What are firmographics?
Firmographics are the descriptive attributes of a company: industry, employee count, revenue band, location, company type, founding year and industry classification codes. Firmographics are to companies what demographics are to people — the basis on which a B2B market is segmented.
Why it matters
Territories, routing rules and campaign audiences are built on firmographic fields. They are also the most stable part of a company record — an industry code changes far less often than a job title — which makes them a dependable key to segment on.
Where firmographics come from
- Company registries and statutory filings, for legal name, registered address and company type.
- The company's own website and careers pages, for locations and headcount indicators.
- Public professional profiles, aggregated to estimate employee counts and departmental breakdowns.
- Classification systems such as SIC and NAICS, applied so that one source's “software” and another's “technology” can be compared.
The common firmographic fields
| Attribute | What it describes | What it is used for |
|---|---|---|
| Industry and sub-industry | What the company does | Segmentation and territory design |
| Employee count and range | How large it is | Qualification and pricing tier |
| Revenue range | What it turns over | Deal-size expectation |
| Headquarters location | Where it is based | Territory and language routing |
| Company type | Public, private, non-profit or government | Procurement path and cycle length |
| SIC / NAICS code | A standard classification | Comparing records across sources |
What to look for
- Whether employee counts are self-reported, estimated or derived. The three disagree, sometimes widely.
- Whether the record describes the legal entity or the operating group. A subsidiary and its parent are different companies with different budgets.
- Which classification system the industry field uses, and whether it is the one your CRM already uses.
- How often the record is refreshed. Headcount moves quietly, and nobody notices until routing sends an enterprise account to an SMB rep.
Related terms
Data enrichment — Firmographic fields appended to the company records you already hold.