Understanding your market size is fundamental for any entrepreneur or VC evaluating a business opportunity. Whether you’re assessing the Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM), or Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), high-quality data is critical. By leveraging reliable datasets and understanding how to apply them, you can make informed decisions about market entry, scaling, and targeting.
This article explores key datasets commonly used in market sizing—like NAICS, BLS, and county-level data—and how they contribute to calculating market fit, TAM, SAM, and SOM. Additionally, we’ll highlight their role in areas such as the data analytics market size, data governance market size, big data analytics market size, and real-time data market size.
NAICS codes categorize businesses by industry, providing a structured way to analyze specific sectors. Each business in the U.S. is assigned a NAICS code, enabling researchers to:
Use Case: You could group NAICS codes associated with data processing, software development, and IT consulting. Summing the total revenue of businesses in these industries gives an estimate of the TAM.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a U.S. government agency that collects, analyzes, and publishes a wealth of data on employment, wages, productivity, and economic trends. This dataset is a go-to resource for understanding the labor market, offering detailed statistics about job roles, industry growth rates, and geographic employment patterns. For market sizing, the BLS can help identify target customer segments, project demand based on industry growth, and refine pricing models by analyzing wage data.
Here’s how BLS data can be applied to market sizing efforts:
Use Case: In the data governance market, you might look at IT managers, compliance officers, or data scientists. If your product replaces or enhances their roles, the BLS data can quantify how many professionals you can target.
Public census data, primarily provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, offers a detailed snapshot of the nation’s population, businesses, and economic activity. This dataset is one of the most comprehensive sources available for understanding macro and micro-level trends. It includes data on business counts, demographics, income levels, and geographic distributions, making it an invaluable resource for market analysis.
For market sizing, census data is particularly useful for identifying potential customer bases, analyzing regional opportunities, and assessing economic health in specific industries. Its versatility allows businesses to segment markets effectively and tailor strategies to real-world conditions.
Here’s how public census data can be applied:
Use case: If you’re exploring the data analytics market, census data can help pinpoint regions with a high density of businesses that are likely to adopt analytics solutions, enabling more targeted and efficient market sizing.
County and state-level datasets provide localized insights into business activity, population demographics, and regional economic trends. These datasets, often provided by state governments, regional economic development agencies, and federal sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, give a granular view of market opportunities. Examples include the County Business Patterns (CBP) dataset from the U.S. Census Bureau, which offers annual statistics on the number of establishments, employment, and payroll across counties, and state-level labor market information from agencies like state Departments of Labor.
These resources are ideal for tailoring market strategies to specific geographies, helping businesses focus their efforts where the opportunities are greatest.
Here’s what county and state-level data can reveal:
Use Case: If you’re analyzing the real-time data market, you can use County Business Patterns to identify counties with a high concentration of tech companies. This insight allows you to focus marketing efforts on regions with the greatest potential for adopting real-time data solutions.
Private market databases are subscription-based platforms that provide detailed information about companies, industries, and market dynamics. These datasets, offered by providers like PitchBook, Crunchbase, and ZoomInfo, are particularly useful for uncovering insights that aren’t readily available in public datasets. They include company-level details such as funding rounds, revenue estimates, employee counts, and competitive positioning.
Designed for investors, business developers, and market analysts, private databases provide a deeper layer of intelligence to complement broader public datasets.
Key features of private market databases include:
Use Case: These tools can help pinpoint high-growth startups adopting analytics solutions, providing a more refined SOM estimate by focusing on likely early adopters.
Off-the-shelf market research reports provide pre-compiled insights on specific industries, offering a broad overview of market dynamics, trends, and forecasts. These reports are produced by leading research firms such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and IbisWorld, and are frequently used by companies looking to validate their market hypotheses or gain a quick understanding of an industry.
These reports often aggregate data from multiple sources, presenting it in a digestible format for strategic decision-making. While they are less customizable than other datasets, they are valuable for benchmarking and identifying high-level trends.
Key features of market research reports include:
Use Case: If you’re entering the data governance market, reports from Gartner or Forrester can provide a snapshot of current market size and competitor positioning, helping you validate your internal projections or refine your go-to-market strategy.
Market sizing is both an art and a science, requiring diverse datasets and careful analysis. When assessing TAM, SAM, and SOM, the right datasets can make or break your analysis. Whether leveraging public sources like NAICS and BLS or diving into private datasets, understanding how to use these resources ensures your market sizing efforts are accurate and actionable.
Knowing how to apply specific considerations and constraints to the TAM generated from data analysis is another skill in itself. Many people find that their time is better spent on other revenue-generating activities and instead employ a programmatic solution, using market sizing software.
Olympus Intel offers the expertise and tools to make market sizing efficient and insightful.
Ready to transform your market analysis? Let Olympus Intel guide the way.
Questions? Our team would love to hear from you, so please get in touch!
You may also like: