Technographic Data
An increasing number of organizations are shifting to the cloud and improving digital services. According to Forbes, 70% of businesses have already implemented a digital transformation strategy or are actively working on one.
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To stay ahead of the curve, these companies analyze a wide range of data, including technographic data. Also known as technographic segmentation, technographic data shows what hardware and software solutions prospective users use, how they use them, and whether they’re interested in trying new technology.
Read on to learn more about technographic data definitions. We’ll cover what technographic data is, why it’s important for businesses, and how businesses can use it for their benefit. We’ll also discuss different ways to gather it, such as web scraping.
What Is Technographic Data?
A portmanteau of “technology” and “demographics,” technographic data is business-to-business (B2B) data that shows you which technologies your prospective clients use.
It includes information about:
- The applications used by potential clients, including applications, hardware, and software
- Prospective customers’ preferred technologies
- The adoption rate of these technologies at scale
A technographic data example would be a report showing you that a competitor uses:
- HubSpot for marketing
- Salesforce for customer relationship management (CRM)
- Google Cloud as their data platform
Technographic data can be vital for segmenting your market and creating marketing campaigns. However, it’s important to note that technographic data is distinct from other types of data, including:
- Demographic data: Demographic data answers questions about people and their habits. For example, how many people are using your app? How many people are going to your website per week? How have your competitors’ staff configurations and sizes changed over time? Companies can use demographic data to identify potential leads and create initial marketing efforts. However, they won’t be able to glean any insights about technology use.
- Firmographic data: This consists of information that can be used to categorize companies, such as data about product offerings, clients, company size, physical locations, and total revenues. It’s useful for creating targeted marketing campaigns that drive B2B sales. However, it doesn’t offer tech measurements and metrics.
Why Are Technographic Data Insights Important For Businesses?
B2B technographic data provides many advantages for businesses, including:
More targeted messages
Technographics can drastically improve pre-existing buyer personas.
For example, let’s say your target market is eCommerce companies. Technographics can improve your traffic by showing that 80% of your best clients use the same shopping cart management system. With this information, you can get more granular with your targeted messages and look for eCommerce sites that use this cart management platform.
More informed sales communications
Technographic data gives sales reps a better understanding of competitors’ technologies and their use. Sales reps can use this information to tailor their sales conversations and have more informed conversations with leads.
Reach new markets
B2B technographic data can reveal trends that are otherwise hard to identify. For example, a technographic report may reveal that 70% of Canadian users prefer WordPress plugins to Wix ones. Use these insights to penetrate new markets and uncover demand for new services and products.
Boost close rates
What do you get when you combine more targeted messages, more informed sales communications, and new markets? Better prospects, higher close rates, and increased sales. Advanced prospect information, including demographic and firmographic data, can also lead to improved lead scoring, stronger buying signals, and more sales.
Improve client retention
Insights about customer technology empower sales and customer success to spot at-risk groups and users. They can then implement solutions for improving client retention.
Gain a competitive advantage
Finally, technographic data shows you what your competitors are doing. Use it to:
- Identify and analyze industry trends
- Target competitors’ clients
- See when big companies are considering and adopting tech changes — for example, whether and when they’re shifting to marketing automation
Ways To Use Technographic Data Intelligence For Your Benefit
As you can see, company technographic data provides many advantages. Here’s how you can use it for your benefit:
Spot challenges, gaps, and opportunities
Technographic data insights let you look at your prospects’ tech stacks to understand their challenges, weaknesses, and opportunities.
To illustrate, let’s say that your company has created an add-on or platform that can be integrated with WordPress. To learn more about prospective users, you can use technographic data to identify WordPress users’ tech preferences. You can also use the data to identify:
- Whether prospective leads are using competitors’ services and products
- Which competitor products and services are the most popular amongst prospective leads
This data will help sales prepare and tailor their pitches before connecting with potential clients.
Create a broader view of competitors’ tech stack
You can also use B2B technographic data to create a broader view of your competitors’ tech stack.
