Lookalike prospecting: upload your customer list and find every company that looks like your best clients

Lookalike prospecting is a B2B targeting method that starts from your existing customers instead of from assumptions. You provide a list of the companies you already serve — a customer export from your CRM is enough — and a data platform analyses what those companies have in common: sector codes, company size, age, growth signals, geographic footprint and more.

The result is a customer profile that is based on evidence, not on a marketing persona workshop. That profile is then matched against hundreds of millions of company records from official registers, so you get a concrete list of lookalike companies: businesses you have never spoken to, but that look exactly like the ones already paying you.

Users with a Drimble Zakelijk or Drimble Business account can upload their customer data directly in the platform. A simple company list works, but the more fields you include — website, sector, location, size — the sharper the analysis becomes. Your data stays yours: it is used to build your profile, not shared or resold.

You do not need a data team for this. Export your accounts from your CRM or accounting package, upload the file, and the matching engine takes care of the rest — including deduplication and correcting outdated names or addresses against the registers.

Most companies have a surprisingly vague picture of their own customer base. The profile report changes that. You see which sectors and size classes your customers really cluster in, which regions you are strong or weak in, how fast your typical customer is growing, and which attributes separate your best customers from the rest.

This profile is valuable beyond prospecting. Marketing teams use it to sharpen positioning, leadership uses it for market planning, and sales uses it to score inbound leads: does this new lead look like our best customers, or like the deals that always stall?

The core of lookalike prospecting is the match. Drimble compares your customer profile with company records from official registers across the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Greenland and India — and shows you how many lookalike companies exist in each region, down to province, state or metro area. Note that we do not provide company data for the Netherlands.

That regional view makes the output immediately actionable. Planning a sales push in a new city? Check first whether there are 400 lookalikes there or 40. Dividing territories between reps? Give each rep a region with enough matching companies to fill a quarter. Expanding abroad? Compare the lookalike density of Manchester, Lyon and Toronto before you book a flight.

A lookalike list only pays off when it reaches the right person. That is why every matching company comes with the contact layer: registered directors, function titles and verified business contact details. Your reps do not start with research — they start with a call.

And because lookalikes are not a one-off export, you can monitor them. Set an alert on your lookalike segment and you are notified when a matching company opens a new location, appoints a new director or shows a growth signal — the moments when a first conversation lands best.

Lookalike prospecting works for any B2B organisation with an existing customer base: software companies looking for their next vertical, wholesalers expanding into a neighbouring region, agencies that want more clients like their three best accounts, and scale-ups preparing an international launch.

The common thread is the same: your next hundred customers are probably a lot like your current hundred. Lookalike prospecting simply makes that visible, countable and callable.