Vainu Custom Industry

How many SaaS companies are there in the world? How about in the Nordic countries? And how many of them focus on sales and marketing technology? And how about HR tech, AgriTech, or LegalTech?

Standard industry classification systems, such as SIC and NAICS, couldn’t give us an answer to these questions, so we did the only rational thing one can do in that situation: We built our own industry classification taxonomy. We wanted a system that was able to segment and analyze companies on a granular level, and we’ve got just that with Vainu Custom Industry.

So, how many SaaS companies are there in the world?

Thousands of people are heading towards Pasila, Helsinki this week to join Slush, one of the largest startup events in the world.

At Vainu, we analyzed 1,000+ startups joining the conference and picked some interesting verticals and companies to keep an eye on.

Account-based marketing is becoming increasingly popular as a customer acquisition tactic among B2B companies.

At this point, most early adopters of the tactic will already have an ABM orchestration platform, such as HubSpot, Demandbase, Terminus, 6Sense, Triblio, or Madison Logic, implemented.

It should go without saying, but one of the key success factors for an ABM program is the specificity of your target account lists. Ultimately, the size of your list can vary depending on your specific program. Still, it’s always a good idea to make sure that your lists include the companies that possess the highest potential value for your organization, whether that be the 10, 100, or 1,000 companies.

It’s B2B sales 101. Using standard industry classifications for market segmentation is commonplace. Need to sell to the finance industry? Use SIC code 6199, and you'll quickly find a list of companies in that industry.  

If you sell to particular verticals, it's easy to see why Industry classifications are essential for proper B2B segmentation. They can assist in identifying the particular organizations that benefit from your product or service and then selling to them. However, traditional industry codes, like NAICS and SIC, have two major weaknesses:

Most of us use the industry data field in our CRM and marketing automation. It’s an important piece of information. We often create segments and lists by using that industry information as one of our search and B2B segmentation criteria. But how often do you end up with endless target lists that include companies that have nothing in common?

This post will cover how to use custom industry categories to create hyper-targeted B2B segments. In other words, you’ll learn how to sell more by selling to fewer.

Let’s get to it.👇