Imagine a world where your marketing efforts are laser-focused on buyers who are actively in the market for your products or services. A world where you can identify high-value accounts with ease and tailor your messaging to resonate with them on a personal level. This is not a dream. This is the power of intent data in B2B marketing. In this blog post, we will explore the world of intent data, its types, sources, and how to leverage intent data for marketing success in 2024.
Intent data provides insights into the behavior of buyers, giving businesses the ability to craft targeted messaging and campaigns based on their interests and actions. This information can play a crucial role in lead generation, allowing businesses to identify and convert prospects who are already in the market for their products or services.
By leveraging intent data, companies can optimize their marketing, improve their ROI, and ultimately drive more revenue. By analyzing online behaviors, businesses can determine whether their audience is likely to make a purchase or switch to a competitor. Despite the immense value of intent data, it is often underutilized.
How Does Intent Data Work?
Millions of individuals around the world are actively using the Internet to find and explore thousands of websites. These are known as intent data signals that showcase purchase and intent behaviors.
Marketers must decide what a prospect’s interest is important and then start monitoring the individual engagement that matches a specified criterion. Marketing uses third party buyer intent data to engage customers and guide them through the buying cycle, which helps to produce qualified sales leads and shorten the sales cycle.
All of these intent signals are incorporated into algorithms designed to monitor and capture pertinent actions derived from the millions of searches and engagements conducted daily, particularly focusing on GNSS corrections.
Short Summary of What this Article Covers
- Understand Intent Data and Its Importance for B2B Marketing Success in 2024
- Leverage First-party, Second-party, and Third-party Intent Data from Websites, Content Publishers & Vendors to Identify High Value Accounts & Create Personalized Messaging/Content Strategies.
- Optimize Your Strategy Based on Insights Gained by Measuring KPIs & Maximize Customer Retention/Expansion with Tailored Outreach Strategies.
Understanding Intent Data and Its Importance
Intent data is essential to marketing and product advertising. It consists of behavioral data points that determine the likelihood of someone buying a product. Intent signals may appear in different ways. Examples include general searches, competitor site visits, interactions with industry influencers, and queries about significant industry events.
All these clues can help in understanding customer intentions. This treasure trove of information is crucial for B2B marketing and marketers in 2024 because it enables them to create more targeted and powerful marketing strategies.
By analyzing intent signals such as filling out forms and responding to marketing emails, marketers can identify prospects who are actively expressing interest in their offerings.
Intent data contains rich contact information. It includes first and last names, phone numbers, email addresses, company names, prospect’s titles, locations, industry, and company size. Besides, it displays contextual data that identify actions the prospects have taken. This wealth of information eliminates much of the guesswork of marketing and sales campaigns, leading to higher cost efficiency.
With nearly 70% of best-in-class marketers claiming that they’re already “very successful” with intent data, it’s no wonder that over 70% of B2B marketers are using or planning to use intent data.
True Buyer-Level Intent Data
The concept of intent data promised to provide a viable substitute to third-party cookies, which Google has scrapped, while still enabling us to effectively recognize and monitor our consumers.
Most intent data available provides what they call account-level intent data. Basically, it gives you general information about entire accounts that might be interested in your ads or product. It’s a rare and unbelievable occurrence for a B2B company to hear that an entire business may be interested in their product.
So – should we scrap intent signals? Of course not. Account-level intent data is not the best we can get. There’s another level of intent data that can truly transform your business, and guess what? It’s already here. In fact, Netline has a whole new guide on it you might want to check out here: “The Proof is Out There: Discover True Buyer-Level Intent Data”
Types of Intent Data: First-party, Second-party, and Third-party
There are three types of intent data: first-party, second-party, and third-party.
First-party intent data is collected directly from users, such as behavior and interest data, and can also come from a customer relationship management (CRM) system or be collected from other avenues such as forms, questionnaires, subscriptions, or social media. This type of first party data is valuable because it provides direct insights into the behavior and interests of prospects.
Second-party intent data is first-party intent data sold by another company, usually representing first-party actions taken on a publisher’s site.
Third-party intent data is the data gathered from external sources. It reflects the topics a potential buyer searches or consumes content about. The information is gathered from third-party providers.
It is then further processed using big data to make it more concise. This type of data is collected through shared cookies and curated at the IP level, providing a broader view of buyers’ interests and behavior.
Sources of Intent Data: Websites, Content Publishers, and Data Vendors
The most reliable sources of intent data are websites, publishers, and data vendors. Websites provide data on visitor behavior, off-site activity, CRM, social media data, and content consumption.
Publishers also collect data that offer insights into content consumption, such as what content is being consumed, how often, and by whom. When partnering with a reputable Shopify development company, marketers can leverage data vendors, who provide access to extensive datasets of intent data from multiple sources. By leveraging these sources, marketers can gain a more comprehensive understanding of their target audience’s interests, challenges, and needs.
This valuable information can be used to create highly targeted campaigns that resonate with prospects and drive higher conversions.
