What Are Firmographics?
If you’ve ever tried to describe your ideal customer, you’ve probably used phrases like “mid-market SaaS companies” or “enterprise healthcare organizations in the Northeast.” What you’re actually describing are firmographics—the B2B marketer’s equivalent of demographics.
Just as consumer marketers use demographics to understand people (age, income, education level), B2B professionals use firmographics to understand companies. It’s that simple. The difference is that instead of asking “Who is this person?”, you’re asking “What kind of company is this?”
Think about it this way. If you’re selling a marketing automation platform, you don’t want to pitch a three-person startup with no marketing budget. You also don’t want to waste time on a massive enterprise that already has Marketo or HubSpot locked in with a five-year contract. You want companies in that sweet spot—maybe 50-500 employees, growing fast, with a marketing team that’s outgrown their current tools but not so large that they need an enterprise solution.
That’s firmographic targeting in action. You’re using descriptive attributes about companies to narrow down your universe of possible customers to the ones most likely to buy. It’s the foundation of every successful B2B targeting strategy, whether you’re doing account-based marketing, building outbound lists, or defining your ideal customer profile.
The Core Firmographic Attributes That Matter
Let’s walk through the main firmographic data points you’ll use to segment and target companies. Not all of these will matter equally for your business—a regional service provider cares deeply about location, while a global SaaS company might not care at all. The key is understanding what each attribute tells you and which ones correlate with your best customers.
Industry Classification: Finding Your Vertical
Industry is usually the first firmographic filter most B2B companies apply, and for good reason. If your product solves problems specific to healthcare, you’re probably not going to have much luck selling to construction companies.
In practice, industry classification comes down to two main coding systems: SIC codes and NAICS codes. SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) is the older system with 4-digit codes and broader categories. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) is newer, uses 6-digit codes, and gets more granular. For example, SIC code 7372 covers “Prepackaged Software” broadly, while NAICS breaks this into more specific categories like 541511 for “Custom Computer Programming Services” and 541512 for “Computer Systems Design Services.”
Here’s what this looks like in real targeting. Say you sell compliance software to financial services companies. You’d want to target NAICS codes in the 52 range (Finance and Insurance), which includes banks (522110), investment firms (523110), and insurance carriers (524113). You’d probably exclude categories like 522390 (Other Activities Related to Credit Intermediation) because they’re not your core buyer.
The power of industry targeting is that it lets you tailor your entire approach. Your messaging for healthcare companies can focus on HIPAA compliance and patient data security. Your messaging for financial services can emphasize SOC 2 and regulatory reporting. Same product, completely different value propositions based on vertical-specific pain points.
Company Size: Finding the Right Fit
Size is where most B2B companies find their natural market. You can measure size by employee count or by revenue, and both tell you different things.
Employee count is usually the more accessible data point. Most companies bucket this into segments like micro (1-10 employees), small (11-50), mid-market (51-500), enterprise (500-5,000), and large enterprise (5,000+). The exact ranges vary by industry and who you ask, but the principle is the same: bigger companies have different needs, budgets, and buying processes than smaller ones.
Revenue sizing works similarly but gives you a more direct line to budget capacity. A company doing $50 million in annual revenue has fundamentally different resources than one doing $5 million, even if they have similar headcounts.
Here’s a real scenario. You sell a customer data platform. Your SMB tier costs $2,000 per month and works great for companies with simpler needs. Your enterprise tier starts at $10,000 per month and includes advanced features, dedicated support, and custom integrations. If you target companies with 500+ employees, you’re going to spend a lot of time talking to prospects who can’t afford your enterprise tier but have outgrown your SMB offering. Better to target the 200-500 employee range where your enterprise tier makes sense but you’re not competing with massive incumbents.
The mistake most companies make with size-based targeting is going too broad. “Any company with more than 10 employees” isn’t a useful filter. You need to find the range where your product delivers enough value to justify its cost, but isn’t overkill for the customer’s needs.
Geographic Location: Where They Operate
Location matters for different reasons depending on your business model. If you run a field service business, geography might be your most important firmographic filter—you can’t service a customer in Dallas if all your technicians are in Boston. If you sell purely digital products globally, you might care less about headquarters location and more about whether you can legally do business in their country.
Even for digital-first businesses, geography still matters. Time zones affect when you can schedule calls and how quickly you can respond to customer issues. Regional regulations like GDPR in Europe or CCPA in California might affect whether a prospect can even use your product. Cultural and language differences influence how you position and sell your solution.
The data itself comes in layers. At the broadest level, you’ve got country. Then region or state. Then metro area, city, and down to zip code if you need that precision. Most B2B targeting uses headquarters location as the primary geographic firmographic, but larger companies might have dozens or hundreds of office locations you’ll also want to track.
