firmographers

Firmographers are professionals who collect, verify, and curate firmographic data—descriptive information about businesses and organizations. Firmographic data typically includes company name, legal form, headquarters and other locations, industry classification, size (employee count or revenue), ownership structure, year established, as well as subsidiaries, parent relationships, and contact points.

The primary purpose of firmographics is to support business-to-business activities and analyses. They are used in marketing and sales for segmentation, targeting, lead scoring, and account-based marketing, as well as in risk assessment, credit evaluation, supply chain management, and economic research. Accurate firmographic data helps organizations identify market opportunities, prioritize prospects, and benchmark industries or regions.

Data are gathered from a mix of sources, including corporate registries, regulatory filings, company websites, press releases, industry directories, and commercial data providers. In practice, firmography is often provided by specialized vendors and data aggregators, with notable examples including Dun & Bradstreet and ZoomInfo. Quality control involves verification, deduplication, standardization, enrichment, and regular updates to maintain accuracy and consistency across datasets.

Privacy and regulatory considerations apply to firmographic data, particularly when combined with other data types. Compliance efforts address data rights, consent where applicable, and regional rules such as the European Union’s GDPR and similar frameworks elsewhere. Limitations in firmographic data can include coverage gaps, inconsistent industry coding, outdated contact details, and varying definitions of metrics like employee counts or revenue across sources.

See also: Firmography, Data quality, B2B marketing.