For instance, let’s say most of your competitors use marketing automation platforms like MailChimp and HubSpot. This data shows you:
- Your competitors’ brand preferences
- Their budgets
- Their priorities, since these tools have different features, usage, and rates
- How serious they are about marketing
- The size of their organizations
- How advanced are their tech and marketing teams
Tailor content marketing for prospects’ technology stack
You can also use technographic data to tailor your content to fit your prospects’ technology stack. This will make your content more attractive to them.
Case in point: you can use B2B technographic data to identify what apps your leads use and the challenges they face. You can then use this information to create marketing materials. For example, after discovering your leads use WhatsApp and Messenger, you can create an email newsletter with tips for:
- Using the apps
- Troubleshooting the apps
- Using the apps to solve problems
Prioritize prospects for best sales opportunities
Once you have a deeper persona based on technographic, firmographic, and demographic data, you can prioritize and distribute prospects across your sales and marketing teams.
You can do this by:
- Creating rich persona profiles of high-quality leads
- Distinguishing qualified leads from those unlikely to convert
- Combining technographic data with intent data to prioritize your leads
Ways To Gather Technographic Data Intelligence
Now that you know how to use technographic data let’s discuss ways to collect it. Three main methods exist:
Surveys
Many companies use email and phone surveys to collect information about how prospects use, adopt, and deploy technology. Unfortunately, many leads won’t respond to cold-call surveys. You’re also unlikely to get accurate and detailed information from responders.
Third-party purchasing
You can also buy technographic data from reputable data collection providers. Due to the prevalence of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions, many data analytics firms and service providers now offer reliable technographic datasets for sale.
Keep in mind, however, that not every provider is for you. Some only offer historical data, while others provide real-time insight. Before considering technographic data sales, make sure you know what you’re looking for.
Web scraping
Web scraping is one of the quickest and most accurate ways to gather high-quality technographic data.
Also known as website scraping, web harvesting, and scraping, web scraping involves harvesting data from sites and exporting it to a database or file. It is accomplished via automated programs called web scrapers or bots, which automate the process of extracting data from sites.
Scraping is more accurate than surveys and more flexible than third-party purchasing because you’re in full control of the data scraping process. It also offers a wider range of data, since you can use scrapers to extract any information that can be copy-pasted from a website, including real-time, historical, and unstructured data.
On the flip side, scraping usually requires coding skills and prior scraping experience. If you don’t know how to code and have never used scraping tools before, you’ll have difficulty determining whether the tools are reporting and collecting relevant data. Security controls on sites may also limit the amount and type of data extracted.
How Scraping Robot Can Help You Gather Technographic Data Insights
Getting the right web scraper or bot for technographic data can be difficult, especially if you’re new to scraping. Most scrapers are expensive, lack frequent updates, and require programming knowledge.
That’s where Scraping Robot comes in. Budget-friendly and intuitive, Scraping Robot is a comprehensive web scraper that anyone can use to gather technographic data. All you have to do is create an account, and you’ll automatically receive 5,000 free scrapes per month. You’ll also get to enjoy all of Scraping Robot’s features, including:
- New modules: We at Scraping Robot constantly review our modules. If you have an idea for a module, reach out to us. We will implement it for free if we believe other customers will benefit from your idea.
- 24/7/365 customer support: We believe in offering the best possible customer service. Accordingly, we have team members monitoring our platform 365 days a year to ensure you can always access your data. Our customer support team is also available 24/6/365 to address any problems you have.
- Seven-day storage: Scraping Robot lets you store your scrapes for seven days. Save or export your data for analysis and storage.
If you need over 5,000 scrapes per month, check out our other tiers:
- Business: This tier offers up to 500,000 scrapes per month at only $0.00018 per scrape.
- Enterprise: Enterprise offers over 500,000 scrapes per month at rates as low as $0.00045 per scrape. You’ll also be able to make custom application programming interface (API) requests.
Interested in learning more about how Scraping Robot can benefit your business? Get a free account today.
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