When any company is looking out for B2B lead sources and especially for a database of companies and key executive contacts, Dun & Bradstreet’s Hoovers Online company database is on everyone’s evaluation list. Having been around for several years and with a comprehensive database of over 23 million companies, its rightly amongst the most widely known online source for company and executive information for business to business marketers. Other than the sheer volume of data that Hoovers maintains, the amount of data on each company ranging from financial figures to locations is very comprehensive and an excellent source for company intelligence which can be useful while targeting them.  

As a business to business lead source, the Hoovers Online database comes with some of the high level executive contacts in each company, some with email addresses and some without. Although they have only high level executive decision makers such as the CEO, President, COO, CIO, VP Finance, Treasurer, VP Human Resources and so on, it can be a good source of leads provided your best target contact is a very high level executive. Hoovers currently offers connectivity to Salesforce CRM and works well to populate your Salesforce account with target companies and high level contacts.

While the Hoovers Online database is an asset to almost any marketing team, if you are on a budget which doesnt suit the subscription fee required to access Hoovers or the business contacts you need are more deep-rooted and more specific roles than the high level key executives it offers, then it may make more sense to use a custom role based list building service like ReadyContacts or evaluate other alternative sources. If these are not constraints, a Hoovers subscription is always a valuable asset to have.

Continuing from our last post on Linkedin Vs Jigsaw For Your B2B Business Contacts, we’ll move on to two more heavy weights as sources for B2B marketers and sales people to build their target lists of leads and locate business executives. Hoovers and Zoominfo are well established sources for locating business contact information with different approaches. Both of them have their pros and cons which is what has to be weighed out before you decide which one best suits your needs. Here is a an overview of the two contact sources:

Hoovers

• What is it?
  • Hoovers is arguably the largest proprietary company information database with detailed company profiles and information on over 25 million business organizations. The database has detailed company overviews, locations, addresses, financial figures, competitors, news releases and key executives for each of these companies making it the gigantic resource on company information it has been known for.
• How do you locate contacts?
  • Hoovers is a subscription based database and while there are a set of free access companies, to get the most out of it you will need a subscription to get started. These can range from $75 per month for the most basic to considerably more for an enterprise subscription. The search criteria is quite extensive and you can search for both companies or contacts and even generate lists based on some parameters that matches your target set of accounts and contacts. Hoovers does offer Salesforce integration to populate a companies Salesforce accounts with the company or contact information they may need straight from its own data. Alternatively, lists of companies with executives can be exported into csv sheets and used
• What are the pros of Hoovers as a business contacts source?
  • With over 25 million organizations in the database its easily one of the most comprehensive sources of company information you can have access to. Along with its network of sources, Hoovers has managed to keep this enormous database up to date and the company information is quite reliable
  • Each account or organization is profiled with rich company intelligence which is valuable for sales persons and each contact or executive comes with a title and often with other details such as a bio and email address
  • The database is ideal for building target B2B lists and the export function ensures you can put all the data you need into a csv format and upload to your own CRM or application
• What are the cons of Hoovers as a business contacts source?
  • Not all the contacts will have complete direct contact information like direct phone numbers, direct addresses and email addresses so from a campaign perspective some amount of work may be required if you wish to make contact with these executives via email or direct mail
  • Hoovers provides users with high level key executives within companies which are mostly C-level to VP level heads of the important functions of the company. It may not be suited to your sales or marketing efforts if your best target contact is someone deeper within the organization like a manager or director level decision maker

Zoominfo

• What is it?
  • Zoominfo is an intelligent search engine which is built for searching company information and profiles. With about 3.9 million companies and 42 million people that can be searched, it provides a good source for business contacts and has two products ZoomExec and ZoomPower Sell specially made for sales and marketing to generate their lead lists
• How do you locate contacts?
  • Depending on whether you need high level executives at your target accounts or a wider range of business contacts you can select between the ZoomExec and ZoomPower Sell paid subscriptions. Once you are a registered user you can search by company names, revenue ranges, industry, contact job titles, level, geography and more. Each of these contacts comes with required contact information in terms of phone numbers and email addresses. Company information and profiles are also quite extensive and will provide most sales perons with the details they would need to know
• What are the pros of Zoominfo as a business contacts source?
  • With the Power Sell version having utp 25 million contacts at 3.9 million companies Zoominfo may not be the largest database but definitely more than sufficient to meet the needs of most b2b marketers and sales persons
  • If you need only higher level key executives the option of being able to subscribe to the smaller ZoomExec helps provide a more cost effective option to subscribing for what you may not really need
  • The search functionality is great to generate exactly the kind of lists you need by selecting your parameters and its ideal for building b2b target lists that can be exported and uploaded to your CRM
  • The contacts come with an email address and a phone number making it perfect to use for phone based reach outs and email campaigns as well
• What are the cons of Zoominfo as a business contacts source?
  • It may not suit your requirements if your target contacts are more specific in role as the contacts are a mix of contacts across different organizations and not role based contact which may be better suited to those selling more niche products to specific decision makers
  • Since most of the data is from search based technology and the size of the data is vast, over time the quality of the data can deteriorate or may not be as relevant
  • If you don’t require a full years subscription or are not likely to make the best use of the volumes of contacts or data throughout the year it may not offer a cost benefit as a pay per use model might since you are paying a subscription fee

All said and done, both of these are proven sources of company data and offer great value in their own ways. Evaluate them carefully see whats best suited for your own requirements. Stay tuned for more businiess contact sources!