The premises type within the business data universe has genuine value to some business types. Most especially those targeting a specific kind of building rather than by industry classification. Three good examples follow;

1. Industrial Waste Disposal / Collection

By selecting a prospect list by specific industry classifications will yield anomalies. For example, the manufacturing sector appears at a first glance to be a great sector to market to. However, any marketing list which selects the b2b data by the manufacturing sector will contain an estimated 30% undesirable prospects. Not all manufacturing company premises are factories; many are offices, head offices and sites of administration, marketing & finance. And these could well be located literally hundreds of miles from the manufacturing plant. So by contacting the satellite offices to provide an industrial waste collection & disposal service would quite probably be a wasted marketing piece. The data list should be selected by factory premises; ideally with a minimum employee size to give a fair indication of the volume of industrial waste.

2. Fork Lift Trucks & Training

Virtually any business sector can have a storage facility requiring warehousing, though admittedly some are more prone than others. When identifying a business list for marketing, selecting the companies trading from an actual warehouse premises would be much stronger than using the regular SIC coding system. As with the first example, employee size will give an indication of usage (i.e., number of fork lift trucks required for sales or service, or number of trainees). The premise type is vital in so much that a head office based in a commercial tower block will have no fork lift truck related requirement. It could be argues that the head offices may make the decisions, though past experience suggests that they are more likely to allocate a budget for the warehouse manager to make the actual decision on which trucks and related training services are required.

There are two anomalies with warehouse premises however. Many large supermarkets, department stores and other retail premises have a warehouse facility at the rear. But by the very nature of their business they are classified as a retail outlet. And you would not wish to select retail outlets in general when identifying a prospect list for fork lift trucks, or you may scoop up all kinds of dross such as fish ‘n’ chip shops etc. For this reason, many of the warehouses are classified as a different premise type. But also, some businesses classified as a warehouse are chain outlets of a larger home improvements store, or commercial courier company. These can be excluded by the branch count however.

3. Office Services

Office services can range from photocopiers, partitioning, stationery and all manner of products which target the office premise. It could be argued that these services are also required in factories, warehouses and other premise types too. So the best example to consider would be p.c. related services (sales, services, networking etc). Specifically, where the employee count should have a high correlation to the number of people actually sat at a desk and using a computer. The office premise is ideal for this, but there are some anomalies. Taxi companies for one; 100 employees could quite literally mean one person sat at the reception desk and 99 drivers out on the road.

There are pitfalls in making any business data selection for your marketing. But at Responsiva you have the reassurance that with around 25 years experience these will be pro-actively explored thoroughly before the data is actually ordered. The business lists you order will be fit for purpose, accurate and well-defined.