Integrating Intent Data into Your Marketing Strategy
Integrating an intent data platform with your sales, marketing automation and CRM tools is the first step in launching a successful B2B sales and marketing automation platform and campaign. Intent data allows deeper insights into customer needs and preferences, enhancing your ability to make strategic decisions and sell more efficiently.
This integration allows marketers to qualify and prioritize sales and digital marketing efforts, engaging the right contacts ready to hear from them.
If Oracle people have visited your Homepage, Solutions page, and Pricing page more than once in the last two weeks, you can use this data to focus your attention on Oracle as a valuable target account.
To make the most of your intent signal data, it is essential to integrate the intent signals into your marketing strategy by identifying high-value accounts and creating personalized messaging and content. By understanding your target audience’s needs and preferences, you can tailor your campaigns to resonate with them and drive higher conversions.
This, in turn, can help expedite the sales process by pinpointing and actively engaging with in-market buyers sooner in the buying process.
Identifying High-Value Target Accounts
High-value accounts can be identified by analyzing intent data to determine which accounts are most likely to make a purchase. Rapid outreach is crucial for targeting these high-value accounts, which is why creating an automatic workflow is essential. By focusing your marketing on these high-value accounts, you can increase the chances of converting them into loyal customers and maximize your return on investment.
To define your target audience from ideal buyer personas, analyze your current customers and think about what makes them successful. This information can be used to create highly targeted campaigns that resonate with potential buyers, driving higher conversions and increased pipeline.
By focusing your efforts on high-value accounts, you can maximize the impact of your campaigns and drive revenue growth.
Creating Personalized Messaging and Content
Personalized messaging and content is the process of tailoring messaging and content to the specific interests and behaviors of potential buyers. By using intent data, you can create personalized messaging and content that resonates with your intended audience and drives higher conversions.
For example, if a potential customer expresses interest in a general newsletter and their job title aligns with the buyer persona, you can jump right in with a more specific sales pitch and use targeted middle- to bottom-of-the-funnel content.
The key to successful personalization lies in understanding your target audience’s preferences and interests. This can be achieved by analyzing intent data and using it to tailor your messaging and content accordingly.
By leveraging customer needs, identifying high-value target accounts, and crafting personalized messaging and content, you can create highly effective marketing campaigns that drive higher conversions and increased pipeline.
Leveraging Intent Data for Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a marketing strategy that focuses on targeting specific accounts rather than a broader audience. Intent data can be leveraged effectively for ABM by aligning marketing and teams and developing tailored outreach strategies.
By focusing on high-value target accounts and creating personalized messaging and relevant content together, you can drive higher conversions and increased revenue growth.
One of the main advantages of using intent data in ABM is the ability to focus on accounts at the optimal moment in their buyer’s buying journey and to have a conversation, saving time and resources. This laser focus on high-intent VIPs is becoming increasingly necessary for B2B SaaS companies as outbound sales are not performing as well as they used to.
Leveraging intent and fit signals for B2B companies helps ascertain where marketing and sales can accelerate and identify the most promising opportunities for growth.
Aligning Marketing and Teams
Aligning marketing and teams is crucial for leveraging intent data in ABM. The first step in aligning these teams is to define common terms, goals, and strategy together. Creating joint KPIs, such as replacing the sales funnel with a revenue cycle, can help ensure both teams are working towards the same objectives.
Moreover, structuring the team, combining workflows, strategies, and communication, is essential for successful alignment. Establishing OKRs, collaborating on buyer personas, creating a service level agreement (SLA), agreeing on lead terminology, defining lead scoring together, agreeing on lead hand-offs process, conducting regular meetings, and having the marketing team and sales team sit next to each other are some of the best practices to ensure alignment.
Developing Tailored Outreach Strategies
Tailored outreach strategies are crucial for successful account-based marketing. By researching and prioritizing your targeted audience based on their needs, interests, and goals, you can create tailored outreach strategies that are more likely to be successful. To determine the optimal outreach channel, consider the preferences of your targeted audience, such as their preferred method of communication.
Developing tailored outreach strategies using intent data involves prospecting the right contact, using a catchy email subject line, adding personalization, demonstrating value, and including a clear and concise call to action. Additionally, keeping your messages short and to the point can help increase the likelihood of your outreach being well-received by your target audience.
By leveraging intent data and tailoring your outreach strategies, you can maximize the impact of your account-based marketing efforts.
Maximizing Customer Retention and Expansion with Intent Data
Customer retention is the ability of a company to keep its current customers and encourage them to continue doing business with the company. Intent data can provide benefits such as improved audience targeting, better alignment between marketing and sales teams, higher-quality leads, and increased revenue growth. By learning more about your customers and applying these insights to retention and expansion efforts based on fresh, high-quality data, you can maximize customer retention and drive revenue growth.
Leveraging intent data to unlock existing customers’ needs and identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling is an important part of maximizing customer retention and expansion. By understanding your customers’ behavior, interests, and preferences, you can create more personalized and targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with them and drive higher conversion rates and increased pipeline.
