Enriching your B2B customer database is crucial for better lead generation, segmentation, sales, and ROI. Discover the top data types to collect. Data is a crucial business driver that tells marketing, sales, and customer success teams where to direct their efforts. It uncovers essential information to help companies make data-driven decisions, develop laser-focused strategies, and build long-term growth.
When running a B2B company, you need five essential customer data types to improve lead generation, segmentation, and nurturing, boost conversions and sales, and increase ROI. Learn more about each before exploring the best methods to collect them.
Contact data
B2B companies that focus on prospecting collect contact data to generate leads and convert them into paying customers. They use it to identify potential prospects, ensure they fit their ideal customer profile, and build a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) database for seamless nurturing.
Contact or people data includes:
- Names;
- Age;
- Email addresses;
- Phone numbers;
- Location;
- Education information;
- Employment history;
- Job titles;
- Skills;
- Social media profiles.
Contact data is particularly beneficial if your sales team relies on cold calls and emails.
Firmographic data
Firmographic data is the B2B equivalent of demographic data. It helps B2B companies segment target organizations according to their business structure, industry, location, and other factors relevant to their marketing and sales initiatives.
Firmographics can help qualify your leads, ensuring they fit your ideal customer profile.
For instance, if you provide sales enablement software, you must ensure your leads are marketing and sales professionals using digital collateral to guide prospects through the sales funnel. Knowing their target audience, size, and revenue can help you attract and convert them.
Some firmographic data points include:
- Company name
- Ownership framework
- Industry
- Size
- Headcount
- Location
- Target market
- Performance (e.g., annual revenue, expenditure, and sales cycle)
- Growth trends
Technographic data
Technographic data uncovers various companies’ tech stacks – every software, app, and tool they use to conduct daily operations. It gives insights into their providers, usage, and integrations and shows which features they use most.
That’s perfect for presenting your products as ideal alternatives or complementary solutions that could take their tech stacks to the next level.
Technographics are excellent for discovering your target customers’ challenges with existing solutions and opportunities to offer yours. You can learn their preferences and pain points and devise plans to meet their needs.
You can identify and qualify prospects, enhance lead generation and scoring, discover growth opportunities, gain a competitive edge, and improve customer retention.
You can empower marketing, sales, business intelligence, and customer success teams through actionable business insights for data-driven decisions. They can identify market gaps, improve ABM (Account-Based Marketing) efforts, improve sales pitches, upsell, and personalize the entire buyer’s journey.
Standard points you can find in technographic data include:
- A company’s tech stack list;
- Features;
- Third-party integrations;
- The number of companies using specific tools;
- The number of stacks where those tools appear.
Chronographic data
Chronographic data highlights meaningful events that can help B2B companies target organizations when the most significant sales opportunities appear.
For instance, changing products, moving to another location, or replacing executives are crucial sales triggers opening up B2B opportunities for more revenue.
The most notable events and changes to monitor are:
- Location changes;
- New hires;
- Employees leaving;
- Promotions;
- Executive replacements;
- Tool adoptions;
- New funding;
- Expansions;
- New partnerships;
- Company IPO;
- Mergers and acquisitions (M&As).
Intent data
Intent data uncovers when your target customers consider or plan to purchase your products or services. That sales intelligence can help you target prospects at the most convenient time and guide them to the end of your sales funnel.
Some B2B intent data points that show a consumer is ready to buy include:
- Demo requests;
- Free trial sign-ups;
- Downloads;
- Subscriptions;
- Frequent visits to your pricing page.
How to collect B2B customer data
You can use many methods to collect B2B customer data, including:
- Surveys – Phone, email, and online surveys are excellent for gathering product feedback and discovering pain points and preferences;
- Polls – This data collection method is best for getting a quick response to a question;
- Questionnaires – This research instrument is perfect for measuring consumer behavior, including purchasing habits, interests, opinions, intent, and attitudes;
- Gated content – Sign-up forms for downloading your whitepapers, subscribing to your email newsletter, or accessing other exclusive resources provide contact data;
- Social media – Running ads and scraping relevant platforms can provide quality customer information;
- Professional networking platforms – Websites like LinkedIn are brilliant for searching companies and their employees;
- Data providers – Companies like Coresignal offer parsed, ready-to-use data, ensuring their records contain up-to-date, accurate, correct, and complete information.
Conclusion
Keeping your B2B customer database up to date with relevant, accurate information is the key to better strategies and long-term growth. It will maximize your team’s efforts, point you in the right direction to boosting sales and revenue, and set your company apart from the competition.
