Business competition grows fiercer each year, forcing B2B marketers to find any edge possible. Many have turned to demographic and firmographic data for audience insights. But technographics has emerged as the key complement shaping modern data-driven strategies.
This new breed of behavioral data reveals how potential customers use and demand technology. Read on to explore what technographics entails, why it offers such an impactful lens, and how to put its power to work.
Defining Today‘s Technographics Landscape
The concept of technographics dates back to the 1980s, though its current iteration focuses more on granular insights. Technographics examines the specific technologies used by a business, across software, hardware, and tech services. Companies may look at over 50 data points, including:
- CRM, marketing, and sales tools used
- Web analytics, data visualization, and database platforms implemented
- Networking, security, and infrastructure hardware deployed
- IoT, AI, blockchain and other emerging technologies adopted
- IT spending habits and budgets
- Technology selection processes and buying committees
This rich view enables segmenting prospects based on tech propensity, spend, and growth drivers. Technographics shines compared to high-level firmographic stats alone.
Why Technographics Matters More Now Than Ever
Technographics empowers sales and marketing teams to laser-target accounts and personalize outreach. A 2022 ZoomInfo survey found:
- 60% of sales professionals will invest more in technographics this year
- 81% say it provides a more complete prospect view
- 81% say it makes them feel more prepared to engage prospects
See how businesses apply technographics in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kc4JWEWCaY
Specific use cases reveal its advantages:
- A telecom equipment maker boosted conversion rates 15% by targeting prospects lacking modern data networking tools.
- A cloud storage firm expanded new customer acquisition 25% year-over-year by engaging accounts poised to ditch legacy on-prem storage.
- A cybersecurity vendor reduced sales prospecting costs 29% by identifying companies with dated security tools ripe for new solutions.
The richness of technographics provides a blueprint to each prospect‘s technical environments and pain points.
Collecting Technographics Requires a Multipronged Approach
While some technographics data comes from first-party prospect surveys and web scraping, firms increasingly turn to data marketplaces for enhanced quality, scale, and convenience.
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Surveys – Directly asking about tech stacks grabs useful self-reported insights but lacks scalability. Response rates remain low.
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Scraping – Tools can extract tech data from websites, though only limited info is publicly visible. Scraping drains resources.
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Tech audits – Companies like Stackshare showcase verified organization profiles and tooling. However, voluntary participation limits coverage.
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Marketplaces – As a Web scraping and data extraction expert with over a decade of experience, I‘ve found this the most efficient channel. Curated datasets deliver turnkey, actionable technographics on millions of organizations with extensive metadata. Marketplaces provide a 360-degree view impossible through other means.
For example, TAMID‘s Technographics dataset covers over 5 million global companies with 47 data points on tech installed and tech budgeting/selection insights. This fuels advanced segmentation and personalization.
Powerful Use Cases for Technographics in B2B Marketing
Now let‘s explore transformative ways to apply technographics across the customer lifecycle:
Account-Based Marketing
Technographics enables precise account identification, segmentation, and personalized messaging at scale. Accounts can be tiered based on tech sophistication, budget, and growth trajectories within a market. Outbound campaigns resonate stronger when highlighting must-have capabilities for advanced tech stacks.
For instance, a cybersecurity vendor may prioritize targets lacking up-to-date threat protection or AI-driven network monitoring tools. Tailored multi-touch campaigns speak directly to the vulnerabilities and needs of each segment for monumentally better traction.
Campaign Personalization
Individual account intelligence allows crafting highly customized digital and offline campaigns. Dynamic ad content can showcase how a product bolsters specific solutions prospects already have in place. Emails can highlight upcoming end-of-life dates for obsolete hardware a company runs. Events can focus on tech upgrading challenges faced in the target industry.
Marketers move from generic, static content to dynamic interactions with laser focus. Conversion rates have been shown to jump 2X or more.
Competitive Intelligence
By analyzing customer technology profiles, businesses can uncover blinded spots and expansion opportunities. Reviewing your solution footprint among users of complementary tech provides assistance locating upsell and cross-sell openings. Examining competitors‘ installed bases may reveal areas of weakness to target.
Say an AI chatbot maker finds just 20% penetration with customers of leading CRM tools. They can prioritize expanding partnerships and co-marketing to gain share.
Customer Retention and Engagement
Technographics delivers an early warning system for customer churn risk and opportunities to promote loyalty. Tracking tech migrations by longtime customers allows anticipating needs and issues. As examples, a shift to different ERP software may signal plans to switch vendors. Lagging behind on adopting new innovations could indicate waning interest.
In response, companies can engage at-risk accounts with adoption incentives or redoubled success management. They can also develop customer health scorecards and retention programs informed by technographics signals.
Benefits and Considerations of Adopting Technographics
Fully leveraging technographics delivers tangible benefits but also requires care to avoid potential pitfalls:
Upsides
- 15-30% increases in conversion rate and sales efficiency
- 2X+ growth in personalized campaign effectiveness
- 20-40% larger addressable market and reduced missed opportunities
- 10-15% gains in customer retention and share of wallet
Watch-outs
- Technologies don‘t always reflect internal needs or buying motivations
- Static snapshots miss real-time changes without updating
- Direct outreach mentioning specific technologies may spook prospects
- Building deep internal expertise for analysis takes time and focused data ops
Overall, technographics is an invaluable — but not sufficient — data layer for today‘s tech-centric B2B landscape. Combining it with first-party intent, firmographic, and demographic data unlocks full perspective.
As you explore ways to incorporate technographics into modern data programs, feel free to reach out with any questions. With over 10 years of hands-on experience extracting and implementing behavioral data, I‘m excited to help strategize on surfacing key customer insights.
The technical foundations of business keep evolving. Keeping pace means tapping into intelligence on technology adoption patterns powering organizations forward today.