How to Use Firmographic Data to Build a Target List (Definition and Examples)

Firmographic data is the set of facts that describe a company, the way demographics describe a person. Industry, headcount, headquarters, revenue, funding stage and company type are the core fields. You use them to decide which companies belong on a list before you look at any individual.

This guide gives the definition, the fields that matter, and a working query against the LeadOcean API. It sizes a list, pulls it, and enriches one row.

TL;DR

• Firmographics are company attributes: industry, employee range, HQ location, funding, revenue, company type, technologies.
• The recipe takes about 15 minutes: resolve filter values, count for free, pull 25 companies, enrich one.
• It spends about 26 LeadOcean records. The count and the filter lookups cost nothing.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean account on the Free plan (1,000 records for life, no card): app.leadocean.io/register.
• An API key stored as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq, or any HTTP client. Requests go to https://api.leadocean.io with the x-api-key header.

Step 1: Know the fields

Firmographic fields fall into five groups. Match each to a filter before you write a query.

Firmographics differ from demographics (who the person is) and technographics (what the company runs). Most real lists combine all three. The related guides cover the wider context: what is B2B data and firmographic segmentation.

Step 2: Resolve the exact filter values

Enum filters match exact strings. A guessed industry name returns nothing. Look the value up first. The lookup is free.

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/enums" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" | jq 'keys'

In an MCP client such as Claude, the same lookup is a tool call:

Use leadocean_list_enum_values with name "industry" and q "software".

Pick the exact string, for example Computer Software. Employee ranges are fixed brackets: 1-10, 11-50, 51-200, 201-500, 501-1000, 1001-5000, 5001-10000, 10001+.

Step 3: Size the list for free

Count before you pull. A company count spends no records and returns an exact total with breakdowns.

curl -s -G "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/companies/count" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "industry=Computer Software" \
  --data-urlencode "employeeRange=51-200" \
  --data-urlencode "hqCountry=US"

The MCP equivalent is leadocean_count_companies with the same filters. To size the people at those companies, use leadocean_count_leads. It counts mailable people by default (verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all), so say what you filtered when you report the number.

Step 4: Pull the companies

Search takes a flat JSON body. Filters are arrays. limit runs 1 to 100, and you page with cursor. This request returns 25 rows, which is 25 records.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/companies/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "industry": ["Computer Software"],
    "employeeRange": ["51-200"],
    "hqCountry": ["US"],
    "limit": 25
  }' | jq '.data[0], .meta'

One search pages to 10,000 rows. If meta.depthCapped is true, narrow the filters instead of walking further. For the people at these companies, POST /v1/exports writes a CSV (up to 50,000 rows a request, 500,000 a day). Bulk CSV export is not on Free.

Step 5: Enrich one row

Enrich takes exactly one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id. For a company record, use the company endpoint with its domain.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/companies/enrich" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"domain": "acme.com"}'

To reach people at the company, GET /v1/companies/acme.com/people lists everyone we hold there. To spend records only on buyers, run POST /v1/people/search with domain plus jobLevel and jobFunction instead.

What you get

Run on 2026-10-21 with the free MCP tools, no records spent.

leadocean_count_companies with industry Computer Software, employeeRange 51-200, hqCountry US:

{
  "total": 460,
  "totalIsExact": true,
  "facets": {
    "hq_state": [
      {"value": "California", "count": 136},
      {"value": "New York", "count": 36},
      {"value": "Texas", "count": 26}
    ]
  }
}

The facet list is trimmed to three of twenty states. leadocean_count_leads for VP-level people in Sales & Business Development at those companies returned 76 mailable people across 36 companies. The same filters with no email condition match 296 people. The 76 is a mailable count (verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all), not everyone.

Company record from Step 5, as the response shape from the API reference, with placeholder values:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "company_data": {
      "company_name": "Acme",
      "company_domain": "acme.com",
      "company_type": "Privately Held",
      "company_industries": [{ "name2": "Computer Software", "priority": 1 }],
      "company_employees": { "number_of_employees": 120, "number_of_employees_code": "51-200" },
      "company_primary_address": { "city": "Austin", "state": "Texas", "country_code": "US" },
      "company_funding": { "last_round_type": "Series A", "last_round_year": 2025 }
    },
    "company_metrics": { "completion_score": 90, "marketability_score": 80 },
    "meta": { "fetched_at": "2026-10-01", "schema": "leadocean.company.v1" }
  }
}

Fields we hold nothing for come back as null. Funding and revenue are held for a small share of companies.

Troubleshooting

FAQ