What are firmographics?
Firmographics are descriptive facts about a company, the business equivalent of demographics: industry, headcount, revenue, location, age, ownership and business model. They are used to segment markets, define an ideal customer profile and filter prospect lists down to companies that could plausibly buy.
The core fields
| Field | Example | Reliability |
|---|---|---|
| Industry | Logistics, dental practices, B2B SaaS | Good, but categories are coarse |
| Headcount | 11 to 50 employees | Good for most companies with a LinkedIn presence |
| Revenue | $5m to $10m | Estimated for private companies |
| Location | Headquarters in Manchester | Good; offices elsewhere often missing |
| Founded year | 2019 | Good |
| Ownership | Independent, PE-backed, subsidiary | Patchy |
| Business model | B2B, B2C, marketplace | Often inferred |
Treat revenue for private companies with suspicion. Most suppliers estimate it from headcount and industry, so filtering on revenue and headcount together often double-counts the same guess.
A worked segmentation example
Say you sell payroll software in the UK and want to size and prioritise your market.
- Start with UK companies in your target industries: hospitality, retail and care homes.
- Filter to 20 to 250 employees, big enough to need payroll software and small enough not to run an in-house team.
- Exclude subsidiaries of larger groups, whose payroll is usually run centrally.
- Split by region if your sales team is regional.
Each step is a firmographic filter. The count at the end is the starting point for your total addressable market.
Why firmographics are not enough
Two 40-person restaurants in the same city look identical on paper. One has just opened a second site and is drowning in spreadsheets; the other has used a competitor happily for five years. Firmographics say both could buy. Only timing tells you which one will. That is why lead scoring usually combines firmographic fit with buying signals.
Common mistakes
- Over-trusting industry codes. A "software" company might be an agency that builds apps for clients.
- Using headcount bands that do not match your customers. Look at your actual customers before choosing bands.
- Ignoring local and trades businesses. Most B2B databases are built around companies with LinkedIn pages and job titles. A plumber with three vans barely exists there. See finding local business leads.
How Sluice uses firmographics
Sluice's directory lets you describe people by company size, industry, location and particular companies alongside job title and seniority. For local businesses, listings carry their own signals, such as no website, few reviews or a slipping rating, which tell you more than headcount ever could.
Questions people ask
- What is the difference between firmographics and technographics?
- Firmographics describe what a company is: size, industry, location. Technographics describe what it uses: its software and infrastructure. Both are used to filter and score accounts.
- Where does firmographic data come from?
- Company registries, company websites, job listings, LinkedIn company pages, business directories and data suppliers that combine these. Revenue figures for private companies are usually estimates.
- Which firmographic matters most?
- Usually industry and headcount, because they most often decide whether a company has the problem and the budget. But test it against your own customer data.
Try it on your own market
Sluice quotes the worst-case price before anything runs and charges only for lookups that found something, so finding out costs close to nothing.
Get started