There are many kinds of data out there, each kind has a unique importance to sales and marketing people.
Today we’re going to talk about firmographic data. Here’s what you’ll learn:
- What is firmographic data and why is it important?
- Firmographic data sources
- How firmographic data helps with account based marketing (ABM)
What is Firmographic data and why is it important?
Here’s some insight from Wikipedia: Firmographic are sets of characteristics to segment prospect organizations.
However, let’s add some insights on why it’s relevant to sales and marketing professionals.
In simple terms, firmographic data are pieces of information on companies. Examples include revenue, technology usage, employee size, address, funding status and many more.
There are too many examples of firmographic data. But why is it so important to sales and marketing professionals?
Let’s just say in this day and age there is a dire need for specific account intelligence. This is because of the continual rise of personalization and account-based marketing.
Quality always wins over quantity; it’s always better to target specific companies you know are a great fit for your service.
Firmographic data Sources
Here are some sources that you could explore to obtain targeted data on companies.
Owler
Owler is a well-known company data provider. This internet giant specializes in providing competitive insights, company profiles. The data provided is mostly crowdsourced so it’s updated in real-time.
Crunchbase
If you require information on funding, founding members, partners and mergers and acquisitions. Crunchbase is the ultimate platform for filtering accounts and prospecting.
AngelList
AngelList is a hub for startup company information. Specifically, AngelList is a network of startups, angel investors and job seekers.
This is without saying. LinkedIn is truly the ultimate source for prospect and company information. Additionally, LinkedIn even provides hiring insights too.
Inc.
Is a popular news source focused on startups and small businesses. Inc. also publishes Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000. These are privately held small companies in the U.S.
Publication & Press Release Sites
Sites like GlobalNewsWire, PR Newswire and many more are a very good source for highly specific insights on companies. Insights could include, news on massive expansion, partnerships, mergers & acquisitions amongst other things.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a good source for auto-searching certain keywords or terms that interest you. For example, you could run a search “Seed funding”.
Cloudlead
Cloudlead combines various inbuilt and paid tools to enrich and verify virtually any kind of firmographic data available online. With software and human intelligence, Cloudlead has very few restrictions when researching customized data.
Additionally, Cloudlead is regularly updating millions of companies on its database available free.
BuiltWith
Provides company data with respect to technology. BuiltWith also has good segmentation. For example Salesforce users by country, revenue segment and more!
How Firmographic data helps with Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
We all know that with the rise of account-based marketing, firmographic data is pretty much a necessity. How does it apply to ABM?
Marketers have been using firmographic data for a long time, however, for ABM there are many use cases.
For example, this must-read article Account-Level Firmographics, Now Automatically in Account Hub by Terminus really stresses how ABM is impacted by good quality data.
The whole concept behind ABM is to target specific and relevant accounts rather than taking the “target by lead” approach. Once you define who the right companies are then you can target these companies with super personalized messaging.
It sounds easy and exciting, but it takes practice, trial and error, and constant improvement.
For example, you could ask Cloudlead to source super-specific companies like:
“Companies having $1 million+ funding and are at least 4 years old, using Salesforce and have at least 10 employees.”
The above is really just a basic example of what firmographic data is. This allows you to specifically target these companies with a specific product.
The next step would be to extract validated contacts (Read why data hygiene matters) from within these companies that match your profile. So firmographic data helps with initiating the process; that is, finding the right set of companies or accounts to target.
This information helps sales and marketing use the right channels at the right time – and to the right person.
If you would like a free sample of data to test how you can execute your ABM strategy, feel free to book a call with us here.