Understanding Existing Customers’ Needs
Understanding existing customers’ needs demands active listening, gathering feedback, and keeping a close eye on competitors. By actively listening to your customers and gathering feedback, you can gain valuable insights into their needs, preferences, and pain points.
Monitoring your competitors can also provide valuable information about what your customers value and need, allowing you to stay one step ahead of the competition and fully comprehend customer needs.
Creating a customer needs statement and implementing customer needs into operations involves understanding the customer journey and using it to identify opportunities for improvement.
By focusing on meeting your customers’ needs and continuously refining your product or service offering, you can drive customer loyalty and retention, ultimately leading to increased revenue and business growth.
Identifying Opportunities for Cross-Selling and Upselling
Cross-selling and upselling are valuable strategies for maximizing customer retention and expansion. By analyzing customer behavior, purchase history, and preferences, you can identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling.
A journey-based approach, which involves understanding the customer journey and using it to identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling, can help you better understand your target audience and develop tailored offers that make sense to your customers.
To successfully identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling, it is essential to segment your customer base, map products to the customer journey, and actively listen to your customers. By understanding your customers’ needs and preferences, you can develop targeted offers that provide value and meet their needs.
Additionally, offering discounts and bundles, keeping the total amount within reason, and remembering that timing is key can further increase the success of your cross-selling and upselling efforts.
Measuring the Impact of Intent Data on Your Marketing Efforts
Measuring the impact of intent data on your marketing is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your campaigns and identifying areas for improvement. Intent data can provide benefits such as improved audience targeting, better alignment between sales and marketing teams, higher-quality leads, and increased revenue growth. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as cost of customer acquisition, customer lifetime value, customer retention rate, customer satisfaction score, and customer engagement rate, you can gain valuable insights into the success of your marketing and identify areas for improvement.
Using intent data to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns can help you identify the most promising opportunities for growth and optimize your marketing strategy based on data insights. By leveraging intent data to identify early opportunities, perfect content strategy, power the sales pipeline, and send highly successful direct emails, you can maximize the impact of your marketing and drive revenue growth.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Monitor
The essential performance indicators (KPIs) for intent data in B2B marketing may differ depending on the particular goals of the marketing campaign. Nevertheless, some appropriate KPIs could include lead-to-close conversion rate, initial customer acquisition cost, marketing percentage of customer acquisition cost, marketing originated customers, and marketing influenced customers. These KPIs can help you understand the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and identify areas for improvement.
For example, the lead-to-close conversion rate measures the percentage of leads that are converted into customers, providing insights into the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. Initial customer acquisition cost, on the other hand, measures the cost of acquiring a new customer and helps you understand the cost-effectiveness of your marketing campaign.
By closely monitoring these KPIs, you can gain valuable insights into the success of your efforts and optimize your strategy accordingly.
Optimizing Your Marketing Strategy Based on Data Insights
Businesses can use intent data to quickly and accurately identify early opportunities by understanding customer needs, identifying high-value target accounts, and creating personalized messaging and content. By refining their content strategy, businesses can create tailored messaging and content that resonates with their target audience and drives higher conversion rates and increased pipeline.
Leveraging intent data to power the sales pipeline involves aligning sales and marketing teams, crafting tailored outreach strategies, and grasping existing customers’ needs. By using intent data to send effective direct emails, businesses can maximize their customer success, and drive higher conversion rates and increased pipeline.
By optimizing your marketing strategy based on data insights, you can maximize the impact of your efforts and drive revenue growth.
Summary
In conclusion, intent data plays a crucial role in the world of B2B marketing in 2024. By understanding its importance, types, and sources, marketers can leverage intent data to create highly targeted and effective marketing campaigns that drive revenue growth.
Integrating intent data into marketing strategies, aligning sales and marketing teams, developing tailored sales outreach strategies, and maximizing customer retention and expansion are all essential components of a successful marketing strategy.
By measuring the impact of intent data on marketing and optimizing your strategy based on data insights, you can stay ahead of the competition and achieve remarkable results.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you leverage intent data in sales?
Leveraging intent data in sales can help you identify cross-sell opportunities, personalize website experiences, customize lead-generation messages, evaluate market trends, see sales cycles and prioritize in-market buyers based on engagement.
Unlock the power of intent data to drive more effective sales and gain a competitive advantage!
How do you collect intent data?
Collecting intent data is simple: first, you must identify the actions potential customers take when they are in the process of making a purchase decision. Then track those activities through analytics tools to capture the intent data.
Finally, use the insights to inform marketing and product decisions.
How do you use intent data to boost your marketing?
By leveraging B2B intent data in your marketing strategy, you can more effectively target the right customers, create personalized content and experiences, and measure performance to maximize ROI. Utilizing these seven tips will ensure that you’re making the most of your marketing.
How intent data can boost marketing results?
By leveraging intent data, marketers can significantly boost results by honing their efforts to reach the right prospects at the perfect time with optimized messaging.
This allows them to personalize campaigns and target qualified leads more effectively, thus driving better ROI.
