What Is Technographic Segmentation and Why Does It Matter?

Will technology ever go away?

With the way things are going, no. In fact, the tech industry sees a 5-6% growth pattern year after year. Consequently, the number of people gaining access to different types of software and technology is also increasing.

You can now use the data accumulated to target the right customers, tailor your marketing approach, and evolve different types of market segmentation techniques.

Technographic segmentation is one such marketing technique, which uses technographic data to understand the technical and digital habits of your users.

What are technographics?

Technographics gives you insights into the technology stack that your customers are currently using.

For example, it can tell you about the devices, operating systems, web browsers, and software that your users use.

However, this is technographics in its most basic form.

In addition to the information mentioned earlier, technographics helps you answer three important questions such as:

• How are your customers/organizations using their technical assets?
• When did your customers/organizations acquire these assets?
• Which other forms of technology are they bound to use in the future?

With answers to these questions, you can successfully segment your potential and existing customers to boost your marketing efforts.

What is technographic segmentation?

Technographic segmentation is a type of customer segmentation technique wherein you divide your customers based on the tools and technology they use.

Created by combining the term "technology" and "demographics", it is an important market segmentation strategy used in the 21st century.

Simply put, technographic segments are based on the technology stacks that customers have used in the past, the technology they are using in the present, and the technology that they would prefer to use in the future.

Attributes used to create technographic segments

When it comes to demographic segmentation, you usually segment your buyers based on attributes like age, gender, and location. With firmographics, you segment your clients based on company size, revenue, and industry.

Similarly, you can create customer segments from your technographic data using factors like:

• Device type (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops)
• Software usage (e.g., operating systems)
• Application type (e.g., CRM, marketing automation tools, web analytics tools)
• Cloud services (e.g., data storage, management, collaboration)
• Social media consumption (e.g., social media platforms)
• E-commerce activities (e.g., online shopping, transactions, payment gateways)

Doing this will allow you to efficiently segment your potential buyers and focus on giving them a great customer experience.

The benefits of using technographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation gives you the ability to delve into the minds of your customers. Technographic segmentation can also help you understand your prospects, albeit in the way they interact with technology.

These tech habits often reveal information that can be used to your advantage.

#1 Customer segmentation

Technographic segmentation can be used to segment your audience in a granular manner to create an ideal customer profile (ICP).

This will allow you to infer their technology spend and usage. Not only will you know a lot about your present buyers but also identify prospects that suit your ideal customers.

By creating hyper focused audience segments, your company can identify the needs and pain points of your potential customers. These data points will further allow your team to address those needs in their marketing and sales efforts.

#2 Personalization

Once you have a specific customer profile in place, you can personalize your marketing campaigns and sales pitches around them.

Companies can also use this information to create products or services that are customized for their target market.

Furthermore, understanding your customers' technology preferences can help you create tailored content, relevant marketing messages, and improve customer experience. This in turn will lead to better prospects and sales opportunities.

#3 Competitor analysis

Technographic information can be used for competitor analysis and give you valuable insights into the emerging trends in technology within your industry.

You can use this data to study your competitors, discover the technology stacks they are using, identify their weak spots, and capitalize on it.

Additionally, you can also target their buyers, understand what motivates them to buy from your competitors, and tweak your sales and marketing efforts accordingly.

#4 Lead generation

Once you have a fair idea about the type of technology your customers prefer, you can create better marketing funnels.

This will allow you to address your buyers in each stage of the customer journey and generate high quality leads. By engaging with prospects in the tech of their choosing, you can also achieve high conversion rates, save costs, and improve your marketing ROI.

#5 Sales conversions

Technographics can be used to customize your sales pitches, achieve conversions, and deliver maximum value per interaction.

It also makes it easier for your sales team to target high quality prospects, focus on those most likely to convert, and generate sales.

Most importantly, it will allow you to take a unique approach with each customer and have high-quality conversations.

#6 Customer retention

After you have identified your ideal customers and done everything in your power to get them to buy from you, it is tough work to make them stay with you.

Technographic profiling makes this task easier by giving your customer service and sales teams information about at-risk accounts. Your teams can communicate with these customers and propose solutions that address their problems.

Your product development team can also identify products and features popular with customers and introduce the same to aid customer retention and satisfaction.

#7 New market opportunities

Used along with firmographic segmentation, technographics allow you to identify gaps in the market and opportunities for new products or services.

It also gives your company a chance to test the waters and invent compatible or competitive solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing systems.

Once you have identified newer niches and done market research, you can create customer personas and develop marketing strategies around them.

How is technographic data collected?

You can collect technographic data through customer feedback, industry reports, surveys, website scraping, and third party data providers.

1. Customer feedback

Customer feedback is a great way to understand customer behavior and satisfaction levels. It enables you to identify whether your customers will like and continue to use the solutions you offer.

When it comes to technographics data, online directories like G2 and Capterra can give you valuable insights into the technology your B2C and B2B customers use. They also provide reviews and ratings on software and tools used by businesses.

You can also get customer feedback by conducting customer interviews and running focus groups.

2. Surveys

As a marketer, you might have conducted a lot of surveys to understand your target audience using cold calls and emails.

As a customer, you might have answered them.

So you probably know that cold calls and emails don’t always give you the information you want. They might go unanswered or turn your clients against your company all together.

