Firmographic Data

What is firmographic data?

Firmographic data, or firmographics, are sets of characteristics to segment prospect organizations in B2B Databases. What demographics are to people, firmographics are to organizations. These characteristics can include the company size, industry, legal status, revenue, employee size, opening hours, geocodes, import / export.

Firmographics variables allow firms to consider the features of organizational behavior in detail, for instance in a particular industry. It is helpful when there is no significant difference between operating variables, purchasing approach, situational factors and personal characteristics of customers.

In general, firmographic data is most relevant to B2B companies that interact with other firms. A firm can be any legal entity from a federal organization or a non-profit organization, to a global enterprise or a small highstreet retail shop.

Firmographics can be incredibly useful in helping you to know more about the companies you’re targeting. This could be both future prospects and even your current customers, and suppliers.

Firmographic data is also often used to enrich other data types, like B2B contacts or technographics. The additional information from firmographics is vital in anticipating the framework for the entire interaction, such as how long the sale might take and the potential budget of the company.

What are the main categories of firmographic data?

Industry Firmographics

Industry firmographics refer to the activities of the firm. At a very high level, organizations can be classified into business and government segments. Most business activities are naturally constrained to certain industries due to their core competencies or the demands of the customers. Only a few business activities are not. Therefore, industry type becomes a natural market segmentation variable for businesses. Government organizations can be segmented by their federal, state, county, regional, city, and municipality status. The dominant business segmentation variables are those associated with an NACE or SIC code. NACE code is the standard European classification for all companies in with the EU. SIC refers to the older Standard Industrial Classification system that was established in 1937. Either NACE or SIC can be used to identify firms by industry. While most businesses use the newer NAICSS, many still work with the older SIC and both systems can be used with most modern business research reports and tools.

Location Firmographics

Location firmographics refers to where the business is located. As a segmentation variable, firms may be aggregated by city, metropolitan statistical area, state, region, country, or continent. Alternatively, firms may be targeted according to their distance from a central location, usually the location of the firm conducting the sales and marketing effort. Most business activities are naturally constrained to certain regions due to competitive pressures, legal restrictions, and cost constraints. Only a few business activities are not. As such, location becomes a natural market segmentation variable for businesses as a firmographic. The nature of the industry plays a role if the location is of big importance. Businesses in a certain industry can therefore be compared with each other on location.

Customer size Firmographics

Customer size in Firmographics refers to the size of clients the company has. This can range from small- to mid-size companies or Fortune 500 clients. The size of customers companies aim for may distinguish one company from another. Company size Firmographics are employee size, revenue, profit, number of locations, number of family members etc.

Status and structure Firmographics

Status and structure firmographics can refer to the relation of one organization to another, or it can refer to the legal status of an organization. For instance, individual establishments (sole proprietorships) may be categorized as being independent businesses, part of a larger parent company, or the headquarters of a parent company. Similarly, firms may be categorized as being a stand-alone entity, a franchisee of a franchising organization, a subsidiary of a larger organization, or the outlet of a larger organization. Alternatively, firms may be categorized as being a sole proprietorship, limited liability corporation, limited liability partnership, private corporation, or public shareholder-owned corporation. Other variables describing the status or structure of an organization are used as well.

Performance firmographics

Performance firmographics refer to the characteristics of a firm related to its business execution over time. The duration of a firm’s existence, rate of growth or decline, profits and losses, and changes in profits and losses can all be indicators of the likelihood of a firm to need a business product or service. Firms in the same industry of relatively similar size but undergoing different rates of growth or decline are likely to have very different demands for business services. As such, they can form meaningful segmentation variables. As such, they can form meaningful segmentation variables. Companies carrying put segmentation of their customers choose performance metrics based on the information they would like to acquire. That is why there may be no performance variable, but a group of variables that can be referred to as «performance», such as:

• Annual revenue: There’s usually a clear correlation between how significant a company’s annual earnings are, and whether a buyer would have money in the budget to afford doing business with a company.
• Executive title: Which titles are proven most likely to need your products and/or services?
• Average sales cycle: How long does the average sale take to close? What is the official dividing line between prospects who want to make a well-informed buying decision and those who have no real intention of buying.

The table below represents some other possible variables used in firmographics:

Size firmographics

• Number of Employees
• Number of Locations
• Number of Plants
• Number of cars, truck (fleet)
• Number of beds (hotels, hospitals)

Financial firmographics

• Sales
• Profits
• Credit Rating
• Revenue

Decisions firmographics

• Headquarter/Subsidiary
• Branch
• Singe locations
• Ultimute parent company
• Domestic parent company

Ownership firmographics

• Public Company
• Private Company
• Government
• Non-Profit
• Person

Market firmographics

• Market Size
• Number of Potential Customers
• Market Structure

Position firmographics

• Market Share
• Industry Position

Stage firmographics

• Product Life Cycle
• Industry Life Cycle

Trends firmographics

• Growth
• Decline
• Stability

Customers firmographics

• B2B
• B2C
• B2E
• B2G

Property firmographics

• Lease – Plant & Equipment
• Own – Plant & Equipment

Technology firmographics

• High Tech
• Low Tech
• WEB TECHNOLOGIES

Want to get started with our Firmographics Data?

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