The Problem: 

Outdated, inconsistent, or inaccurate data causes marketing campaigns to miss the mark. According to a Gartner survey about data quality, businesses believe poor data is responsible for an average yearly loss of $15 million. MIT Sloan estimated that bad data could cost companies up to 15-25% of their revenue. If your database is full of incorrect contact information, outdated job titles, and dead-end email addresses, it could be costing your business dearly. 

How to Fix It: 

✅ Data Normalization: Many businesses struggle with inconsistent verbiage for the same thing. Are they “leads” or “conversions”? Are they “clients” or “accounts”? Even if you can’t get everyone to use the same words for the same things in weekly meetings, data needs to be consistent across all your business software platforms. Use standardizing rules, templates, and maps that apply a single taxonomy for all your data. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to capture all that data or know what data you have. 

✅ Automate Data Hygiene: Implement automated data validation tools that routinely check for missing or incorrect information and correct errors in real-time. Real-time analytics and data synchronization can keep your marketing and sales efforts running on accurate information. 

✅ Automate Data Update Reminders: Use automated partner engagement tracking to detect inactivity or outdated data and trigger automated outreach campaigns to re-engage contacts and validate information. Extu’s partner engagement tools can help you identify partners who are inactive in incentive programs, for example, and prompt them to update their account details with a triggered email. 

✅ Schedule Quarterly Data Audits: Dedicate resources to reviewing and cleansing your CRM data at least once per quarter. Channel marketing solutions like Extu’s can collect all your incentive, marketing, and group travel data into a single, centralized source, making it easy to run reports and spot inconsistencies before they hurt your marketing ROI. 

2. Duplicate Records 

The Problem: 

How to Fix It: 

✅ Deduplication: Duplication of data can happen, especially when you’re collecting data from disparate systems into one place. Many sales and marketing platforms have both preventative and after-the-fact tools that prevent data duplication. From Salesforce and Hubspot to Microsoft and Monday, you likely already have access to many data deduplication processes, even if you aren’t using them.   

✅ Data Entry Standards: This ties in closely with “Data Normalization” mentioned in the previous section. Once you’ve settled on a universal, standardized taxonomy for your data, make sure that taxonomy is used in all data entry. Use fields, formulas, and templates to make it as close to impossible as you can to enter incorrect data. Require unique identifiers (such as email addresses or company domain names) to flag potential duplicates at the point of entry.  

✅ Use Merge Logic for Duplicate Resolution: Instead of simply deleting duplicate records, implement intelligent merge rules that combine the most accurate and complete data from multiple sources. For example, if one record has the most recent contact details while another has a full purchase history, merging them ensures you retain all valuable information. Many CRMs and data platforms, including Salesforce and HubSpot, offer custom merge rules that let you define which fields take priority when consolidating duplicates. 

3. Incomplete Data Profiles 

The Problem: 

Partial data leads to poor personalization, ineffective lead scoring, and gaps in customer insights. If key fields like industry, role, or purchase history are missing, marketing messages won’t resonate. 

How to Fix It: 

✅ Progressive Profiling: Capture new details about your partners and customers over time instead of relying on a single data collection point. Platforms like Extu’s partner engagement tools track activity such as marketing interactions, incentive promotion participation, and sales contributions, enriching existing profiles with new, unique data points that offer a clearer picture of your sales channel. 

✅ Incentivized Data Submission: Offer partners small rewards for updating their profiles. For example, channel incentive programs can reward partners with points or exclusive content for submitting updated company information, invoices, or warranty registrations that help you fill out the missing gaps in your partner and end-user data. 

✅ Third-Party Data: You can tap into third-party data providers to enhance missing details on business size, location, and industry trends. Be careful which companies you trust and how you use the data you acquire, though. Even if the data you collect meets privacy requirements such as GDPR and CCPA, people tend to ignore contact from companies they haven’t shown interest in.  

4. Data Silos Across Departments 

The Problem: 

When sales, marketing, and finance use disconnected data sources, nobody has a complete picture of partner performance, incentive results, or campaign impact. This leads to data silos that cause conflicting reports, misaligned strategies, and wasted marketing dollars.  

