Technographic Data: Definition, Benefits, and More

As its name suggests, technographic data is a relatively new type of business insight that tells companies everything they need to know about the technology their customers use. It’s the kind of intelligence inherent to today’s B2B landscape – a space built and propelled with tech.

Before you ask, here’s why you need technographic data for everything from prospect and opportunity identification to tailoring the best customer experience in the market.

What Is Technographic Data?

As hinted earlier in the article, technographic data is the knowledge of the technology used by different companies. It’s not only about what your customers rely on. Technographics, as we call it, is any type of data that reveals more about present-day business technology and its applications.

Let’s say you’re selling refillable printer cartridges.

To find new prospects and push your business forward, you need a clear picture of what kind of printers local companies are using, right? How many printers do they have per office, and how often do they need a refill? Are they printing in color, or are their documents strictly B&W?

Technographic data can give you all the answers.

Technographic data is obtained and used similarly to other types of market segmentation. It’s only that, in specific B2B environments, knowing the tech stack is much more valuable than firmographic, geographic, or other types of data related to having other businesses as customers.

One more time, technographics refer to the knowledge of the tech stack – the unique combination of hardware, software, tools, applications, applications, and frameworks businesses use.

Why Do You Need Technographics?

Why would anyone need more business insight?

One word – competition.

The benefits of applying data to real-time problem-solving and long-term decision-making in today’s competitive business environment are endless. As entrepreneurs, our ultimate goal is not to beat other problem-solvers and innovators but to grow our businesses despite competition.

And for that, you need a competitive advantage.

Soon, we’ll talk more about how technographic data can accelerate your business growth. In general, knowledge puts you ahead of the competition. The knowledge about the market and customers is like road signs – without it, you can quickly end up gridlocked.

The Benefits of Technographic Data

How does technographic data ensure competitive advantage? And can it inflict real change? Can it improve your marketing campaigns or boost conversions? It absolutely can.

These are the most significant benefits of using technographic data.

Better Leads

If you were selling printer cartridges, many different companies would fit into your ideal customer profile. Today, every single business has a printer, but to narrow down the prospect pool to the businesses that are most likely to convert into customers, you need more insight.

Technographics can tell you the number of printers used in a specific company, but also the number of companies using a particular type of printer. The more specifics you have, the better.

Data accuracy is of crucial significance when you’re dealing with lead enrichment.

By keeping your prospect data accurate, you’re focusing your marketing and sales efforts on the right companies. Firmographics play an equally important part in this, of course, but when you’re selling a tech-related product or service, technographic data provides a more accurate aim.

Improved Sales

Sales improvement is the first of many direct upshots of accurate prospect data.

Selling products and services in the B2B space comes with a unique set of challenges, the most trying of which is lead generation. Identifying the right company to pitch to takes the most significant portion of time and resources available to a salesperson. Selling is easy when you know who to sell to.

That’s where you need accurate prospect data. Enter account profiling.

Combined with firmographics and other types of relevant data – especially intent – technographics enable sales teams to reduce the time needed for discovering the best prospects to the minimum. That way, they can focus all their skill and talent on doing what they do best – sell.

Targeted Marketing

Increased marketing reach is yet another critical benefit of technographic data. Intelligence is essential to marketing success, whatever strategy you choose. Whatever trick you employ, marketing will miss the mark unless you’re familiar with the needs and problems of your prospects.

Technographic data allows you to customize your marketing content, for instance, in personalized emails. Targeted ads are another excellent example of this.

Both targeted ads and account-based marketing campaigns require a profound understanding of your customers and bulletproof market segmentation. Technographic targeting can help you do this based on the customer characteristic most valuable to you – their tech stack.

Easier Retention

Tapping the same pool of information, your customer success team can work harmoniously with your salespeople and create enjoyable experiences for all of your current customers.

In the B2B sector, the fight to win over customers doesn’t stop with conversion. It may be even more important to retain them, given how hard the acquisition is – B2B businesses must invest in personalized service, enjoyable experiences, and long-lasting relationships.

Technographic insight is useful for this, too.

You can do a lot with the correct information. For example, technographics can signal your customers’ growing or changing needs, which you can use as an opportunity to upsell, cross-sell, or extend the deal. Ultimately, it can help you show your commitment and care.

3 Ways to Acquire Technographics

Hopefully, now you understand the importance of technographic data throughout the customer journey. Should you decide to include it in your knowledge base, it would be our pleasure to help you out. There are three ways to obtain technographics, some better than the others:

1. Customer Surveys – Even large businesses should make the time to reach out to their customers and ask if they need anything. That’s part of creating successful customer experiences. It’s also an excellent way to collect necessary technographic information. However, it only works for customer retention and doesn’t help you gain any insight into prospective customers.
2. Data Scraping – Data scraping is a way to collect large amounts of data from available online sources. Though some companies have dedicated teams for this, you should know that in-house data scraping comes with many challenges. It requires a significant investment in knowledge and tools; even then, it often ends up with raw, unusable data and bans all over the internet.
3. Data Providers – Purchasing technographic data from third-party providers is the easiest and most effective way to obtain valuable insight. The data you receive is not only accurate and scrapped from multiple sources but also clean and applicable as is. At Coresignal, you can make custom requests and receive monthly or quarterly data updates. Just tell us what you need.

Conclusion

If your business is in the business of selling tech-related products and services to other companies, you need technographic data to do that better. Technographic insight helps you understand your customers better, boost sales, tailor targeted marketing, and create successful customer journeys.

It’s one of those all-in-one solutions that your competitors have only started to discover.