Senior director-marketing, Business Marketing Solutions, Experian, Costa Mesa, Calif.

Small businesses have always been a rich source of customer prospects for b-to-b companies, but they continue to be difficult to reach.

Denise Hopkins, senior director of marketing for Business Marketing Solutions, a division of Experian, has made it her mission to introduce several new products and services-three in the last 12 months-to help b-to-b customers reach that profitable segment more easily.

"The small-business segment has so much purchasing power, and there's a lot of growth in targeting that segment. Small business is such a dominant portion of the b-to-b space,'' Hopkins said. "We've been focused on developing products to help clients use data to target the small-business space.

"We've been so aggressive recently because that's a place where we have data assets that can help our clients target small business,'' Hopkins said.

Small business also tends to be the most vexing segment for marketers to reach. "The information isn't readily available,'' Hopkins said. "Small-business information is difficult to manage because of the silent attrition and churn that occurs.''

Last June, Experian launched B2B Marketing Triggers, a service that uses credit and marketing data to help marketers identify customer prospects. In October, it announced an online database tool for b-to-b marketers called Business Market Analyzer, which centralizes business in an online interface so marketing executives can identify their best business prospects.

Last month, Hopkins' division introduced the Business Owner Link Corporate File, which identifies small businesses in Experian's National Business Database and links the small businesses that are set up as corporations, LLCs and LLPs to the principal's home address. In that way, it helps identify small-business owners that b-to-b marketers may already have as consumer customers but may have missed in past marketing programs because of their companies' legal structures.

"They [the three products] are all designed to put the power of data into the hands of the user,'' Hopkins said.

Hopkins has a holistic data view, which has served her well in the development of these new products. She's been with Experian for more than eight years, spending two years focusing on consumer marketing services in the Credit Information Solutions Group; four years as senior director of marketing for Experian's Data Management Solutions; and the last two years in her current role.