How big of a problem are data silos? Here are some startling stats from a Forrester/Airtable survey: 

• Large companies (20K+ employees) use 367 software apps and systems, on average. 

• The average respondent spends 30% of their week, or 2.4 hours a day, trying to find the right data. 

• 80% of respondents say that reducing data silos is a critical or high priority.  

• The #1 reason that employees disengage is the difficulty of finding the information they need to do their job. 

How to Fix It: 

✅ Data Centralization: Ditch scattered spreadsheets and disconnected CRMs. Integrate all your channel marketing, sales, and incentive data into a single interface, giving every department real-time access to the same information. This is the last step after you’ve normalized data and established a standardized data entry process across all departments—now everyone has access to the data they need, and they don’t have to worry about it being incomplete or conflicting with data from other sources. 

✅ Role-Based Access: Give sales, finance, and marketing different levels of visibility within the same system. Many platforms, like Extu’s channel sales and marketing software, have permission and access controls for program users, so you can create role-based dashboards and experiences. Each program participant can see the data that matters to them without compromising security or usability. This keeps data clean, accurate, relevant, and accessible.  

✅ Automated Data Synchronization and Integration: Even when companies attempt to centralize data, different teams may still rely on their own preferred tools. Sales probably wants to use a CRM like Salesforce. Finance has their ERP systems. Marketing has platforms for demand generation, campaign analysis, and content creation. You don’t have to make every team abandon their existing tools. This will cause chaos. Automated data synchronization ensures all platforms are continuously updated with the latest, most accurate information. Many modern integration solutions, such as iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) tools like Zapier, enable real-time data exchange across multiple systems.  

5. Poor Data Management Practices 

The Problem: 

Data goes bad faster than a freshly bought avocado. It’s been estimated that B2B contact data goes out of date as fast as 70.3% per year. Without a structured approach to data management, marketing teams rely on outdated lists, duplicate records, and messy reporting structures—even if you’ve done your due diligence to standardize and consolidate data.  

How to Fix It: 

✅ Routine Data Audit: Even when you centralize data, errors and inconsistencies build up over time. To combat this, establish a quarterly or biannual data audit process where a designated team reviews CRM records, marketing databases, and partner program data for inaccuracies. Leverage data quality reports and health scoring to identify outdated or incomplete records that need updating. This not only helps you identify data gaps, but helps you see where you’re losing data most often, while finding out why that data’s lost and prevent losing more of it in the future. 

✅ Defined Data Ownership: Many organizations struggle with data quality because no one is directly responsible for maintaining it. Assign data ownership roles across departments (e.g., marketing manages campaign engagement data, sales maintains contact details, and finance oversees revenue-related records). This ensures that each team is accountable for keeping their data clean and up to date. 

✅ Data Lifecycle Plans: Define clear policies for when and how data should be updated, archived, or removed to prevent clutter and outdated records from accumulating. Establish data retention timelines (e.g., contacts that haven’t engaged in 18+ months are flagged for review) and archiving protocols for inactive partners or historical sales data that is no longer relevant. A structured data lifecycle plan ensures that your marketing and sales teams only work with accurate, relevant data while maintaining historical insights for long-term analysis. 

Conclusion: Take Control of Your B2B Marketing Data (Before It Controls You)

The challenges of inaccurate data, duplicate records, incomplete profiles, departmental silos, and poor data management aren’t just frustrating—they’re costing your business time, money, and missed opportunities. Every inefficient process, outdated record, or conflicting report chips away at your ability to prove marketing ROI, engage partners effectively, and make data-driven decisions with confidence. 

But the good news? These challenges aren’t inevitable. 

By implementing the right mix of automation, data governance, and strategic integration, you can eliminate blind spots, unify your partner data, and create a scalable foundation for long-term growth. Whether it’s normalizing your data, incentivizing clean records, integrating systems, or assigning clear ownership, every step toward data clarity is a step toward better marketing, stronger partner relationships, and ultimately, higher revenue. 

At Extu, we help B2B marketers like you take control of their data, streamline partner engagement, and make every marketing dollar count. With our Partner Experience Platform (PXP), you gain a single source of truth that eliminates silos, enhances data accuracy, and provides real-time insights—so you’re always making informed decisions.