At a very fundamental level, the starting point for B2B sales and marketing is defining the target audience—often referred to as the ideal customer profile (ICP). In most cases, an ICP includes company firmographic information: industry, number of employees, revenue, etc. But for B2B companies, a critical component of an ICP is technology usage.

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How Technographic Data Improves B2B Targeting

Technology usage, or technographics, provide insight into how a company is operating, where they are investing their time and budgets, and often can provide insight into whether they are a good fit for your solution.

As a component of your ideal customer profile, layering technology usage data is much more powerful than using firmographics alone. Here’s a great example: If your target audience includes companies based in the United States, in the retail industry, and with revenue over $100MM—you’ll have a good sized pool of companies to target (3100+ according to our data).

Now let’s say that you know that your solution is most often used by companies that use a business management software called Epicor. By adding this element of technology usage onto our ideal customer profile, you’ll discover the companies that are the best fit for your business—132 businesses, to be exact.

With this insight, you can now focus your budgets, optimize campaign targeting, improve sales outreach, and ultimately become more efficient—resulting in shorter sales cycles and higher conversion rates.

Nothing Good Comes Easy

With all of the value that technology usage insights can provide B2B sales and marketing teams, why isn’t everyone using these attributes as a component of their strategy? Simple answer: accurate and up-to-date information is hard to find. If you are able to identify the technologies that a company is using, the process is cumbersome and time-consuming—and probably incomplete.

The solution? Partner with a B2B data provider who specializes in providing real-time, comprehensive technographic details.

Benefits of Targeting by Technology

1. More efficient sales teams.

When your sales reps have deep account insights at their fingertips—including technology usage information—they can spend more time selling.

2. Relevant marketing messaging.

Dive deeper into the accounts that fit your ideal customer profile, and segment them into relevant groups. In doing this, you can create micro-campaigns with corresponding messaging that resonates with prospects.

3. Get a leg up on the competition.

Competition can be fierce in B2B industries, so why not use technographic insight to gain market share? Find out the companies who are using solutions that compete with yours, and create specific take-away campaigns and prospecting initiatives.

4. Know where to cross-sell and up-sell.

Find a B2B data provider who also builds AI-models based on your CRM history. By evaluating the technology stack of your existing customers, these models can help you understand where your best cross- and up-sell opportunities are, and can even recommend the next most logical product for that customer.

Whether you are a startup or an enterprise corporation, understanding more about your target audience critical for business growth. By accessing real-time technographic insights and incorporating those into your ideal customer profile, you can gain a significant competitive advantage.

Have any questions about using technograhpics, or about how Enlyft can help? Contact us anytime.

About Enlyft

Enlyft helps B2B companies identify and engage the accounts most likely to their solutions. Built with AI at its core, the Enlyft platform provides access to real-time company insights—including firmographic information, technology usage, purchase intent, and more. The result? Insights that enable sales and marketing teams to more effectively identify, prioritize and engage prospective accounts.