What is B2B Data? Expert Purchasing Guide

Why companies choose Cognism’s B2B data:

Sales Companion (Web App): Access a vast database of contacts, companies, and buying signals.
Sales Companion (Browser Extension): Access company and contact details on LinkedIn and other platforms.
Diamond Data®: Phone-verified mobile numbers for B2B contacts.
Intent data by Bombora: Identify companies researching topics relevant to your business.
Cognism AI Search: Find prospects with ChatGPT-style text or voice prompts.
Cognism Enrich: Instant and scheduled CRM enrichment and on-demand CSV enrichment.
Seamless integrations with CRMs and sales and marketing tools.
International coverage: EMEA, NAM, APAC.
Fully GDPR and CCPA-compliant data.
Database checked and cleaned against global DNC lists.
Fast and friendly support team.
Unrestricted access to person and company-level data (subject to fair use policy).

Where does B2B data come from?

Business data is sourced from two main channels: public and private. Public data sources are freely available in the public domain, including:

Websites.
Social profiles, ie. LinkedIn.
News articles.
Email signatures.

Private B2B data sources are secured from public view and can only be accessed via subscription, permission or payment. They include:

Paywalled websites.
Financial and market intelligence.
DaaS (data as a service) providers.

Companies collect first-party B2B data from their audience directly (i.e. email subscriptions, social media followers, and current customers). User-submitted business data may not always be correct and often becomes stale as people change companies, roles, email addresses, and phone numbers.

That’s why companies turn to third-party B2B data vendors that supply these key resources in an automatic and scalable way. They gather sales and marketing data from various public and private sources, clean it using proprietary methods, and redistribute it.

Redistribute how?

The old-school way: you download a massive CSV file with static B2B data that needs to be manually refreshed and uploaded to your CRM.
The modern way: you get access to a sales intelligence platform like Cognism with dynamic B2B data that’s refreshed automatically and easily syncs with your other tools. Sounds great, right?

Unfortunately, third-party data also comes with challenges. Some providers take a more relaxed approach to data accuracy, completeness, or compliance than others.

So, it’s vital to vet providers and test their data. Luckily, the sales intelligence market is growing fast, providing plenty of options.

How do providers verify B2B data?

Data sources have different levels of credibility and often provide conflicting information. Verifying billions of these data points is one of the biggest challenges for data scientists.

B2B data is only as good as the provider’s algorithmic and machine-learning models for identifying and classifying business data. Improving these technologies is a complex process that requires collaboration between data engineering, research, and analyst teams.

Many vendors in the category view incorporating manual data evaluation as impractical and inefficient. Therefore, human-verified datasets are hard to come by, but their accuracy is unmatched.

Cognism is an exception!

It employs a research team to phone-verify the B2B mobile numbers in our database. That global dataset (Diamond Data®) sets a new standard for B2B data quality and intelligent sales prospecting.

How to choose B2B data providers?

Michael Iannuzzi, previously Director of Marketing and Sales Development at Drift (now Salesloft), tested multiple providers before Cognism. He said:

“We used ZoomInfo and LeadIQ across all of our sales teams. However, finding correct mobile numbers in these databases was like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Cognism defeated all the other lead generation providers by a huge amount. Its database had an 80% accuracy rate and the highest coverage of mobile numbers.”

“The platform was also very swift. The SDRs would find a lead that visited our website, pull up Cognism and get the contact’s number instantly. It was that quick.”

“The astounding results combined with the platform’s simplicity was critical to getting the deal done quickly.”

“Our decision to move from ZoomInfo and LeadIQ to Cognism was an easy one. The platform surpassed all our expectations.”

How to clean bad B2B data?

B2B data is considered bad if the phone numbers connect to the wrong contact, if they’re on DNC lists, or if they’re duplicated, corrupted or incomplete.

You can choose the manual, time-consuming route to clean it or speed up the process with B2B data enrichment technology.

Modern tech like Cognism Enrich allows you to automatically enrich first-party data and refresh historical records in your CRM to unlock new revenue.

It also enriches new B2B data entering your systems, improving productivity and stopping you from wasting budget.

Is collecting and storing B2B data legal?

B2B prospecting data can only be used for the reason it was collected. This means potential prospects must have opted in and been made aware that you hold their data.

Also, business data must be stored in a way that makes it impossible for outside sources to obtain and use it for nefarious purposes.

If your B2B data isn’t compliant with the country you’re using it in, you risk incurring penalties from the FTC (US) or ICO (UK). Two companies that made more than 480,000 unlawful marketing calls to businesses signed up with the UK’s DNC register were issued fines totalling £180,000.

Here’s how Cognism provides compliant B2B data lists:

Cognism’s B2B contact data is GDPR and CCPA-compliant.
Cognism’s email database is notified and doesn’t include B2C emails.
Cognism’s phone numbers are checked against more DNC lists than other providers.

What are the B2B data types?

Here are the five most important types of business data - combine them to find and interact with prospects in your ICP:

1. Contact data

This is the most important type of B2B data for sales prospecting, lead generation, and sales.

It consists of the prospect’s basic demographic information, including phone numbers and email addresses. Contact data (also called demographic data) gives you insight into whether they fit your ICP (ideal customer profile).

It includes the following points:

Name.
Email address.
Telephone number.
Job title.
Location.

2. Firmographic data

The second type of business data is based on company information. Firmographics define which company your prospect works for. It’s helpful for segmenting audiences and evaluating markets.

