Firmographics 101: Smarter B2B Targeting in Ireland

Firmographics 101: Smarter B2B Targeting in Ireland

Most B2B teams don’t have a lead volume problem, they have a lead quality problem.

And the answer isn’t just “more data,” either.

Instead of focusing on the companies that actually fit their product, too many sales and marketing teams cast wide nets.

The best go-to-market teams are taking a different approach to B2B data. They’re prioritising high-impact firmographic data points like industry, size, location, revenue, and legal structure. This shift leads to faster cycles, more accurate forecasts, and reps spending their time on high-potential opportunities, not dead ends.

A data-quality first approach can work for your team too.

In this article, you’ll learn how to use firmographics to sharpen your B2B targeting, gain better insights, lower your CAC, and find more ideal customers.

What is firmographic data?

Firmographics are structured data points that describe companies (rather than individuals). They’re essential for targeting, segmentation, and prioritisation in both marketing and sales.

Firmographic data includes key attributes such as:

  • Industry 
  •  Company size
  • Revenue band
  • Location
  • Legal structure

This data can be segmented by region, industry, or size to help go-to-market teams sharpen messaging, assign territories, and identify high-fit accounts faster.

For example, if your product performs best with companies in a certain revenue range or legal structure, firmographics let you focus on that segment and avoid businesses that are unlikely to convert.

You can also use firmographic data to track and improve prospecting performance.

You might find that your SDR team gets strong open rates with companies in one sector but struggles to convert another. That insight can guide messaging tweaks, new collateral, or coaching on objection handling.

We’ll get into how to build firmographic segments and activate them in your sales process in a moment, but first, let’s explore why they matter so much for targeting.

How firmographics power smarter targeting

1. You can focus on more high-potential accounts

Firmographics help you cut through the noise and concentrate your efforts on businesses that actually fit your offering.

Instead of marketing to every company in the country, you can better focus on the ones that align with your ideal customer profile with specific attributes like size, sector, structure, or location.

This kind of focused targeting helps to reduce wasted effort, improves lead quality, and increases the likelihood of meaningful engagement.

2. Tailored outreach resonates

When you understand what kind of company you’re speaking to, your messaging becomes more relevant.

A small business does not want the same message as a professional services firm or a larger enterprise. What one company values, such as affordability or speed, may differ completely from another’s priorities, like compliance or long-term scalability.

Firmographics help you shape your message to match what that type of business actually cares about.

3. Efficiency leads to lower CAC

Better targeting drives better results. With clearer segmentation, you spend less on campaigns that miss the mark and more on the ones that convert.

This leads to a lower customer acquisition cost, more qualified conversations, and a pipeline filled with prospects that are worth pursuing.

In a focused market like Ireland, this kind of efficiency gives you a real advantage.

How to unlock smarter targeting with Sunstone

Keeping track of the right lead data across multiple sources is a challenge for sales teams of any size. Even if you’re using a solid CRM, it likely doesn’t contain all the information you need to segment effectively, prioritise high-fit accounts, or surface new opportunities, especially not in a way that’s clean, complete, and actually useful.

The gap is real, particularly for small and mid-sized teams juggling fragmented tools and limited resources while trying to scale.

We see it all the time. Companies with strong sales teams are still relying on outdated lists or incomplete firmographic data. They’re chasing leads that look promising on paper but don’t match the profile of past customers or current demand.

And it costs them deals, time, and budget.

Sunstone solves this by automatically enriching, scoring, and segmenting companies using reliable firmographic signals and behavioural patterns.

Using its market intelligence engine and firmographic clustering model, Sunstone’s SaleSight platform gives you:

  • A fresh stream of high-fit companies that resemble your best customers
  • Built-in segmentation by size, industry, structure, and location
  • Predictive lead lists based on company fit and engagement trends
  • Easy filtering and export tools to move fast on warm opportunities

Unlike static lead lists or spreadsheet-based targeting, SaleSight works dynamically. It can be updated monthly based on real-time changes in the market and performance feedback from your outreach. Your team always has access to leads that reflect your current strategy, not just last quarter’s guess.

Whether you’re building your next campaign, onboarding a new SDR, or trying to lower CAC, SaleSight gives your team the clarity and focus to move faster with less noise.

4 steps to start building firmographics-driven targeting

1. Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Start with what already works. Look at your top-performing clients and ask: What traits do they share? Are they a certain size? Do they operate in specific industries? Do they cluster in certain regions?

Use that data to start building a clear picture of who your ideal customers actually are.

2. Focus on the firmographics that matter

Not every data point is equally useful.
Do your best clients tend to be in regulated sectors?

Then industry classification matters.

Are you looking for growing companies?

Pay attention to structure and revenue bands.

Trying to build a local pipeline?

Prioritise by region or HQ location.

The key is to choose firmographic signals that align with your outcomes.

3. Segment and score your leads

Once your firmographic filters are in place, group companies into tiers based on fit.
For example:

  • Tier A: Strong match to your ICP
  • Tier B: Moderate match with some potential
  • Tier C: Low fit, but worth light-touch or automated outreach

This makes it easier to focus your resources and avoid wasting time on low-potential accounts.

4. Tailor your outreach at scale

Different companies require different messages. A small services firm doesn’t want the same pitch as a larger regional enterprise.

Use your segments to customise templates, surface relevant proof points, and speak directly to what matters most to each type of business.

Tools like Sunstone’s SaleSight platform help automate this entire process, from identifying high-fit companies to delivering targeted lead lists that match your ICP.

