HOW BETTER DATA CAN SUPERCHARGE YOUR ABM PROGRAM

The Super Ingredient You Need to Be More Effective in Your Marketing and Sales Outreach

TABLE OF CONTENTS3 Executive Overview

4 The Right Data is Crucial to ABM Success

8 ABM Use Cases Powered by Technographics

11 Case Studies: Technographics in Action by HG Insights

14 HG Insights: The Trusted Leader in Technographics

15 Can Technographics Work for You?

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Successful account-based marketing (ABM) strategies are based on knowing your customer. In fact, the definition of ABM revolves around marketing to a tightly defined audience of companies that are pre-qualified. ABM replaces or augments a mass market approach so that sales teams spend more time engaging with prospects and can be more effective because they know better what the customer’s needs are.

To launch an ABM program takes extensive customer data. Firmographic data is an important starting point because it can help you target companies with the right size and scope for your solution, whether that be Fortune 100 or smaller. In addition, demographics help you target the right person within that organization based on title or responsibilities.

But for companies selling technology, or products/services that are dependent on technology, technographics are the “super ingredient” for ABM programs, delivering a complete record of the core hardware and software technologies your prospects use in their organizations. This crucial data allows marketing and sales teams to better target the right customers and to present a tightly honed sales benefit message.

With this gold mine of information, ABM campaigns can be even more focused and effective, whether your goal is to increase renewals/upgrades, displace a competitor, or offer a complementary solution.

This eBook will guide you with all you need to know to improve the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns with technographics.

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW

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Account-based marketing (ABM) is a marketing and sales strategy that emphasizes deep understanding of a select group of key accounts and makes a significant effort to understand their business and the need for your solution.

Some definitions of ABM state that the goal is to have “account

awareness,” but that would indicate that knowing the company is enough. In our definition of ABM, the goal is to understand your account and their technology environment enough to be able to market to them with as complete an understanding of their needs as possible.

THE RIGHT DATA IS CRUCIAL TO ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING SUCCESS

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ABM benefits

• Increased presence and impact in an account• Better and earlier customer engagement• Better sales forecasting• Tighter alignment of marketing and sales efforts• More compelling marketing for better competitive differentiation

Traditionally, ABM practitioners have built their customer profiles using firmographic and demographic data:

• Firmographics: This data describes aspects of the company that are important for your sales efforts. This can include employee size, revenue, industry, headquarters location, and number and location of branch offices. Many companies structure their products around firmographic information, including adding features and price points desired by a certain market (for example, a branch office telephone system). An understanding of firmographics is also helpful for building sales channels (for example, a direct sales staff to reach Fortune 100 companies). Firmographics are strategically important for planning at a macro level.

• Demographics: This data describes the prospective customer with information such as name, title, spending authority, work history, social connections, seniority, and more. With this information, the sale representative can isolate the right person in a company who can recommend her product.

The Right Data is Crucial to ABM SuccessThe Right Data is Crucial to ABM Success

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Technographics are the Super Ingredient You Need

So, your customer prospect has a complete firmographic and demographic profile. What else could the modern sales organization need to efficiently and effectively move the prospect to becoming a customer?

For technology companies, that answer is a complete understanding of their technology installed base. It’s called technographics and it’s quite a revolution for sales and marketing teams.

With technographics, sales can better evaluate a prospect’s likelihood of turning into a customer. Technographics offer the following benefits:

• Understand your markets by seeing what companies are using competitor products or products that are complementary to your solution. This gives you a clearer picture of your total available market, and allows you to identify who to target with your offer and how to tailor your outreach for maximum impact.

• Be better prepared for initial sales meetings. Sales people who go into an account speaking authoritatively about how their product will meet specific needs will have an advantage over the rep with a more generic message. Technographics allow the rep to know the pain points of their prospects and to move more quickly to deliver the right technology solution.

• Develop uniquely tailored marketing messages across all your channels - email, digital advertising, and sales outreach. A customized message attracts attention and stimulates higher response rates because it shows that you better understand your prospect’s needs.

Technographics tell you how many companies use a specific technology

The Right Data is Crucial to ABM Success

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=

Firmographics

Size,Revenue,Industry

Name,Title, Spending authority,Work history

Hardware,Software,When verified

Demographics Technographics

Complete Account Profile

The Right Data is Crucial to ABM Success

Technographics Give You a Complete Account Profile For companies using ABM to sell technology today, the competitive sweet spot occurs when firmographics, demographics, and technographics are combined into an account profile. With this combination, sales teams can identify their best-selling opportunities and develop a hyper-relevant sales strategy for higher levels of customer engagement and faster close rates.

Technographics show technologies installed at individual accounts

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Here are some examples of how technographics can be used to improve your ABM initiatives

Account TargetingTechnographics allow companies to precisely target their offerings at scale. For example, they can identify companies using products competitive or complementary to their own offerings, or organizations using software that is obsolete or no longer supported by their vendor. Knowing this information allows sales and marketing teams to develop campaigns and messaging that directly address the pain points of their prospects. Technographics can be used to find accounts in a customer’s existing CRM or marketing automation platform, or to find new accounts to pursue.

Sales AutomationSales automation refers to the automation of business tasks related to a sale, such as reporting or lead distribution or prioritization. This automation is important to the sales team because it alleviates many of the time-consuming tasks that take away from valuable selling time. Technographics enhance sales automation by helping sales teams quickly create more targeted prospect segments based on technology install data. This allows sales team to save time and accelerate sales cycles by focusing on the right opportunities.

