Technographic Data: The Power of Insights for B2B Businesses

In an age where B2B marketing decisions are heavily reliant on financial investments, understanding the landscape of technology adoption and usage has never been more crucial. As a B2B business leader, you’re already familiar with demographic and firmographic data, but there’s a critical component that could be the key to unlocking deeper insights and driving your sales and marketing strategies forward: technographic data. 

In this article, we’ll examine what technographic data is, where to find it, and how technographics will help you increase sales, improve marketing results and elevate company performance. 

Whether you’re seeking to improve your company’s account targeting and sales intelligence, or simply trying to better understand best practices around customer acquisition, we hope that this article helps you understand why you should be using technographic data. 

What Are Technographics?

In its broadest sense, ‘technographics’ is a shorthand term for ‘technographic segmentation’. 

It’s the means of analyzing statistical data, produced by a population or group, based on their ownership and usage of technology. It is a class of technology market segmentation such as Demographics and Firmographics. 

Technographic data is a means of understanding a company’s technology stack: 

• What hardware and software are they using? 
• Which tools and applications? 
• How they are implementing and utilizing their varying systems and platforms? 

Technographic data is the information related to the tools and technologies that companies use to run their businesses. This can range from software applications to hardware infrastructure, and even the platforms that companies use to engage with their customers. This type of data provides a detailed look into a company’s tech stack, which can reveal a lot about their processes, efficiencies, scale, and even their buying intentions. 

Technographics is the next step in the development of market analysis after demographic data, firmographic data, and psychographic data. 

Why You Should Care About Technographics?

Understanding technology is understanding that it is basically modern evolution. There is no resisting it. 

You adapt, or you perish. 

This holds true if you are a business reliant on accurate prospecting data to drive your marketing, an established brand looking to identify niche personas, or a startup yet to make your first sale. 

Like it or not, if you want to survive, you must give yourself every available competitive edge. Prep your sales and marketing teams with data-driven strategies. 

A study by Demand Gen Report found that 66% of B2B marketers are using technographics to identify competitive opportunities and target accounts that are not yet using their products or services. 

For B2B businesses, technographic data is not just another dataset; it’s a vital component of the intelligence that drives strategy. It’s not enough anymore to know who your customers are demographically or what industry they operate in. You need to understand how they operate, and technographics can provide this insight. 

The importance of technographic data is that you can gauge a prospect’s readiness for your product or service. If you’re selling a SaaS solution, knowing that a prospect is already using cloud-based services can signal a smoother transition and higher receptiveness to your pitch. Conversely, a company heavily invested in legacy systems may require a different approach, focusing on the benefits of digital transformation. 

Moreover, technographic data can signal market trends, showing you where there’s a growing demand for certain types of technologies. This can help you anticipate needs and tailor your offerings accordingly, potentially getting ahead of competitors who aren’t leveraging this kind of information. 

And, be in no doubt about it, the explosion in data we’re currently experiencing is mind-blowing. 

With a better understanding of a prospective customer’s technology stack, technographics enable greater personalization of the customer journey. According to a report by Forrestarter, 75% of B2B customers expect companies to personalize their messaging and offerings based on their technology use. In a world of all but equal solutions and services, those who provide superior customer experience will win out every time. 

The Benefits of Technographic Segmentation

The main strategic advantage of using technographic is that you’re able to personalize your sales and marketing messages to resonate with your prospects’ current technological landscape. Tailored messaging increases the relevance of your communication, which can lead to higher engagement rates and better conversion. 

However, there are some ancillary advantages.

1. Improve Sales Productivity

According to a recent study, 63% of a sales rep’s time is spent on work that doesn’t generate revenue. One-fifth of that is spent on contact and account research alone. 

Technographics can nullify this wasted time by ensuring that salespeople spend their time selling rather than finding people to sell to.

By incorporating technographic data into account profiling activities, you achieve a more accurate representation of your Total Addressable Market (TAM). 

Narrow down your Total Available Market with technographics 

This improves the efficiency of the sales function by narrowing your prospect base and providing focus to sales reps. 

2. Reveal New Opportunities

Technographic segmentation can also reveal opportunities in new markets that you wouldn’t have discovered without access to technographic information. 

Once you know a prospect’s technology stack, you can better customize your marketing content for your initial contact. 

By tailoring your messaging to the specific requirements of the customer you improve the chances of a positive response, as it demonstrates you have taken the time to understand their current challenges. In fact, 92% of companies say they see higher conversions from personalized emails. 

So, better messaging is one aspect of improving customer engagement. But it doesn’t stop there. 

Once your message has prompted a response, technographic data can then inform the conversation your sales agent has with the prospect. 

Your sales agent’s time will be spent more productively, and they’ll see higher conversion rates from their sales engagements. 

3. Improve Account-Based Marketing Campaigns

These benefits should be clear to anyone that practices Account-Based Marketing (ABM). 

Technographic data to augment a company’s existing firmographic knowledge will help improve messaging, as well as synergy between your marketing and sales departments. 

