08/05/2020

What is Technographic Data?

Technographic data is composed of detailed information about the technology stack installed by your targeted accounts. This type of profiling can include both software and/or hardware specifications, website mechanics and automation technologies. Further information can include how recently they’ve adopted these products or IT spend in general. This kind of information can lead to interesting Technographic B2B use cases.

Having this type of data is important to understand which prospects will be a good fit based on the company’s alignment with being able to use a certain type of technology, enabling you to remove them as a target if it’s not viable with your solutions technical specifications. This is especially relevant if your solution is an “add-on” to existing software or it requires system compatibility. Multiple sources have mentioned Technographic data usage as increasing closing rates and improving conversion speed, furthering business growth and boosting prospect engagement, among other benefits.

When combined with Firmographics (company details) and Demographics (personal details), Technographics can help provide a holistic view of the targeted company as well as their fit with your solution and most importantly, serve as an indicator for potential purchases. Using data from all three of these categories enables effective Account-Based Marketing (ABM), which we’ve already explored in this article. In addition to ABM, there are a number of other B2B Technographic Use Cases we will explore in the next section.

B2B Marketing Technographic Use Cases

Having explained the general purpose of Technographic data, in the following section, we will explore a number of more specific Technographic B2B Use Cases:

ABM Scoring: this Technographic B2B Use Case was already mentioned in conjunction with Demographics and Firmographics but it’s also significantly relevant individually. ABM success relies on effective targeting and prioritising the highest quality leads (for example on sales call lists). Implementing a Technographic score in this analysis enables to add a key point of buying intent and prospect identification.

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Definition: understanding what technology purchase behaviour your customers typically share is an important measure to help define the ICP your marketing and sales team should be targeting.

Marketing Campaigns: targeting the correct audience with the added insights that come from technographic data leads to increased engagement as the messages and content can be customised to improve relevance to prospects.

Online advertising: segmenting an audience with technographic data can capacitate hyper-targeted ads to audiences when taking into consideration the technology products in question.

Customer journeys: with technographic data, a marketer can optimise the entire inbound marketing funnel to better nurture leads by using more detailed segmentation. Top, medium or bottom-funnel content can be sent based on the technology usage of the customer. Whether they are using competitor products, complementary tools or no solutions at all can define what kind of content should be highlighted.

Market analysis: a lesser-known Technographic B2B use case is market analysis. Finding companies that use similar software can enable a marketing team to uncover a wide range of audiences that could be viable targets that had not been previously considered.

Enriching your current CRM can be accomplished by adding technographic data points. If you simply want to optimise your database without enriching it, check out this article on CRM cleanup tactics.