Nonetheless, phone and email surveys can give you technographic insights into the technology your clients and business use.

Create surveys and ask your clients to provide information on the technology stack they use on a daily basis along with the way in which it is used to enhance their marketing efforts.

3. Industry reports

Industry reports give you a bird’s eye view of what’s happening in a specific industry. For example, the advertising industry.

With B2B clients, they are your best bet at understanding technology trends and outlooks in the industries they inhabit.

These industries can be global or local.

You can use industry reports to gather a substantial amount of information on the technology stacks that businesses and organizations in a particular industry use.

4. Web scraping

Web scraping is the process of collecting content and data from a website by extracting its underlying HTML code.

It is a fairly reliable method of identifying the types of technology being used by different companies. If your prospects use Google Analytics, you will know. If they use Hubspot or Salesforce, you will also know (if you have the right tech and people for it).

The technographic data obtained through website scraping is mostly accurate, unless the code and data scraped is outdated.

5. Third party data providers

You can easily use third party data sources to get information on various companies, including the technology they use.

These providers make the process of data collection faster, giving you sufficient time to implement it in your marketing strategy.

The only drawback, however, is that not all third party vendors have enough data sets to be useful. If you do decide to purchase technographic data from a third party provider, make sure that you choose a vendor with reliable data sets.

6. Social media

Besides the conventional methods listed above, you can also use social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to get a rough idea about the technologies your prospects are interested in.

Look up client profiles, their posts, and read their updates on social media regularly.

The accuracy and quality of technographic data is only as good as the data source being used. So make sure that you choose an option that helps you achieve your marketing goals.

Challenges of technographic segmentation

Given its multiple advantages, technographic segmentation comes with its own set of challenges.

• Your tech segments can quickly become outdated.
• According to a study by SiriusDecisions, 50% of users switch to a new solution within three years. This means that technology adoption rates are changing rapidly.
• Collecting accurate data on technology usage is quite challenging.
• Marketers struggle with data quality when trying to implement it in their customer segmentation strategy.
• Unless your third party vendors are credible, it is highly unlikely that the gathered data will help your marketing activities.
• You will also have to meet certain data compliance standards (like GDPR in the European Union or the CCPA in California).

You can solve these problems by regularly testing and refining your technographic segments, collecting accurate technographic data on tech usage and adoption rates, and select credible data sources.

Furthermore, ensure that your vendors are following data privacy regulations while collecting raw data to maintain customer privacy.

Uses of technographic profiling

Technographic profiles are currently being used in software development, ecommerce, telecom, and finance industries not just to understand B2C customers but also to approach B2B clients.

Here are a few specific use cases:

In Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a B2B strategy that helps you target high-value customer accounts using data to better understand potential customers.

You can employ technographics in ABM to personalize your sales campaigns, learn buying intent, and identify prospects. By prioritizing high-quality leads and including technographic information in ABM, you can easily check their perceived value and conversion potential.

This will enable you to tailor your sales campaigns and prioritize leads for maximum impact and return on investment (ROI).

In Inbound Marketing

You can use technographic data to optimize your inbound marketing funnel.

By segmenting customers based on their tech stack, you can deliver top, medium, or bottom-funnel content and build a customer journey map.

The customer journey can be:

• Complementary journeys for clients with compatible technologies
• Educational journeys for prospects with no current solution
• Competitive journeys for clients with competitor products

Customizing the buyers' journey can further help you refine your inbound marketing funnel to nurture leads and increase conversion rates. The accumulated data can also be used by marketing teams to create targeted marketing campaigns.

In Cybersecurity

Technographic segmentation can also enhance network security measures, including network access control systems and cybersecurity.

By leveraging tech data, you can better understand the technographic profile of your company, plan for these security systems, limit access to specific users, and evaluate their security risks.

You can then create a robust network security strategy to safeguard your company’s assets and maintain business continuity in case of cyber threats.

How to collect and use technographics data when generating personas

There are many tools available online, like BuiltWith and Wappalyzer that help you discover the technology used by different companies. The accuracy of the data provided varies, since many companies try to keep their tech stack private.

One option is to buy and use data from these providers as part of the persona generation process.

Alternatively, you can use Persona by Delve AI, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to create data-driven personas for businesses, their competitors, and their social media audiences.

Persona by Delve AI has built-in modules that infer technologies used by customer companies and uses them to provide a sneak peek into the technology used by each of the personas generated, apart from giving you insights into their goals, challenges, motivations, communication preferences, and business interests.

A portion of a sample persona generated by Persona by Delve AI platform for Delve AI’s own business is shown below.

As highlighted by the Technologies module, the technographics related insight is that customers in the segment represented by this persona are very likely to use technologies such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, PayPal, Google Cloud and Shopify.

This data, of course, is in line with all the popular tools used by most marketing professionals who make up a big chunk of our clientele.

With automatic persona generation platforms like Delve AI, your buyer personas will be more accurate as they are data-driven and updated automatically based on inclusion of emerging technologies in the ever evolving tech landscape.

Wrapping up:

Technographics allows you to define your target market and create effective marketing campaigns. When used along with demographic, psychographic, and firmographic data, it helps you personalize marketing for different market segments.

This data can be used to create buyer personas and help your customer service, product development, and sales teams.

Technographic segmentation won’t just boost sales but also aid the process of digital transformation.