If you want to understand your prospects better and reach out to people that will buy from you today, then technographic data is your best friend.
Analyzing the tech habits of different companies, such as their buying patterns, the software they use in their organization today, and what piece of tech they might need can help your sales and marketing teams improve revenue, reduce sales cycles, and understand your prospect better.
But the questions that arise now are:
- What is technographic data?
- How can you source it?
- What are its applications and benefits?
Let’s take a look at what all this means.
What is Technographic Data?
In the simplest terms possible, technographic data means data related to a business’ technology environment i.e. the software and hardware technology stack and insights around those technologies.
Most sales and marketing teams rely heavily on firmographic data (industry type, company size, total sales and revenue generated, and more) and demographic data (age, gender, email address, direct dial information, social handles, and more) to identify targets, ICP or total addressable market to craft the suitable outreach strategy.
However, this data leaves a lot to be desired. These datasets don’t tell you what kind of software your prospects use or help you spot the gaps in their technology stack etc.
This is where technographic data gives you an organizational overview into what tech solutions your prospects/customers have adopted, which completes the picture.
Using technographic datasets along with firmographic and demographic datasets can get you a holistic view of your prospects and improve your go-to-market strategy drastically.
But most of all, technographic profiling allows your teams to identify suitable, high-intent targets accounts for your company.
(Source)
Why is Technographic Data Important?
On its own, technographic data provides technology information of a company, but paired with the right sales and marketing efforts, this data provides you with the much-needed edge towards getting favorable outcomes like winning deals.
Some of the benefits of technographic data are:
- Accurate Segmentation – Understanding which technologies your target accounts are using helps you segment them into different buckets based on their needs (what software are they using right now), gaps (software they aren’t using right now but should be), and priorities (e.g. why are they spending more on marketing software or sales software?).
Segmenting them in this manner will allow your sales team to assign their resources effectively and personalize their outreach. - Improved Targeting – Not all leads will have the same potential when it comes to your company. Some leads need to be filtered early on since they don’t match your ICP but in a dog-eat-dog technology market, businesses need to identify which leads will likely acquire new solutions and which need more time.
To get a more in-depth understanding of why technographic data is important, check out this blog post.
Sources of Technographic Data
While it is possible to get technographic data manually, it is however very cumbersome. Manual collection of data is also tedious and time consuming and cannot be done at scale. Using products that provide technographics data and insights is the best way to source it for your company.
Companies that gather technographics data go about using the methods mentioned below.
- Scraping/crawling the web: Scraping publicly information from websites and looking at the source code of webpages can help you obtain data regarding the apps and services used by a company.
This method often produces more accurate results as compared to surveys, however it requires technical skills to make sure that the tools are collecting and reporting relevant data. - Company Reports: Company reports typically show the partners of the company that provide the technological solutions, and could also include information on upcoming partnerships or information around technologies the company has dropped as well.
Company reports are a good place to identify different areas where they are underperforming and might require new products or services to help them improve.
Sometimes, these reports might not reflect the company’s current technology stack as they might be old reports that are available or the release of this information may vary from company to company. - Jobs and Social Media Posts: Using this method might provide you with the context you need for information collected from other sources.
For example: Company ABC has recently set up it’s Marketing Operations division and is looking to hire a new Director of Marketing Operations. This signals that the company will heavily invest in marketing automation tools to help aid this division. This is an indicator for companies that provide automation solutions to reach out to company ABC and pitch their products or services.
Similarly, social media posts can help you gather information regarding new hires, companies customers, technology partners, etc.
- From third-party vendors: This is probably the most direct method of obtaining technographic data. With the use of cloud-based SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS solutions, these service providers will have better access to more vigorous and attested technographic data sets.
Like any method, this has its own share of limitations. Here, personal data needs to be anonymized to be compliant with both local and global privacy laws. The way to implement this method is to remember that not all data providers are equal.
Your best bet is to do research before contracting any technographic data provider.
Technographic Data for Marketing and Sales
Business intelligence tools have become a key component of businesses and how they function. Understanding the use case scenarios for technographics data is important if you want your team to use these insights effectively.
Let us take a look at how technographic data can be used by sales and marketing teams to function more effectively.
(Source)
Technographic Data for Marketing
- Precise Customer Segmentation – Technographic data can help you build a clear image of the prospect’s technology stack, which in turn can greatly help personalize your pitch to appeal to them better.
For example, let’s say the product you’re selling is a market intelligence software and has integrations with CRMs built in. You want to reach out to 10 prospects, and technographic data shows that 5 of them use HubSpot, 3 of them use Pipedrive, and 2 of them use other Copper, but are already customers of your competitors.
Companies that are already using the CRMs will require market intelligence tools to fuel it with data. With this information, your sales team can reach out to the 8 companies that use CRMs with personalized pitches (“…our solution works great with {your.CRM}…”) and position your product accordingly.
As for the two others that use your competitors, your pitch can be “I know you already use X’s software for this, but I assure you that our integration with Copper offers functionalities that aren’t even in X’s roadmap.”
When you reach the right people with the right messaging, you can expect to delight your customers from the get-go. This enables you to increase the potential of driving more prospects through the sales funnel and engage with your accounts more effectively.
- Understanding your ICP – The very thing that account-based marketing (discussed next) depends on is making sure you understand your ICP before you start to target your potential prospects. ICP is developed based on multiple aspects such as firmographic data, demographic data, input from both the sales and marketing teams and behavioral characteristics of your existing customers and more.
Of this, technographic data is equally important, especially if you are a SaaS provider. Understanding the technological landscape of your prospects is essential to your sales and marketing teams because they are the ones who will be interacting with your potential prospects.
The technological landscape will allow your company to understand how your product or service will be able to add/provide valuable insights and solve for your prospects current pain points. - Account Based Marketing – Almost every successful B2B venture has account-based marketing to thank for a large chunk of their revenues.
The biggest advantage of using technographics for account-based marketing is being able to deliver a hyper-personalized sales experience that cements a deeper connection with your prospects.
This can be the make or break factor when it comes to B2B sales. With all the marketing automation tools available in the market, it’s not hard to focus on a particular segment.
However, if you can go to a prospect knowing exactly what technologies they are using; you can position your products or services better, thereby gaining an advantage over your competitors’ ABM tactics.
Technographic Data for Sales
- Outbound prospecting – Employing the use of a sales intelligence tool like Slintel will not only provide you with firmographic data but also technographic data and events that occur in the company. This will allow your outbound teams to work more effectively to identify the right fit outbound leads for the company.
- Improved Sales Conversations – With better fit leads identified, you can improve the sales conversations you have with these leads. Fueled with crisp and clear technographic data, you can predict the questions from your prospects and be better prepared for the same.
- Enhance your sales efforts – By understanding your leads and existing clients’ technology needs and usage, you can streamline your pipeline to prioritize better fit leads and develop better outreach campaigns.
- Upselling – While technographic data can be used to identify potential prospects, it is also useful for existing customers. You can identify when your customers are making a change in their tech stack and provide them with add-on products or services to help them achieve their goals.
To find out what other ways you can used technographic data of your prospects, check out this blog.
Final Thoughts
With businesses becoming ever interconnected with technology, it is safe to say that technographic data is here to stay.
By incorporating technographic data, your B2B efforts when providing solutions to your prospects or customer’s pain points can make you stand out from the crowd.
Technographic data allows your sales and marketing teams to be better equipped when targeting prospects and customers alike in the digital age.
