You are in business. You have customers, prospective customers, loose connections, people who have never heard of you, and people who would gain from having heard of you. Your data universe is a mix of existing contacts and prospective contacts; the problem is knowing who the latter actually are.
To get the most out of your marketing, you run different types of campaigns depending on the people you’re hoping to engage, and that is influenced by their profile and where they currently are in their buying journey. But reaching the people you don’t yet know exist, and who have never heard of you either, is a key component of growing your sales. And the only way to do that… is to understand your data universe.
What is out there?
Did you know that there isn’t actually a single database containing all private sector businesses in the UK? The closest to it is the Inter-departmental Business Register (IDBR), which is managed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). But this only includes VAT/PAYE registered businesses. To find out about unregistered (or non-employing) businesses you need to do a bit more digging. However, if that sounds like a lot of effort, don’t be put off; it really is worth it.
To help you, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy publishes Business Population Estimates during the autumn every year, and we think it’s a superb place to start to get a feel for what’s out there for your industry, regardless of the size of your business.
For example, did you know that at the start of 2018 there were more than 5.7million private sector businesses and also that small businesses (up to 49 employees) account for 99.3% of all private enterprises, SMEs bump that up to 99.9%. But perhaps what’s most significant of all is that SMEs account for at least 99.5% of businesses in EVERY main industry sector?
You might also find it interesting to learn that:
- 75% of businesses don’t employ anyone besides the owner
- 35,000 businesses employ between 50 and 249 people
- And only 7,500 business employ more than that.
So if your product or service currently only appeals to large organisations, but you’re wondering if a version could be developed to appeal to smaller enterprises, the R&D might be well worth thinking about from a statistics point of view.
Matching the stats to your sales funnel
As you can see, though, if you’re operating a leads funnel, this kind of information is vital. Being able to assess if your conversion rates will create enough leads from your data universe matters. However many businesses you think are out there that match your criteria, once you’ve segmented your contacts, weeded out the long shots, and condensed things down to a targeted data set, you have to know that the stats are aligned with your objectives.
To do that you must have the right information to interrogate in the first place.
Tapping into the rich sources referred to above provided by entities such as the ONS and the BEIS is a great way to properly understand the data universe that’s at your fingertips.
We recommend you have a look. For once you have it at your fingertips, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be able to get to grips with it properly. For more help and information on sourcing data please feel free to make contact, we have been specialists in sourcing and brokering B2B data for ten years…
