Firmographic Data: An In-Depth Guide
A Liveclicker report found that 90% of retail marketers use some personalization today. Moreover, those who use advanced personalization can expect an ROI of $20 on every $1 spent. However, the report also showed that most marketers were not using advanced tactics.
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So, how can marketers bridge this gap? The solution is firmographic data.
While it’s crucial to study technographic and demographic data, understanding firmographic data is essential to driving better engagement and conversions. But what exactly is firmographic data?
Here’s an overview of firmographic data meaning, benefits, and use in a business setting.
What Is Firmographic Data?
B2B firmographic data is information about a company that can be used to segment and target them. It includes information such as:
- Organization Size: How big is the company you’re targeting? Do they have 500 or 50,000 employees? Besides the staff, it’s also essential to consider their physical size.
- Industry: What industry is the company in? It can be helpful to understand the challenges and needs of companies in different sectors. While some companies fall into one industry, many have a mix of business activities and can be segmented into several firmographic categories.
- Revenue: What is the company’s revenue? The figure can give you some insight into how much money they have to spend. For instance, if your solution costs $20,000 a year, you won’t want to target a small business with a revenue of $50,000.
- Location: Where is the company located? You may want to target companies in a specific city, state, or country.
- Public or Private: Is the company public or private? The distinction can be significant since public companies are subject to different rules and regulations.
- Growth Trends: When collecting business firmographic data, it’s important to consider growth trends. Is your target company in an industry destined for growth? Is the company growing or shrinking?
You can use this data to segment your target market, create buyer personas, and determine the best way to reach your audience.
In addition to the above data points, you may also want to consider other factors such as the company’s credit rating, social media presence, and website traffic.
Who can use firmographic data?
By virtue of the firmographic data definition, it is the information about a firm or a company. Any business entity that wants to target other businesses as its customers can use firmographics data for marketing and sales purposes.
Thus, firmographic data is instrumental in B2B (business-to-business) marketing. However, it is not restricted to only B2B companies and can be used by any business that wants to target businesses as its customers.
Firmographic Data Examples
Regardless of the firmographic data sources, there are some standard examples of data all B2B marketers should collect. The most important fields to consider are:
- Company name
- Industry vertical
- Geography (location)
- Company size (revenue, employee count)
- Average sales cycle
- Annual revenue
- Financial stability (private/public, profit/non-profit)
- Website
Firmographic data can be incredibly helpful for segmentation and developing targeted account lists.
Why Is B2B Firmographic Data Important?
Business firmographic data gives marketers a cohesive view of their target market and helps them identify potential new markets. In addition, marketers can identify qualified leads by understanding the characteristics of businesses in their target market.
Some benefits of collecting firmographic data include:
Improved personalization and market targeting
US marketers regard better customer experiences as the leading benefit of personalization. The same applies to B2B sales, too.
When you understand the size and revenues of companies in your target industry, you’re better equipped to target the businesses that are likely to become customers.
For instance, a small home-based business selling handmade jewelry is not likely to be interested in the same type of product as a large corporation. Firmographic data helps you personalize your marketing message and improve the likelihood of a sale.
Increased ROI on marketing campaigns
By understanding the characteristics of businesses in your target market, you can create more targeted marketing campaigns. Further, it leads to increased ROI because you’re not wasting money on marketing to companies that are not interested, cannot afford, or have no use for your product or service.
The improved ROI can be attributed to two factors:
- You can send targeted messages to companies more likely to be interested in your products or services.
- You can use the most effective channels to reach your target market.
For example, suppose you know that most companies in your target market are small businesses. In that case, you can focus your marketing efforts on small business trade publications and social media platforms like LinkedIn.
Foster long-term buying potential
Ideally, you want your customers to stay loyal to your brand in the long run. The best way to ensure this is to provide an excellent customer experience from the very beginning.
Firmographic data can help you create a strong relationship with your customers from the beginning, by helping you identify companies that are the best match for your products or services. You can use it to identify companies that will consistently avail your service in the long run.
For instance, a company with positive potential growth will likely need your product or service for a longer period than a company expected to experience loss for the next three to five years.
Where Does Firmographic Data Come From?
Businesses must know from where to collect firmographic data since these sources determine the credibility and usability of the information. Fortunately, there are several ways to collect firmographic data for marketing and lead generation.
Surveys
Online surveys have become increasingly popular as they provide businesses with a cost-effective way to collect information. For example, marketers can create surveys to acquire information about a company’s size, industry, location, and revenue.
Third-party sources
Third-party firmographic data sources include customer data platforms, public databases, and marketing intelligence platforms. These sources provide accurate and reliable information that businesses can use for marketing and lead generation efforts.
Before you purchase firmographic data from a third-party source, check the source’s credibility and accuracy. Plus, comply with data privacy regulations, such as the GDPR and CCPA.
Web scraping
Web scraping simply means extracting data from websites. It’s a popular method businesses use to collect firmographic data, as it’s relatively easy and doesn’t require substantial resources. You can either do it yourself or hire a web scraping service.
If you plan to scrape the web to collect firmographic data, you can use residential or data center proxies, such as those from Rayobyte, to conceal your identity on the web and avoid getting banned by websites.
Alternatively, you can use an automated web scraper like Scraping Robot to make the collecting of firmographic data hassle-free. You merely provide the URLs to be scraped, and the tool does the rest.
Besides speeding up the data collection process, Scraping Robot eliminates the added toil that comes with proxy management and maintenance.
How to Analyze Firmographic Data?
Interpreting the firmographic data meaning is essential for making informed decisions in any business. You might have the best firmographic data providers and the fastest web scrapers, but it’s all for naught if you don’t know how to analyze and interpret it.
Suppose you’re a healthcare virtual assistance company. The main types of firmographic data you’ll be interested in would be names and contact information of healthcare providers, specialties, locations, practice sizes, and website URLs.
You can further classify this data into primary, secondary, and tertiary.
Primary firmographic data is the most important and is directly related to your core business. In the healthcare example, this would be healthcare providers’ names and contact information. Meanwhile, secondary and tertiary firmographic data provide extra context and may be helpful for specific business applications.
Once you have the data, you need to draw insights from it. For example, Practice A gets 500 patients a month and has a revenue of $60,000.
You can use this data to understand how much the practice will be willing to spend on your service. Do they need virtual assistance or is their existing staff sufficient?
On the other hand, Practice B only gets 200 patients a month but has a revenue of $120,000. So, it tells you that Practice B is more profitable and may be willing to spend more on your service.
Maybe Practice B is a dermatology clinic and gets frequent calls from people interested in different types of cosmetic procedures. Therefore, the service will likely outsource call management to a virtual assistant company to reduce the burden of menial tasks on the in-house staff.
As you can see, every detail you collect about a business can provide some value. It’s up to you to find the right interpretation and analysis for it.
Final Words
Firmographic data helps businesses segment and target specific audiences with laser precision. Moreover, it allows efficient use of marketing resources and prevents time wastage.
Some notable firmographic data examples include company name, size, industry, location, and revenue. The data can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns and drive conversions.
Businesses can rely on firmographic data providers or use web scraping through a tool like Scraping Robot to collect firmographic data about their target audience. Get in touch to learn how Scraping Robot can help your enterprise collect valuable data for informed decision-making.
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