How Technographics Help Your Sales

If you’ve never heard the term “technographics” before, just think of it like demographics, which is what you collect about people to determine if they might want your product: age, income, race, gender — basically, the kind of metrics that businesses use to identify sales leads! 

But there’s a slight difference: Technographics tell you about the kind of technology potential customers have in their lives.

Specifically, technographics can tell you about a person’s:

• Computer(s): How many, what operating system or systems, preferred use (games, work, budgeting, etc.)
• Phone(s): Apple or Android, smart or otherwise
• Other Devices: Tablets, smart watches, smart fridges, etc.
• Apps: What software do they use, when, and for what purpose?
• Adoption rates: Are they early adopters, late adopters, or somewhere in between?

When you see this list, you might have two questions:

1. If I’m not running an IT firm, who cares?
2. How on earth do I find out about this stuff?

Both those questions are fair. The short answers? You should care a lot and “it can be complicated.” 

To collect this kind of information, most company owners turn to outside help, like a lead gen performance marketing company, but there are ways to gather some of this information yourself.

Here is a guide to some of the ways that technographics can boost your sales.

Why Should I Care About Technographics?

Aside from giving you more data about potential leads, knowing more about the technology users have can offer you insight into the ways that your products can serve them. 

No matter what your company makes, whether it’s video games or buggy whips, you need a website, social media pages, an app, blogs, videos, and a web store. The devices your potential customers use will make a massive difference when they interact with any of those things.

Let’s say you sell all-natural denture cream. Do you think creating Tik Tok videos will reach your core demographics? Likewise, if you make cool, indie side-scroller video games, shouldn’t you optimize them for the platforms your potential customers use most? Gather the data so you can use the data!

Darts in the Dark

No sales manager likes throwing darts when they can’t see the dartboard. Gathering information about users’ technology helps you to find your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). 

When you’re acting upon leads for potential sales, it would be embarrassing to reach out to a possible customer and extol the virtues of your Windows-based spreadsheet software, only to find out that person only uses Apple products. 

Gathering information in advance saves time so the sales team can target people who can use your products and services.

Building Relationships

In a digitized world, people want to feel like they’re dealing with fellow humans they can trust, rather than cold robots or uncaring salespeople filling quotas. 

When you can reach out to a lead and talk about their Alienware R10 with the RTX 3090 card and 32gb of ram, you’re showing that you understand them and their needs. 

This also helps with optimization for your software, apps, and website. If your mobile website looks terrible on the new iPhone, talk to your lead gen performance marketing company about making tweaks. 

You can develop long-term loyalty by refining and gathering technographics that help you to build relationships with your current customer base. That trust they feel when they decide to take the plunge on that first purchase will drive them to make future purchases. They’ll also tell their friends and family, which will generate even more sales!

So How Do I Collect Technographics?

Some businesses will have an easier time with this than others, depending on the industry they operate within. 

For most businesses that want to collect the info themselves, they’ll have to rely on directly questioning their user base. No matter what, it takes a fair amount of labor to collect this information! 

Firms that specialize in technographics will use web scraping tools to analyze website source code to see patterns that are indicative of specific technologies. 

Of course, this really only works for companies or individuals with websites, and even then, it doesn’t always work on all software platforms.

Getting Someone Else to Do the Work

Ah, here we are — your best option! Insights ABM is a lead gen performance marketing company that specializes in finding the data you need to generate strong leads. We help brands just like yours become noticed! Contact us to start your winning strategy today.