Intent data enables businesses to identify accounts that are actively seeking products or services that are similar to those which they offer. And with many B2B businesses struggling to get their message across to the right audience at an appropriate time, this data could very well be the answer to a lot of B2B prayers.
Intent data can prove to be highly valuable for both sales and marketing teams, enabling them to make informed decisions surrounding the prioritisation of leads. Typically, it is categorised into two key categories: first-party (aka internal) intent data and third-party (or external) intent data. Internal intent data refers to the behavioural insights captured by your own organisation via things like the tracking on your website, whereas external data (as the name suggests) refers to the data captured by third-party tracking, such as cookies, and allows you to access account intent from across the web.
Whilst internal data is more cost-effective and often considered to be more reliable, the majority of businesses choose to opt for the use of both types of data to gain fresh insights from new prospects and create a more comprehensive image of the drivers, goals, challenges and intent to buy for each account. There are several activities that can help to signal this intent, including:
- Website visits
- Researching product reviews
- Newsletter subscriptions
- Webinar attendance
- Social media engagements
- The download of specific resources
How can B2B businesses leverage this data?
There are numerous ways that your business can utilise intent data to make informed business decisions that help to improve your performance and drive the results you need. Some of the most obvious benefits include:
- Personalisation: intent data offers insight into the wants, needs and motivations of prospects, allowing you an opportunity to create highly relevant content tailored to address these specific requirements.
- Predictability: with the help of intent data, businesses can accurately predict buyer behaviour enabling them to tailor their communication to ensure they are reaching out at the right time with the most relevant information for each stage of the buyer journey.
- Lead generation: by giving you access to marketing qualified leads, intent data can save both marketers and sales reps a lot of time when it comes to lead generation.
- Lead qualification: through the use of intent data, businesses can rank leads based upon their likelihood of purchasing specific products or services. This allows informed decisions to be made surrounding the prioritisation of leads.
- Improve landing page conversions: by understanding a buyer’s intent, you can tailor your landing pages to match their specific needs and motivate them to take action.
- Drive sales: with 99% of businesses who have utilised intent data in some form saying they have seen a positive impact on sales and ROI, there is no denying that it’s a worthy investment.
- Reduce churn rate: intent data is not only useful for identifying prospects who are in the market for one of your offerings, but it’s also great for indicating which clients may need additional attention, too. It enables you to see those who are actively researching alternative solutions, providing an opportunity to uncover their motivations for looking elsewhere and refine your own offering to help overcome this.
With more and more B2B businesses realising the benefits of intent data, it is rapidly becoming a staple in almost every marketing strategy – don’t let yours fall behind. For more information, contact us today to speak with one of our marketing experts and discover how we can help you create a strategy that sells.