Power up your targeting with Sunstone

Sales and marketing teams generate firmographic data constantly, but without the right tools, it goes unused, buried in spreadsheets or stuck in disconnected systems. The difference comes down to how well you can turn that data into action.

That’s where Sunstone comes in. Our platform makes smart targeting simple. It analyses the companies you already work with, identifies patterns that matter, and uses them to surface high-fit leads through SaleSight, your intelligent firmographic targeting engine.

You don’t need to guess who to go after next. With Sunstone, you get the clarity, structure, and precision to target the right companies, lower your CAC, and grow your pipeline with confidence.

Book a demo today to see how Sunstone helps you reach the right companies, faster.

The Hidden Costs of Inaccurate Market Data

The Hidden Costs of Inaccurate Market Data

Accurate market data is critical, especially for startups making fast, high-impact decisions with limited time and resources.

High-quality market data helps you find the right companies, reach the right contacts, and build campaigns that actually convert. It keeps your team focused, your strategy aligned, and your budget aimed at what works.

Because when your data’s off, you’re wasting time, money, and momentum on the wrong leads.

In this article: We’ll break down what inaccurate market data is really costing you, how it quietly undercuts your sales and marketing performance, and what you can do to fix it before it starts hitting your bottom line.

What is market data?

Market data is information about companies, contacts, and industries that helps you find and connect with the right customers. It’s how sales and marketing teams identify who to target, when to reach out, and what to say. It includes things like:

  •  Company size, industry, location, and revenue
  •  Decision-maker names and contact details
  • Market signals like product launches, leadership changes, press coverage, or social media updates

It doesn’t just tell you who’s out there, it helps you personalise outreach, prioritise your pipeline, and build campaigns that perform. If your data’s accurate, you focus better and convert faster. If it’s wrong, you waste time chasing the wrong companies or miss the ones that actually matter.

Why is high-quality market data essential?

High-quality market data helps you target the right companies, personalise outreach, and focus your efforts where it actually drives results instead of causing your team problems like:

1. You’re chasing the wrong companies

One of the most immediate overlooked costs of bad market data is time.

When your team is working from outdated firmographics, incorrect contact details, or misclassified industries, they end up chasing leads that were never viable in the first place.

Let’s say your data says a company has 50 employees and fits your ICP perfectly.

Except… they downsized last year.

They pivoted into a completely different vertical.

The “Head of Marketing” listed in your CRM left six months ago.

You don’t know that — because your data hasn’t been updated.

So your team spends days chasing a dead lead. SDR time is burned. Sequences go out. Follow-ups are sent. Nothing lands.

Now multiply that across hundreds of accounts. You’re looking at weeks of wasted outbound. And the opportunity cost adds up long before you even realise what’s going wrong.

2. You’re spending money on the wrong data

Marketing teams waste up to 20% of every euro spent on bad data, according to Experian’s Global Data Management Report. That means nearly a quarter of your campaign budget could be going toward audiences that will never convert. Imagine spending €10,000 on a campaign… and learning that €2,100 of it just evaporated because your list was wrong. You wouldn’t do that on purpose. But if your data isn’t regularly updated? You already are.

3. Poor conversion rates and misleading KPIs

Inaccurate market data can skew your numbers in ways that aren’t obvious at first. If you’re building campaigns or setting KPIs based on an incorrect view of your target market, your conversion rates will suffer. But instead of blaming the data, you might blame the messaging, the segmentation, or your team. Gartner reports that poor market data quality costs organisations an average of $12.9 million per year. That includes everything from inaccurate forecasting to wasted time chasing the wrong leads. Maybe your pipeline looks full on paper — but nothing’s moving. Maybe your cost-per-lead looks amazing — but none of those leads are closing. Without clean, reliable sales intelligence, even the best GTM strategy will misfire.

4. You’re burning out your team

When people don’t see results, they disengage. A LeadJen report found that inaccurate contact data wastes 27% of sales reps’ time each year. When all that effort leads to dead ends, motivation drops fast. Many startup leaders assume this is just part of the grind. But in most cases, it’s avoidable. With clean, accurate data, teams have:

  •  Better conversations
  •  More qualified leads
  • Clearer, faster wins

Fix the inputs, and the output takes care of itself.

5. You’re missing the companies that matter

Arguably the most expensive problem is the hardest to see: You’re missing opportunities you didn’t even know were there.

A recent IBM study found that bad data is responsible for up to 30% of wasted business activity. That includes the deals you never even got to chase.

Think about it: a company raised funding, doubled headcount, and launched in your vertical last quarter. That’s probably your next best-fit customer, but only if your data knows about them.

Startups relying on gut feel or static datasets end up stuck in narrow markets, unable to scale effectively. High-quality data expands your view of the market and unlocks smarter, more strategic growth.

What startups should do instead

Startups don’t need more data, they need better data. That means:

  •  Regularly updating firmographics to reflect today’s market
  •  Verifying contact info before outreach begins
  • Aligning segments with real-world behaviour
  • Using enriched data to qualify and prioritise leads

Whether you’re launching your first outbound motion or expanding into new markets, market data should be an asset — not a liability.

The sooner you fix the hidden costs, the faster you can grow.

Make SaleSight part of your go-to-market strategy

Not having high quality data on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) slows sales and wastes time.

SaleSight helps early-stage teams define their ICP, map the real market, and build a prospect list that’s ready to act on — no more guessing, just clear, actionable direction.

With accurate data and dynamic segmentation, you’ll spend less time chasing dead leads and more time connecting with the right ones.

Ready to grow smarter, not louder? Get in touch — or start exploring with SaleSight today.