While many companies know and use information about their clients and related statistics(demographics) and the technology they’re using (technographics), which is crucial information to enhance marketing and sales efforts and outcomes, it’s no excuse to forget about another type of data—firmographics.
Firmographic datasets are crucial for successful market targeting and effective segment organization. Just as a reminder, your competition is probably heavily investing in firmographic data, therefore, you must do so too, to stay ahead.
In this guide to firmographics, you’ll find out more about firmographic data, explore how businesses can collect it, what are the use cases, and the benefits you’ll get when leveraging a firmographic profile.
What is firmographic data?
Data is everywhere but companies are still struggling to effectively manage it and improve its reach and reliability, which can cost them their potential clients. In fact, 95% of businesses state the need to manage unstructured data is a problem for their business.
Firmographic data is the collection of firm characteristics that can be used to create various market segments and identify high-value clients. The information you receive about organizations and companies is critical to determine at what level is your product relevant to that target audience and industry.
Depending on your company’s focus, firmographic data can include versatile firm characteristics such as industry type, company size, company reach, annual expenditure and revenue, ownership style, market trends, and growth details.
The insights you gain from firmographics combined with demographics can be unreal. Demographic datasets include age, location, gender identity, education level, and the average income of specific individuals, thus all this info will help you analyze broader company values.
How businesses can collect firmographic data?
To leverage firmographic data for your business, you need to know how to properly collect it. Fortunately, there are various tools today that will help you with different ways to collect raw data.
However, remember that all data post-collection needs to be sorted through first. As Forbes outlined, 70% of companies either have a digital transformation strategy in place or are working on one. Therefore, let’s take a look at ways to collect data.
Lead forms and landing pages
Lead sign-up forms and landing pages are the fastest, easiest, and most direct ways of acquiring accurate firmographic data. All you need to do is make forms and think of places where to locate them, somewhere where people will most definitely fill them out. For example, this can be a request for a demo or free trials, high-value offers, free consults, and lead magnets like webinars.
While lead forms are usually useful when they’re relatively short, you can test your forms to see if they are relevant and whether or not they will result in conversion rates dropping significantly.
Look out for data on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great source to mine data. Even though not all brands are registered on the platform, the ones that you can find usually have plenty of information, and there’s so much you can learn from the platform.
For example, a company profile can contain a ton of valuable information, such as employee count, whether they work remotely or in an office, where they get their funding, etc. The information is all right there and since it’s all uploaded by the company itself, you can be sure it’s reliable.
Investigate
Nothing wrong with a little investigating, right? If you dive deep into a Google search about a company, you can find many details and even sites which share projected revenue industry and estimated company size.
If you are willing to spend some time, search for podcasts, news reports, and case studies about the business. Podcasts with founders or team members usually have some exclusive information or secrets.
Use third-party tools and services
Third-party tools are surprisingly useful for collecting firmographic data that companies won’t share upfront. These tools are designed to collect all types of details about companies worldwide, including firmographic data like annual revenue, recent funding, number of employees, and industry.
The main benefits of firmographics
The main goal of firmographic data is to deliver insights to organizations that are then used to segment customers into meaningful groups. If marketers and sales teams have access to segmented information that organizes clients by size, revenue, location, etc., decisions can be made fast and justified. Here are some specific benefits of firmographics for organizations:
More successful and effective ABM
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a major focus throughout all organizations. 48% of those organizations consider ABM an effective strategy. The technographic data you collect will positively influence your ABM strategy, it will help you develop a stronger relationship with your prospects.
Enhanced customer service
With access to companies’ locations and employee details, you can highly improve your customer service offerings. For example, if you have firmographic data about a company’s location, you can assume what services they will prefer.
A single-state organization will prioritize partners that deliver local services, while a multinational firm prefers worldwide digital services.
Prioritizing leads
A deep firmographic profile can save you precious time and big costs. It’s important to understand that what your company offers might not be an interest to others, you won’t always be the best for everyone. Asses the facts you get from firmographics and prioritize your leads and spend more time catering to the ones that are most likely to convert.
Conclusion
Firmographic data is necessary for your business growth, as when used correctly, it provides you with a great competitive advantage. To become among the best in your industry, you need to utilize the data you collect effectively.
Use firmographic data to study the behaviors of opposing teams through so-called game footage, learn to effectively identify high-value leads, and leverage the data for a more targeted marketing approach.
