What Is Technographic Data and How Can You Use It to Drive Sales

In the world of B2B sales, it is essential to make your marketing activities as efficient as possible. Even before you actively start scouting leads, you need to collect loads of data to ensure that the resources you put into the process do not go to waste.

Targetting your marketing strategy can help you save marketing costs while driving up your sales. This is where the concept of technographic data comes in.

What Is Technographic Data?

Technographic data may be considered the next iteration of demographic and firmographic data. Demographic data deals with the choices, conditions, and cohorts of people. Firmographic data deals with the decisions that companies make and the interaction of employees within the company.

Both these types of data do not consider the technologies and firmware in use by companies. This type of data concerns the field of technographics. A company's technographic data includes all kinds of technology: from software to hardware. It also entails network firmware and IT infrastructure.

Technographic data can help B2B services determine exactly the companies they want to target, based on the technologies currently in use by them. Let us look at how you can use it for focussed prospecting.

Using Technographic Data for Focused Prospecting

Understanding Opportunities

The primary motive of technographic data is to help firms gain insights into a target account's technological gaps. This way, they can approach such accounts with the necessary solutions.

Another company's technical deficiency can be an opportunity for your B2B service. Implementing your software can help make their internal processes more efficient - and may even improve their bottom line.

Knowing the software and hardware currently in use by an account can help you deliver a tailor-made sales pitch for your software or tool. Thus, it's more likely that your target account will consider your solutions seriously.

Segmentation

Demographic and firmographic data might allow you to gain insights into a company's employees. But they do not allow segmentation based on technological decisions. When you are selling software or hardware, it is essential to know the technical infrastructure currently used by your targets.

Suppose your tool is incompatible with your target account's hardware. Perhaps it is already using a more efficient solution. In that case, the resources you spend on scouting and engaging with them will have gone to waste.

Technographic data allows you to segment companies according to the software and hardware. This will enable you to restrict your marketing only to those leads that can use your software. This way, technographic data can significantly improve your chances of converting these leads.

For example, if you are engaged in creating an eCommerce payment tool for Shopify, it would be inefficient to market it to all leads you can find. It is much better to market your tool only to Shopify stores, specifically ones that do not currently use a similar or better tool. Technographic data allows you to restrict yourself to only such companies through filtering and segmentation.

Customized Marketing

Once you have selected a cohort of companies that you will be marketing your solution to, you can tailor your marketing activities according to this cohort's needs and preferences. There are multiple advantages of implementing such an approach.

A large swathe of your industry might not require the features your marketing campaign is highlighting. As a result, a generalized marketing strategy for the whole industry can reduce your lead conversion chances. At the same time, there might be features that these companies need but never get to know since your campaign didn't highlight them.

Technographic data contains minute and specific details regarding what your target cohort needs. This allows you to get at the heart of the problems they might be facing through your marketing campaign. Targetted marketing using technographic data can considerably improve your chances of lead conversion.

Prioritizing Leads

Technographic data provides you with enough information about each target account to score these accounts according to their conversion chances. It is often impossible to engage with every target account simultaneously with a limited marketing budget or resources.

Thus, it is essential to prioritize leads and engage with them sequentially. Through insights you gain from technographic data, you can develop a quantitative measure that tells you a target account's conversion chances.

Numerous open-source and commercial sources also allow you to score your eCommerceleads. You can pitch your product to these leads in the decreasing order of this score. This allows you to use your marketing resources efficiently, thereby improving your sales.

Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing is a modern marketing method that involves the micro-targeting of specific accounts with high conversion chances.

Account-based marketing is especially beneficial in cases where a few companies dominate a large market share. Potentially converting these companies into clients can give your access to a vast customer base that engaging with small market players will not.

You must analyze technographic data about every such target account in minute detail. Look for technological gaps that your solutions can fill. Approach such companies only with complete information about the infrastructure they are using. With these steps, you can make a strong pitch about how your software or tool can reduce the company's costs.

In Closing

Technographic data is not a very old concept, and various market leaders have only now started to invest in the collection and analysis of such data. Implementing insights from technographic data into your sales and marketing strategy today can place you ahead of your competitors.

If you can convert major market players into customers through technographic data, it could lead to a windfall for your company in the years ahead - even with limited resources and a shoestring budget.

However, do understand that technographic data is only one part of your marketing strategy. You must have a robust solution and an experienced sales team to guide customers through every step in the sales funnel without considerable leakage.

With these assurances, your sales can potentially go through the roof!