B2B data and targeting

Every campaign starts with a list, and the list decides more than the message does. This is where you answer which companies, before anyone asks which people. Two questions separate the tools here. The first is whether you describe your market with filters, industry, headcount, country, technology, or by resemblance, handing over the accounts that already converted and asking what looks like them. Filters are a theory about your market and theories are often wrong; resemblance needs a seed of real customers and is useless without one. The second question is coverage on your market specifically, which no vendor page can answer. A database with excellent United States coverage and thin European data is a good product and a bad choice, if you sell in Europe. Test it on twenty companies you know intimately and count what it gets right. On price, expect two shapes: a credit balance you spend as you go, from roughly a cent a credit, or a quote after a sales call, which is what you get when a vendor publishes nothing. Neither shape is a warning sign. What matters is knowing the size of the market before you pay to collect it, because counting is usually free and collecting never is.