Here’s where this gets practical. Imagine you sell an HR platform and you’re expanding from the US into Canada. Your firmographic filter might be: “Companies headquartered in Ontario with 50-500 employees.” That’s specific enough to build a focused outbound campaign. You can reference Canadian employment law in your messaging, run LinkedIn ads targeting Ontario decision-makers, and schedule calls during Toronto business hours.
Revenue and Financial Health: Can They Afford You?
Revenue data tells you about buying power. A company doing $100 million annually has budgets that a $5 million company doesn’t. But financial firmographics go beyond just top-line revenue.
Growth rate matters enormously. A company growing 50% year-over-year has expanding needs and fresh budget. They’re hiring, scaling, and buying tools to support that growth. A company with flat or declining revenue is probably in cost-cutting mode, making them a much harder sell unless you can prove immediate ROI.
Funding status is another key signal, especially for startups and growth-stage companies. A company that just raised a $20 million Series B is actively investing in growth. They’re your ideal prospect if you sell tools for scaling companies. Six months later, when they’re getting pressure from investors to show profitability, the buying window might close.
For public companies, you can get precise revenue and profitability data from SEC filings. For private companies, you’re usually working with estimates from data providers, though these have gotten quite accurate. Funding data for venture-backed companies is readily available through sources like Crunchbase and PitchBook.
The key insight here is that revenue firmographics help you time your outreach. Don’t just ask “Can they afford this?” Ask “Are they in a growth phase where this investment makes sense?”
Ownership Structure: Who Makes Decisions
The difference between selling to a venture-backed startup, a private equity-owned company, and a family business is night and day. Each ownership type has different priorities, decision-making processes, and buying behaviors.
VC-backed companies are usually growth-focused and willing to invest in tools that help them scale faster. They move quickly but also churn quickly if something isn’t working. Private equity-owned companies tend to be more efficiency-focused—they want tools that reduce costs or increase margins. Family-owned businesses often have longer decision cycles but better retention once they commit.
Public companies are transparent (you can see their financials) but often have formal procurement processes that slow down deals. Private companies can move faster but you have less visibility into their financial health. Non-profits operate on completely different budget cycles and priorities than for-profit companies.
Here’s a practical example. You sell a financial planning tool. Your pitch to a VC-backed SaaS company emphasizes how your tool helps them forecast growth and manage burn rate for investors. Your pitch to a private equity-owned services business focuses on margin optimization and operational efficiency. Same tool, but you’re speaking to fundamentally different priorities based on ownership structure.
Growth Stage: Where They Are in the Journey
A two-year-old startup finding product-market fit has completely different needs than a 20-year-old enterprise optimizing operations. Growth stage isn’t always captured as a distinct data field, but you can infer it from other signals like company age, hiring velocity, funding rounds, and revenue trajectory.
Early-stage companies (startups) are scrappy, moving fast, and willing to try new tools. They’re also risky customers who might not be around in a year. Growth-stage companies are scaling everything—team, revenue, operations. They’re ideal buyers for tools that help them grow more efficiently. Mature companies are established and optimizing. They’re stable customers but harder to displace incumbents. Declining companies are contracting, which usually means they’re not buying new tools.
Watch for growth signals like rapid hiring (they’re adding headcount), office expansion (they’re scaling physically), new funding rounds (they have capital to invest), and revenue acceleration (they’re winning in the market). These signals tell you when companies are moving from one stage to another and might be in-market for your solution.
Where to Get Firmographic Data
You’ve got several options for sourcing firmographic data, each with different strengths and trade-offs.
B2B data providers like ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clearbit, and others aggregate firmographic data from multiple sources and package it into searchable databases. These platforms let you filter by industry, size, location, and other attributes, then export lists of companies matching your criteria. The advantage is comprehensive coverage and easy filtering. The downside is cost—enterprise data platforms aren’t cheap.
Government sources provide free, accurate data for certain company types. SEC filings give you detailed financials for public companies. State business registries have basic information on registered entities. The IRS publishes data on tax-exempt organizations. The catch is coverage—you’re only getting data on companies required to file these documents.
LinkedIn Company Pages are surprisingly useful for firmographic research. Most companies maintain their LinkedIn presence with current employee counts, headquarters location, and industry classification. LinkedIn also shows you hiring trends and company growth. You can’t export this data at scale easily, but for manual research or smaller lists, it’s valuable.
Company websites themselves are first-party sources. About pages, careers sites, press releases, and investor pages often contain the firmographic data you need. The information is usually accurate since companies control it, but collecting it manually doesn’t scale.
The reality for most B2B teams is using a combination. You might use a data provider for broad filtering and list building, then verify critical details from company websites or LinkedIn before high-priority outreach.
Putting Firmographics to Work
Having firmographic data is one thing. Using it effectively to target, segment, and prioritize accounts is where the real value comes from.