You’ll be able to target companies based on their tech stack and create ads or emails that match what your prospects hope to hear. 

Your lead scoring will improve as you learn more about prospects, and more time can be spent chasing valid leads that are truly an ideal fit for your solution. 

4. Improve Customer Retention

Having prospects become customers is great. Keeping them and forging long-term, mutually beneficial relationships is the ultimate goal. 

You’ll have improved market forecasting and will be able to preempt market-driven issues impacting at-risk accounts. You may also use your insight to drive product development (for example, if you see your customers adopting a certain solution that you could offer). 

Knowing who is using competitor tools or services can provide opportunities to increase market share by facilitating the targeting of the competition’s customer base. 

All of these benefits and other goals around customer success (upselling, cross-selling, renewal & expansion opportunities) can be realized with the proper application of technographic segmentation, which is why so many companies already incorporate technographic analytics into their marketing activities and customer analysis. 

How to Collect Technographic Data

There are three tried-and-tested methods for acquiring technographic data: 

1. Phone or Email Surveys

Despite the historical utility of these practices they are increasingly becoming remnants of a bygone age. Unscalable, often unreliable, and potentially counterproductive. Sure, cold calling and email still have a place, but in the age of big data, there are arguably more effective ways to acquire technographic data. 

2. Data Scraping

Data scraping is a method of extracting code from websites with a view to identifying key information. 

It suffers from limitations that make it prohibitive in the long run, as only certain types of software leave any trace on websites. 

Frequently this data will be old or out of use, and data scraping has no value in hardware identification. And this is before even entering into the field of ethics around these practices. 

3. Buying B2B Technographic Data

Purchasing a database is the easiest route to having usable technographic data. 

Historically, purchasing data has been perceived as a gamble due to issues of reliability. This is understandable. Until recently, the capability to quantify and update the required volume of data at the necessary speed and scale didn’t exist and companies selling data couldn’t guarantee results. 

All that has changed. 

There are now reputable providers in this space, like DemandScience. Each B2B data provider has their own technology install base, providing accurate information on thousands of companies and technologies. 

It has taken time for this market to mature sufficiently and, as with most things in life, the old maxim ‘caveat emptor’ (“Let the buyer beware”) holds true… But, with proper research, there are now a number of technographic data providers whose offering does exactly what is described on the tin. 

Leveraging B2B technographic data for targeted marketing campaigns

When it comes to targeted marketing campaigns, technographic data is invaluable. Imagine being able to segment your audience not just by industry or company size, but by the actual technologies they use. This allows for highly specific and relevant messaging. For example, if you’re marketing a cybersecurity solution, targeting businesses that have recently adopted cloud technology can be particularly effective, as they may be more aware of the potential risks and in need of your product. 

Moreover, technographic segmentation can improve your return on investment (ROI) for marketing campaigns. By focusing your resources on the segments that are most likely to respond based on their tech profiles, you can reduce wasted effort and spending, while increasing the chances of campaign success. 

Lastly, leveraging technographics can help you craft a compelling narrative around your product or service. You can position your offerings as the next logical step in a prospect’s technological evolution, making it easier for them to see the value and relevance of what you’re selling. 

Analyzing technographic data: Key insights for B2B businesses

The analysis of technographic data can yield key insights that drive strategic decision-making. For instance, uncovering patterns in technology adoption can indicate which industries are ripe for innovation, allowing you to tailor your development efforts to where the demand is headed. 

Additionally, technographic analysis can reveal competitive insights. By understanding the tech stacks of your competitors’ customers, you can identify gaps in their offerings that your business could fill, providing a competitive edge. 

Furthermore, this analysis can inform your go-to-market strategy. Insight into the technologies that are gaining traction can help you prioritize markets and regions for expansion, aligning your efforts with the technological maturity and preferences of those areas. 

How DemandScience’s Data Ecosystem Empowers B2B Businesses

DemandScience’s database is a prime example of how B2B businesses can tap into technographic data. Our comprehensive data ecosystem offers detailed insights into companies’ tech usage, allowing for precise targeting and personalization of marketing efforts.

We can help you identify which companies are using competing or complementary products, enabling strategic account targeting. This information is crucial for crafting pitches that speak directly to the pain points and needs that arise from specific technological scenarios. 

Moreover, our robust database can enhance lead scoring by factoring in technographic details, thus improving lead quality and prioritization. With a more refined understanding of a prospect’s tech environment, your sales team can approach them with the right message at the right time. 

Conclusion: Insights, Improved Targeting

Technographic data has emerged as a cornerstone of intelligent business strategy in the B2B realm. This rich vein of insights allows you to understand not just who your customers are, but how they operate and what they might need next. 

To truly harness the power of technographic data, start by assessing your current data collection methods and consider partnering with an expert to fill in the gaps. With the right data in hand, you can fine-tune your targeting, deliver more relevant messaging, and ultimately, drive better business outcomes. 

Remember, in a landscape where technology evolves rapidly, staying informed on the technographics of your market is not just an advantage—it’s a necessity.  

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If you’d like to know more about how we could help to grow using technographic data, please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.