It includes:

Company name.
Company location.
Industry.
Number of employees/company headcount.
Revenue information.

A combination of demographic and firmographic data points is a good start to implementing a broad growth marketing plan. Many marketers will stop here. But you can go a lot further if you gather even more useful B2B data.

3. Technographic data

Technographics is related to either:

The technology that an employee uses.
The technology that a company uses.

This type of B2B data helps you understand prospect workflows, how they could be improved, and the pain points they might face day-to-day.

Technographic data is particularly useful if you’re providing a solution that other technologies don’t have. Understanding which technologies other companies use also helps you position yourself against competitors.

4. Chronographic data

Chronographic data points, also known as sales event triggers, refer to the changes that happen over time to companies or individuals.

In B2B, timing is essential, and B2B sales triggers provide contextual insights to sellers, helping them prioritise. This type of B2B data helps salespeople and marketers highlight events that indicate a potential sales or marketing opportunity, such as when your target account appoints new leadership.

Chronographic data includes:

Company location move.
Job join or leave.
Company funding.
Company acquisition.
Company IPO.
Event appearances.
Company job hiring.

5. Intent data

Intent data refers to behavioural data that shows when an account is interested in buying. Intent signals are gathered from various public and private sources.

Bombora is a leading intent data provider; it collects consent-based data from a cooperative of 5,000 B2B sites where business buyers search for solutions.

What’s the upshot for salespeople and marketers in using B2B intent data?

It allows them to target prospects who are actively researching products like theirs and are close to making purchasing decisions. This opens up many opportunities to approach prospects at exactly the right time in their buyer journey.

Cognism partnered with Bombora to allow Cognism users to speed up their sales cycles, improve targeting, and create more relevant campaigns.

How does B2B data help to find new leads?

We interviewed George Mckenna, Head of Cloud Sales at Ultima, about his experience of using Cognism’s B2B data combined with Bombora’s intent signals:

“Our sales cycle is typically 6-8 months long. At Cognism, we saw ROI in 8 weeks from intent data and direct dials. One deal pays for a year’s Cognism subscription.”

“Cognism identifies the leads, allows us to target them based on the prospect’s intent, and then follow up with the sales action. Using intent data has massively reduced our time to engagement.”

“The sales managers used to make 100-150 calls per day. Now, they can achieve their targets by making 30 calls per day because they are calling prospects who actually pick up the phone. That’s more results, fewer calls.”

What are the B2B data use cases?

High-quality B2B data is essential for the following B2B sales and marketing activities:

1. TAM identification

The process of defining your Total Addressable Market (TAM) - the total number of potential prospects in your target market.

Calculate your Total Addressable Market with Cognism’s free TAM calculator.

2. ICP development

Creating an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), which is a representation of your perfect buyer. Use your ICP as a springboard to find others who match its characteristics.

3. Lead generation

Identifying your ideal customers and sourcing their contact details, ideally direct dials. Sales data quality is the most important factor for this activity.

4. Outbound sales

The outbound sales process is when a B2B salesperson contacts and engages with prospects via phone, email, social selling or networking. The salesperson needs accurate B2B data for this process to work!

5. Demand generation

For B2B marketers, demand generation refers to the umbrella of marketing activities that attract new buyers to your brand. It encompasses content marketing, email marketing and PPC. You need good B2B data to power these marketing strategies.

6. Analytics

The process of tracking B2B sales and marketing metrics for managing and improving individual or team performance.

B2B data for sales teams

B2B data enables sales teams to predictably develop a sales strategy, prospect for leads, and generate new business revenue. With a B2B contact database built with Cognism data, sales teams can:

Access high-quality, compliant data collected from public and private sources.
Find key decision-makers and their direct contact information using filters such as job title, company, industry, skills, technology and more.
Use sales trigger events to better time your sales outreach and identify the right people at companies who are ready to purchase.
Clean and enrich out-of-date records. Fill in any missing gaps in your CRM data and source new opportunities.

B2B data for marketing teams

Cognism enables data-driven marketing teams to identify new audiences and build smarter B2B marketing campaigns:

Increase your campaign reach and improve your funnel with lead intelligence insights.
Build targeted ABM campaigns, boosting audience match rates across all your advertising platforms.
Take the guesswork out of campaign planning by using marketing triggers to target prospects right when they need you most.
Reach and engage with more prospects, getting your emails seen by the right people at the right time.

B2B data for RevOps teams

Revenue operations (also called RevOps) is an emerging but vital discipline in B2B. It combines sales, marketing, customer success and system operations, resulting in a new end-to-end solution.

When it comes to a B2B data service for revenue operations managers and teams, Cognism is a good option for a reliable and globally compliant data source.

You can use this technology to:

Calculate your TAM and generate complete target account and contact lists.
Enrich your leads database and plug any gaps with information straight from Cognism’s compliant data asset.
Help your revenue team meet performance targets with accurate direct dials and mobile numbers.
Enhance your workflows with Cognism’s data and CRM/revenue tech stack integration.

Why is Cognism the best for B2B data?

Cognism is one of the best databases for finding actionable business data. We’re the choice for you if:

You work in B2B - our data isn’t for B2C businesses.
You work in a sales, marketing or RevOps team - our data isn’t for sole traders.
You want to connect with other businesses - our data can’t help you connect with freelancers.
You want to target EMEA, DACH or the USA - our data is best in these regions.
You’re concerned about compliance - we’re a fully compliant B2B database.