Start by defining your ideal customer profile using firmographic criteria. What industries do your best customers operate in? What size companies see the most value from your product? Where are they located? What ownership types tend to buy and stick around? Look at your existing customer base and identify the firmographic patterns among your happiest, highest-revenue, longest-tenured customers.
Then use those criteria to segment your market. Not every account that fits your ICP deserves the same level of attention. You might create a Tier 1 segment for companies that match your ICP perfectly—say, 200-500 employee SaaS companies in your target verticals. Tier 2 might be similar but slightly smaller or in adjacent industries. Tier 3 could be companies that match on some dimensions but not all. Each tier gets a different sales approach—high-touch and personalized for Tier 1, more scaled for lower tiers.
Use firmographics to build target account lists. Instead of manually researching companies one by one, you can query a data provider with your firmographic criteria and get back thousands of matching companies instantly. Then enrich those companies with contact data for decision-makers and prioritize based on fit.
Many teams implement firmographic scoring to quantify account fit. You might assign points for each attribute—30 points for being in a target vertical, 25 points for being in your ideal size range, 20 points for revenue fit, and so on. Companies scoring above 80 are high priority, 60-80 are medium, below 60 are low. This gives your sales team clear direction on where to focus.
Combining Firmographics with Other Data Types
Firmographics are powerful, but they’re even more effective when combined with other data signals.
Pair firmographics with technographics (technology usage data) and you can get incredibly precise. Firmographics tell you the company is in your target market. Technographics tell you they’re using a competitor tool that your product integrates with, or that they’re not using a solution in your category at all. That combination—right company profile, right tech stack—creates a highly qualified prospect list.
Layer on intent data and you add timing. Maybe a company matches your ICP perfectly (firmographics) and uses complementary tools (technographics), but they’re not actively researching solutions like yours. That’s a warm prospect. If that same company starts showing intent signals—visiting category-related content, downloading comparison guides, searching for your competitors—they become a hot prospect.
Add engagement data from your own marketing and sales touchpoints. A company that matches your firmographic ICP and has visited your pricing page multiple times is showing buying intent. One that matches your ICP but has never engaged might need more nurturing.
The key is using firmographics as your foundation, then layering additional data to refine targeting and prioritize outreach.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Most companies make predictable mistakes with firmographic targeting. Here’s what to watch out for.
Being too narrow is common when you’re first starting out. If your ICP is “10-person SaaS companies in San Francisco,” you’ve probably limited yourself to a few hundred companies total. That’s not a viable total addressable market for most businesses. You need to be specific enough to focus your efforts, but broad enough to have room to grow.
The opposite problem—being too broad—is just as bad. “Any company with revenue” isn’t a useful filter. You’ll waste time and money marketing to companies that will never buy from you. The whole point of firmographic targeting is to narrow the universe down to high-fit accounts.
Focusing on the wrong attributes happens when you choose firmographics that feel important but don’t actually correlate with your best customers. Maybe you think company age matters, but when you analyze your customer base, you find that growth rate is a much better predictor of fit. Always validate your firmographic criteria against real customer data.
Treating firmographics as static is a mistake. Your ICP should evolve as your product matures, as you move upmarket or downmarket, as you expand into new verticals or geographies. Regularly revisit your firmographic targeting criteria based on win/loss data and customer success patterns.
Finally, don’t trust all firmographic data equally. Employee counts can be outdated. Revenue figures for private companies are estimates. Industry classifications might be wrong. Verify the firmographics that really matter before you base major decisions on them.
Key Takeaways
Firmographics are the foundation of effective B2B targeting. They help you answer the fundamental question: “Which companies should we be selling to?” By focusing on attributes like industry, company size, location, revenue, ownership structure, and growth stage, you can identify prospects that match your ideal customer profile and prioritize your sales and marketing efforts accordingly.
The most important firmographic attributes for your business depend on what you sell and who buys it. For some companies, industry is paramount. For others, size or location matters most. The key is analyzing your existing customer base to identify which firmographic patterns correlate with successful customers, then using those patterns to find more companies like them.
Getting firmographic data is easier than ever thanks to B2B data providers, though you can also source it from government databases, LinkedIn, and company websites. Most teams use a combination of sources to balance coverage, accuracy, and cost.
The real value comes from putting firmographics to work—defining your ICP, segmenting your market into tiers, building target account lists, and scoring accounts based on fit. And while firmographics are powerful on their own, they’re even more effective when combined with technographics, intent data, and engagement data to create a complete picture of account fit and buying readiness.
Start with firmographics as your foundation, refine your criteria based on real results, and layer on additional data signals as you scale your targeting capabilities. That’s how you build a sustainable, repeatable B2B targeting strategy.
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