Inbound Lead Enrichment: How do I label accounts ?

Inbound Lead Enrichment: How do i label accounts ?Linkedin Industry, GICS or NAICS or all

Let's talk more about labeling leads with Industry.

There are three options to label with industry. Here are those three types/options:

1. GICS: Global Industry Classification System
2. NAICS:
3. Linkedin Industry

You enrich one of the three industry types when you get a lead. If you do not, let us take a pause here. These are the three most common industry conventions.

Three benefits of enriching with these three industry conventions:

1. You can handshake with any database provider in future.
2. Your CEO or investor wants to see leads/traffic at industry level. GICS provides 72 industry types, hence it is possible to generate a report with meaningful insights. Linkedin and NAICS will have 400+ industry types. 
3. Definition of these industry types do change quarterly. These are well established conventions so your data, labeling is not going to be outdated.

Two OMG Facts to know:

1. Mapping between Linkedin Industry and NAICS, GICS is 1:many. Hence, it is preferable to keep both the fields and not one. Most of the customers have learned to live with Linkedin Industry accuracy.
2. GICS and NAICS mappings are not 1:1. There is always a risk of losing meaningful labeling when you switch from one to another. Hence, never remove a column until the other field is well-accepted.

Is Industry still relevant ?

Value of Industry is relevant due to the benefits provided above. 

When is Industry relevant ?

Value of Industry is relevant for businesses where target industries have limited or no segments. For example, if you care only about IT services and do have verticals in it, then these industry types cannot be used in segmentation. 

There are two alternatives:

1. Go for Sub-Industry information in GICS or NAICS. This still might or might not segment the way you would want to do.
2. Create another field: Lets call it segmentation variable.

Segmentation by Labels: 

There are two options I know.

1. Linkedin Specialities: Every company provides Linkedin Specialities.
2. Business Tags: Crunchbase, OceanFrogs and other vendors do provide business tags. 
3. Products and Services: Use Company’s products and services if business tags are not available.