Everything You Need to Know About Firmographic Data

When consumer brands start their personalization journey, they immediately break their customers and leads up into different segments based on unique demographics.

Segmenting your audience makes it much easier to create relevant content which is used to convert prospects into leads and leads into customers. Like the old marketing saying goes, “if you target everyone, you target no one.”

In the business world, B2B demographics are called firmographic data.

Personalization is more important in the B2B world than many people believe. With 85% of buyers admitting that they’ll completely write off companies who don’t personalize the very first interaction, we may even say it’s mandatory.

Firmographic information alone isn’t enough to create highly relevant content for your buyers but it’s the first place to start your segmentation process.

What Is Firmographic Data?

Firmographic information spans company-wide information and information on the specific user-level. B2B segmentation with firmographics helps you paint a picture of who your customers are so you can target similar audiences in the future with relevant content.

Firmographic Data by Industry

First, you’ll want to paint a broad picture of which industries your customers fit into.

• NGOs
• Government agencies
• B2Cs
• Other B2Bs

You’ll also want to segment by industry based on verticals like SaaS, manufacturing, e-commerce, healthcare, and more.

Firmographic Data by Size

Do you target small and mid-size operations or fortune 500s? Size is very important because a mom-and-pop shop has different needs than Amazon.

Firmographic size usually involves two components:

• The amount of revenue a company makes.
• The number of employees in the company.

If you find that almost all of your customers are small businesses, you could further segment those groups based on specific numbers – like companies with 5-10 employees or 10-20.

Firmographic Data by Location

In a global economy, location may not seem important anymore – but it is.

Where are your customers headquartered? Where do they do business themselves? Do they have more than one location?

Not only is this important for understanding your customers’ needs, but it also helps you send timely emails and further personalizing your communication methods.

Firmographic Data by Performance

Understanding your customers’ performance is valuable for thinking of yourself as a partner rather than a vendor. When you create content based on this information, you show that you care about their business’s overall wellbeing and growth.

To break your customer segments down based on performance, look at figures like

• Market share
• Quarterly or annual sales figures
• Growth and losses (both in employees and revenue)

User-specific Firmographic Information

Finally, it’s also valuable to look at your leads and customers on a specific level to make your content as effective as possible.

• Job role
• Title
• Department
• Buying power

Why Should You Care About Firmographics?

Personalization is critical in B2B as we enter 2020.

According to the Salesforce State of Marketing report in 2017, 65% of businesses said they’ll consider switching vendors if a brand doesn’t make any effort to personalize communication materials.

Today, that figure is likely much higher.

The latest Salesforce report states that 84% of consumers – and 83% of business buyers – say that being treated like a human being rather than a number is the key to winning their business. Buyers expect a consumer-like experience from brands so highly personalized content is crucial for making that happen.

Firmographic data can’t do all of the work but it is the best place to start with segmentation. Understanding your current customers and leads on a firmographic level helps you answer their questions, solve their problems, and understand what they need from your company.

What Is Firmographics Used For?

Firmographic information is used for creating personalized content strategies.

Look at all the different firmographic categories mentioned above. A buyer working for a Fortune 500 company requires different things than a startup trying to stay afloat. Why would they read the same blog posts and watch the same videos?

Even within a company, firmographic data is important for creating personalized content. CEOs have different questions for your company than the rank-and-file end users of your product – yet the work for the same company on the buying team!

In practice, you can use firmographics to create

• Targeted social media advertisements
• Relevant email campaigns and newsletters
• Authoritative blog posts
• Tutorial and explainer videos about your company
• A/B testing

Every time you create a specific piece of content, keep a specific firmographic segment in mind.

For B2B Segmentation, Firmographics Aren’t Enough

While firmographic data is the most important place to start segmenting your audience, B2B segmentation with firmographics alone isn’t enough.

Understanding a lead’s role and buying power at a company doesn’t tell you

• Their specific daily problems and needs
• Why they’re visiting your website
• Their stage of the buying cycle
• Which competitors they’ve already researched
• How much they know about your company
• Which type of content they prefer (blogs, eBooks, podcasts, video, etc.)

Instead, it’s best to use firmographics as a base and build onto it with other information like

• Behavioral data off your website
• Behavioral data on your website
• Intent data

Once you have all of that, you can use firmographic data as a base to build a personalized content strategy for different segments of your audience – and current customers – to increase demand generation, lead generation, and customer loyalty.

Skyrocket Lead Conversions with Personalized Landing Pages

Hushly can help you take charge of your personalization strategy with data you already have!

Using behavioral data, you can create hyper-personalized adaptive content hubs with content bingeing features, self-nurturing landing pages, and much more. Since your sales team only has control over 10% to 43% of the buying process, it’s important to squeeze every drop of engagement out of your website. That’s where Hushly comes in.

It’s so easy that you can have the entire platform up and running in as little as 30 minutes. Plus, we’ll never charge you for storage or maintenance fees – you’ll only pay for the genuine leads you collect through our system.

Check out Hushly’s awesome content bingeing features to get started!

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