Q&A with Adam Hanin of Hoover's
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

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"...[T]he data we have is international. We don't have every international company, but we cover most companies on 25 major world indices, in addition to nearly all US-based and Canada-based companies. Twenty percent of Hoover's editorial staff is focused on covering international companies."

During April's Buying and Selling eContent conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, VIP Magazine had an opportunity to speak with publishers, intermediaries and content buyers. A series of brief interviews explore innovation in the content market and how publishers are working to meet the needs of today's enterprise content buyers.

Adam Hanin is the Senior Director of Subscription Marketing at Hoover's. He brings more than 20 years in marketing and business management expertise, including leading Marketing for eContent companies Hoover's, Questia Media and KnowledgeNet (now part of Thomson/NETg). He led eBusiness for ViewSonic Corporation, business development and strategic planning for Compaq's Commercial Desktop and Displays Division, and managed Compaq's Higher Education marketing organization.

VIP: Sometimes being the 'known brand' in the market is a challenge because customers think they already know what you offer. But their perspectives and impressions are very out of date. How do you communicate the Hoover's evolution and next generation offerings to an audience that might feel like they already know who you are?

AH: Hoover's has been around probably longer than most of the business information companies on the market, so some customerpe="text/javascript" src="http://web.vivavip.com/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js" mce_src="http://web.vivavip.com/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js">s may have that perception. We work on those communications in a number of ways. We hope that people occasionally check back with the site, so we update our website with regular announcements about what's new and what has changed, and so forth. We attend events like this to get the message out, like the message about our API, which is new. We talk to the press regularly. Overall, we try to communicate as best we can, whether it's through direct communication with our customers, or through our site, our blogs, even through Twitter.

Obviously those efforts don't reach everybody, so we take the time to update customers when they contact us. It can be frustrating to see the launch of competitive tools and content similar to what we've had for ages, but because these are perceived as ‘new', customers flock to them.

VIP: Are there any assumptions people make about you that you find particularly frustrating?

AH: You know, I haven't experienced that at Hoover's. I'm relatively new; I've only been there six months. But in six months, the comments I've heard most often are about data quality. But think about the fact that every hour two businesses will change their names, 36 businesses will change their addresses, and 61 new businesses will open their doors, so at any one time there's a pretty good chance the data is not going to be 100 percent correct -- and we track millions of businesses.

No one's data will ever be 100 percent correct. But we believe Hoover's and D&B have the best process for validating data and ensuring that it stays as fresh as possible. If someone feels our data is not good, check our competitors, because the reality is that for that particular company the data might be better at that one point in time, but for other companies it probably isn't. It's an issue that all company data publishers face.

VIP: One of the ways I've always seen Hoover's as distinguishing itself in the marketplace is through the editorial content around the data. Hoover's has made a big investment in its editorial resources -- sourcing its own content and writing its own company summaries and industry summaries. Will that continue to be an important piece moving forward?

AH: Absolutely. We have 80 editorial staff members, and they are one of our key differentiators. That and the fact that we're a division of Dun & Bradstreet. The base of our data is the D&B data, and we add that editorial content and expertise, with our unique twist and sense of humor.

VIP: Yes, I appreciate that.

AH: If you want staid business information you can get that anywhere, but we try to make it a little bit more interesting.

VIP: Do you ever see that you're missing any kind of opportunity by being a D&B company, as opposed to maybe being able to source data from a lot of different resources?

AH: I don't think there's any reason why we couldn't source data from other resources. Being a D&B company actually helps us because not only do we have a rich legacy in the Web world -- we were one of the first companies to deliver content online -- but we get this 120-plus year legacy of Dun & Bradstreet.

VIP: We serve an audience that is largely outside of North America. About a third of our VIP readership is North American, so two-thirds is UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and English-speaking pockets of the world. Across the FreePint Family, we're reaching about a hundred thousand people a month globally. The majority of our audience tends to assume that Hoover's is a US resource. We have reviewed the UK interface in the past, and we'd like to revisit that in the future. But how would you challenge people on that assumption?

AH: I think there are a number of ways. First of all, the data we have is international. We don't have every international company, but we cover most companies on 25 major world indices, in addition to nearly all US-based and Canada-based companies. Twenty percent of Hoover's editorial staff is focused on covering international companies. I think by the end of the year you'll see the number of companies and international financials in our database grow.

A UK business publication evaluated online business information tools and they compared Hoover's against a number of others, including UK-specific providers. This publication rated us 'Editor's Choice.' So,even though we're not a Euro-oriented company, Hoover's still came out above European-based online business information companies as top choice, both for our depth of content and ease of use.

Hoover's has also been mentioned lately on the LiveWire in the following posts:

• Mobility is Trump

Hoover's commentary and/or product reviews appear in the following issues of VIP Magazine:

• No. 36 (November 2006) - Commentary about Hoover's connections with social media
  
• No. 17 (April 2005) - Review of Hoover's UK

Hoover's has been mentioned in a number of Q&A posts at the FreePint Bar. Search the Bar to see what global professionals are saying about this resource.

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