ABM USE CASES POWERED BY TECHNOGRAPHICS

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Sales Territory AssignmentsFormerly a decision made utilizing only firmographics, now account staffing and sales territory assignments can be made more precisely with technographic information. With firmographics alone, factors such geographic density of targeted companies is the main factor in account assignments. But geographic density assumes that all prospects are equally likely to be customers. With technographics, you can determine which companies are more likely to be customers by factoring in an understanding of their adoption of enabling technologies or whether they use certain competitive systems.

Micro-messaging campaignsWithout technographics, marketing messaging must assume certain traits about a customer’s environment. But the specific needs of any customer will be different. Having as much data as possible on the technology installed at a particular account helps to identify those specific needs, which can be used to focus marketing messaging very narrowly and increase the impact of each marketing outreach program.

ABM Use Cases Powered by Technographics

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ABM Use Cases Powered by Technographics

Digital AdvertisingAdvanced data management platforms (DMPs)/demand side platforms (DSPs) allow digital advertisers to target their advertising by firmographics and demographics. Adding technographics allows B2B marketers to hyper-target prospective customers or entire market categories in online advertising based on the core technologies they have installed at their companies.

360-degree Customer Profile

A 360-degree customer profile provides a complete view of the systems installed or services in use at a customer or prospect’s location. The 360-degree profile allows sales teams to track share of wallet or to follow technology trends that might open up other sales opportunities. Technographics are the only way to build these profiles at the scale required for large sales organizations.

Technographics are the only way to build 360-degree account profiles at scale

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CASE STUDIESTechnographics in Action by HG InsightsSaaS Company Targets AccountsBedrock Data, a start-up SaaS data integration service provider, knew that its ideal customers have multiple CRM or marketing automation solutions. The company leverages technographics to analyze its prospects and customers to know just how many and what type of these systems are installed on customer sites.

With this information, the company can find the right accounts to target and rank them according to their need for the service. By using HG Insights, Bedrock Data was able to better identify ideal customers from its prospect list and reported that the data helped it to close the business much faster (within 30 days) than before.

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“It’s challenging reaching out to a new audience, but based on the targeting we can do using HG Insights’ technographics, we saw way above average response through email outreach — open rates, click-through rates, and engagement — in just our first month, which led to some quick sales wins for us.” Zak Pines, Vice President of Marketing Bedrock Data

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Prioritizing Sales LeadsIntacct, a cloud-based ERP software provider used HG Insights’ technographics to pare down a prospect list that totaled more than 70,000 companies to a much more focused list for its sales team to engage with. The HG Insights’ technographics data allowed the software provider to identify a prospect’s installed technology and if the prospect had any cloud-based services. With this information, the sales team was able to customize messaging for each customer, which lead to better quality conversations and enabled the team to focus on the accounts that had the highest likelihood to become customers.

Case Studies: Technographics in Action by HG Insights

Read entire case study

“We had been disappointed by the quality and timeliness of other data sources, so when I was first presented with technographics from HG Insights, I was extremely skeptical. We started with a small dataset so that we could validate its accuracy. The data drove some quick sales wins for us and soon my entire SDR team was asking for more.” Wanda Pansky, Senior Director of Sales Development Intacct

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Cloud Provider Tracks Competitive SolutionsIt’s not uncommon for large companies to utilize multiple cloud providers. One HG Insights cloud provider customer wanted to create 360-degree customer profiles in order to track the cloud services in use at the main sites of its strategic accounts.

The company combined HG Insights’ technographics with a third-party database of office location data, allowing sales management to segregate HG Insights’ in-depth customer technology installed base data on a hyper local basis. HG Insights’ technology installation information helped the sales team understand customer trends, know its market share, and develop customer programs on the spot to defend or expand its services footprint.

Studying Competitors Leads to New OpportunitiesOne professional services automation (PSA) company turned to HG Insights and its technographics to reach new prospects by studying competitor trends. Technographics provided the company with historical technology adoption data to develop competitor trend information, which informed new product development. Using technographics allowed the PSA company to reach new prospects and accelerate its sales pipeline.

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“HG Insights provided us with the most comprehensive and granular set of technology installation data we could find. HG Insights allowed us to target new companies by single or multiple technologies. They also surpassed our expectations by consistently delivering datasets that were three or more times larger than competitors for a given product or group of products.” Brent Spencer, Global Director of Marketing Kimble

Case Studies: Technographics in Action by HG Insights

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HG INSIGHTS: THE TRUSTED LEADER IN TECHNOGRAPHICS

BEST IN CLASS TECHNOGRAPHICS

Company Verification Date

Technology Stack

Physical/Cloud/Geography

WHO WHAT WHERE WHEN

HG Insights offers the most comprehensive technographics in the industry, indexing billions of unstructured documents each day – including B2B social media, case studies, press releases, blog posts, government documents, content libraries, technical support forums, website source code, job postings, and much more – to produce a detailed census of the technologies companies use to run their business. Companies use this information to out-market, out-sell, and outgrow their competition.

Out-market, out-sell and outgrow your competition with technographics

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CAN TECHNOGRAPHICS WORK FOR YOU?Can technographics be the super ingredient for your ABM campaign? HG Insights believes these insights will provide you with the advantage you need to achieve extraordinary results in your outreach. HG Insights can provide you with free data samples to let you see firsthand how you can benefit from technographics.

To explore the data for yourself or request samples:

For more information on technographics in general:

Visit HG Insights Marketing Solutions

Visit HG Insights’ Technographics

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