Struggling to find the right companies on the Internet?

If you enjoy searching for needles in haystacks, that’s fine.  It not, then read on for some practical tips on how to make your searching more effective.  There are some topics to address first:

•  What type of company are you trying to find?
• What do you want to know about that company?
•  What are the most appropriate sources of information for you?

Be clear about what you are looking for!

Having a clear definition of the type of company you are seeking will help make your searches more fruitful.  It often helps to take this a few steps further, namely:

·        What type of company is more likely to be interested in doing business with you?

·        Which department and which person are the most appropriate to contact?

Whilst the Internet can be a good source of free information, there are some disadvantages.  You may need quite sophisticated search criteria to find the right companies and this can be quite time consuming.  Once you have found them, you are restricted to the information that is in the public domain.  You may need to consider specialist business databases that are easier and quicker to search and which contain additional information not readily available elsewhere.

·        Structure your search: start with free text (plain English) and then convert this to search criteria.  These will vary according to the type of database you are using. This can be a real lateral thinking exercise finding other ways or proxies to better look at a problem.

·        Refine your initial search criteria based on your first set or sets of searches.  Is this the type of company you were expecting?  Look at the key words and categories that these companies are listed under and refine your search accordingly.  Also if you are getting too many companies you will need to tighten your search criteria.

·        Do the full search and decide which companies best fit your criteria.  Check to see what patterns may emerge from the companies you are discarding.

·        Capture the relevant data in your own marketing database.  Decide what information you need to extract and what attributes you wish to add that are relevant to your business

·        Analyse and rank them according to your assessment criteria.  This will also help you quantify the opportunity by market and company.

Well planned and professionally executed searches can identify new prospects that are likely to be interested in doing business with you.  Do seek advice to help you achieve better results.

We can give you expert guidance on:

1.      Defining effective search criteria to optimise your searches. 2.      Selecting the most appropriate sources of information. 3.      Designing a Marketing Database to capture and analyse the results of your searches.