Firmographic data describes a company the way demographic data describes a person: its industry, size, location, ownership and stage of growth. It sorts companies into groups, so a team can segment a market, draw a territory or test whether an account matches its ideal customer profile.
How it is used
Teams use firmographics to size a total addressable market from the bottom up, to score the fit of an account, to balance sales territories and to compare a company with its peers. A segment is a rule over these attributes, for example software companies with 201 to 1,000 employees headquartered in the United Kingdom. A worked case is territory planning with firmographic and hiring data.
Firmographics say who a company is. They do not say what it runs or when it is likely to buy, which is why they are paired with technographic data.
Where the attributes come from
Registries, filings, company websites and press releases are the usual sources, and each has a weak point. Registries give legal facts but little about what a company does. Filings are detailed for listed companies and thin for private ones. A website describes the business in its own words, which a model can read into an industry and a customer type. Size is the hardest attribute: stated headcount arrives at intervals, and most companies publish no revenue.
Three mistakes recur:
- Keeping a value with no date, which cannot be tested later.
- Using headquarters country as the footprint of a group that operates in many.
- Scoring a subsidiary apart from its parent, which understates the group.
In Fokals data
Each company has one stable Fokals company ID, and a listed company carries its ticker, MIC, ISIN, LEI and share-class FIGI. Employee Headcount delivers stated headcount over time. Website labels give each company an industry (21 values), a business model, a target customer size and a growth stage, so a segment is a rule over labelled fields.
The weekly market series cut by industry, country, size band and market, with size as the band of stated employees, so a segment can be followed week by week as a cohort.
Related terms
- Technographic data: what a company runs.
- Corporate hierarchy: how subsidiaries roll up to a parent.
- Data enrichment: adding these attributes to records you hold.
- Ideal customer profile: the firmographic description of your best customers.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between firmographic and demographic data?
Demographic data describes people, with attributes such as age, income and location. Firmographic data describes organisations with the equivalent attributes: industry, number of employees, headquarters, ownership and growth stage. Business marketers use firmographics to segment accounts in the way consumer marketers use demographics to segment households.
What are examples of firmographic data?
Typical fields are industry, employee count or size band, headquarters country and region, public or private status, parent company, year founded and growth stage. Revenue is also common, though only companies that publish accounts state it. A good test of a field is whether it divides your market into groups that behave differently.
How is firmographic data different from technographic data?
Firmographic data says who a company is: its industry, size and location. Technographic data says what it runs, such as the analytics, commerce and CRM tools on its website. Fit models usually start with firmographics to define the market, then add technology to find the accounts inside it.