Businesses across verticals are starting to see tremendous value in data. Data is slowly taking over industries as a go-to resource for facilitating decision-making, so you might be wondering which data to use to improve your business.

Web-based firmographic data emerges as one of the best data to use in B2B markets, although it has some use cases in the B2C niche.

However, it’s still something new, and business owners and managers have reservations about refining their business processes, especially those as sensitive as decision-making. The correct information can dispel these reservations and have you on the right track.

Here is everything you need to know about web-based firmographic data.

What is web-based firmographic data?

To help you better understand what web-based firmographic data is, we’ll separately address the web-based and firmographic data parts.

When looking at various business solutions, you’ll notice that some come with the “web-based” prefix. It implies that a particular tool is available online. You can start using it immediately, often without downloading anything.

Firmographic data or firmographics is a B2B equivalent of demographics. Demographics help you discover a lot about your customers. On the other hand, firmographics enables you to understand businesses in a specific industry, market segment, or location.

For instance, in a capable firmographic data, you will be able to discover the following:

• Company name – the complete name of a company;
• Industry type – the industry type a company operates such as legal service, financial, IT & services, or logistics;
• Company size – how many people are on the company’s payroll and the size of its offices;
• Location – the current company location and where it has the satellite offices;
• Trends – whether the company is successfully maintaining its position in the market or is experiencing downsizing or growth;
• Performance – the total sales and revenue, including annual and quarterly reports;
• Ownership – whether the company is a non-profit, public, NGO, or private. Therefore, web-based firmographics is online firmographic data readily available for

Web-based vs. internal firmographic data

When you consider using a web-based database vs. a database you build from scratch, there are several things to know regarding firmographic data.

First of all, the dataset you collect may be incomplete, inaccurate, or outdated. Organizations are pretty limited when collecting firmographic data on their own.

You can create detailed surveys and email them to the companies in your network. However, there is always the risk of not getting all completed surveys back as companies don’t particularly enjoy sharing private data with their competitors.

There is another way to create an internal firmographic database. You can launch a web scraping operation to get the data from online sources, such as companies’ official websites and social media profiles.

You will have to address various anti-scraping measures and have an appropriate infrastructure to sustain your operation at scale. It includes the server side of the process, data refinement, and database and server maintenance.

Web-based firmographic data puts you immediately in the position of benefit.

You can start using the data the moment you purchase it. Whether you want to use it with your analytics tools or to display charts and pies for instant insights, you will be able to do it.

Plus, you don’t have to worry about staying compliant as these firms collect data and build datasets while respecting all relevant rules and regulations, including GDPR.

How to obtain web-based firmographics

We’ve already covered two main methods of building an internal firmographics database – collecting the data through surveys or web scraping. To obtain web-based firmographics, you will need to purchase the data from a reliable data provider.

Firmographic data vendors have elaborate marketplaces where you can browse through many databases. Obtaining web-based firmographics will cost you, but that is an excellent investment considering the value.

The value doesn’t only come from getting access to the complete data set. You can rest assured that it features accurate and the most recent data on relevant companies ready for use out-of-the-box.

Benefits of firmographic data

It’s important to note the difference between using firmographic data and its web-based counterpart.

The benefits of using firmographic data are many. For instance, you can use it to launch informed account-based marketing strategies. To improve your conversion rates, you can personalize your marketing approach for every decision-maker in the target company.

You can also use firmographics to calculate location quotients and make intelligent investment decisions in local markets worldwide.

Using web-based firmographics brings all these benefits, plus a few more.

First, you don’t have to invest in collecting and internally storing your data, which can also take weeks. You get access to the most recent data that data providers have refined for use.

Additionally, you don’t have to worry about staying compliant with data privacy laws as the data provider takes care of it.

Conclusion

Web-based firmographic data unlocks many opportunities for your business. You can access online datasets that include valuable information on companies in a specific industry, market segment, or location.

Web-based firmographics can help you improve your decision-making process and base your decisions on accurate, relevant, up-to-date facts, leading your company to long-term success.