Purchase intent data turbo-charges account based marketing and personalisation strategies, but what is it and how can it be used?

What is intent data?

Wouldn’t it be great to know when companies are actively in-market for your products and services? If you could find a way to narrow down your segment or account-based advertising to focus only on the companies who are specifically looking for your solution at any one time?

Often only a small portion of your potential customers are actively looking to buy at any one time, so how do you know if and when a prospect is actively looking to purchase a product or solution that you offer?

Well, intent data aims to tell you just that.

B2B intent data helps you identify companies and accounts who are actively in-market for your products and services.

Intent data is information gathered from across digital channels, both on and off your website, that shows you information about who is most likely to be in-market to buy what you sell. Understanding this data is incredibly important, as the typical B2B buying journey is not linear. Knowing the signals that tell you when your prospects are ready to take the next step is vital to an effective ABM campaign.

One client we spoke to recently said “this sounds like The Holy Grail”, but it’s possible you’re already sitting on a stack of this data already, and you just don’t know it.

Types of intent data

Intent data breaks down into two broad types:

• Owned/internal/first-party data. This is the stuff you have access to – the information you are capturing on your website, interaction on your social media feeds. Roughly, all of the things that you can monitor within your marketing automation system. Example of first party intent data: a user from company x visits your website and views 2 service pages. The intent of the visit suggests the user/company are in-market or currently researching your products or services.
• External/third party data. This is the stuff that B2B dreams are made of. This is data gathered externally, off site, and gains insight about which companies may be in-market for your products and services from a wider set of digital interactions and external websites. Example of third party data: say you sell a marketing automation tool. A user from company x searches for “marketing automation tool” or visits multiple websites and views content related to marketing automation tools. The intent of the searches and content suggests the user/company is in-market or currently researching marketing automation systems.

A note on external intent data

External ABM intent data is, in our opinion, the next big marketing trend waiting to be adopted en-mass by B2B companies looking to gain a competitive advantage, and clients get very excited about the prospect of using it – but temper your expectations.

It’s important to note that external intent data currently only comes from second/third tier publishers. These sites will be monitoring what company visitors are doing on their sites, via IP tracking (the type of tracking used by a tool like Lead Forensics) or cookies, then selling that information back to a vendor (we use DemandBase for this type of data collection).

This means the intent data available right now is from a limited number of sources, so you won’t be pick up every company in the world looking for your services, and there won’t be a volume of data available at this time that will allow you to do any sort of advanced predictive modelling, but we’d say it’s an absolutely invaluable tool if you’re serious about implementing an ABM strategy.

How to use intent data

You may already be using it. In fact, it’s almost certain that you are. Some form of intent data can be gathered from almost any modern digital marketing tool, it’s just a case of knowing how to read it and use it in your strategy.

For example, your marketing automation system will be able to monitor which of your subscribed contacts are viewing product pages on your website. You can use that information to trigger automated workflows, personalise content and CTAs, increase lead scores, or simply notify your sales team for outreach in order to help the contact make a sales enquiry. This is super basic stuff, but it’s an example of how intent data can be used with what you currently have.

Advances in marketing technology and implementation strategies mean that the use of intent data is becoming more granular (keyword searches, sentiment analysis, comments and conversations online) that allow us to make sure we are targeting companies in an ABM context that we know are highly-likely to be looking for products or services.

Why use insight intent data?

If the above wasn’t clear enough: it gives you an enormous competitive advantage. You can get in front of the companies looking to buy first, before your competitors.

We all know the statistics: 67% of the buyer’s journey is now performed digitally (Sirius Decisions) and B2B buyers are typically 57% of the way to a buying decision before actively engaging with sales (CEB), but it’s often a struggle to understand how to action this information beyond “create some content and hope searchers find us”. But what if you took your content to them? With the right intent insight, you can amplify your content, messaging and product features to prospect accounts actively looking to buy before your competition.

Using third-party intent data on top of your own intent data ; from sales insights to account research. Layering this information helps to develop a clearer, more comprehensive picture of target account business drivers, goals and challenges, which can be combined to deliver a more comprehensive perspective on propensity to buy.

Once you have this clarity on account’s intent and insights, you can then start building out propositions, campaign messaging and execution strategies – targeting the right accounts, with the right message, content and offers, at the right time.

Using the right intent data can help you:

• Define the accounts to target in your ABM strategy: An issue we see often with ABM strategies is confusion about who should form the target account list, ta lot of companies don’t know where to start. By constructing a list of dream clients and mapping them to your intent data, you can build a list of previously unknown opportunities. Conversely, an active ABM strategy can benefit from intent data by creating a steady stream of new accounts to focus on.
• Prioritise what gets sent to sales: Intent data can help your sales team figure out who is actually ready for an approach, and what you need to approach them with. Many companies we work with have a very simple lead qualification process, where every single contact is passed on to sales for contact. This leads to a hugely inefficient process as companies sale, and frankly, pissed off sales teams with dud leads. If someone from a company you know are in-market downloads content on your site, for example, intent data can help you boost that prospect up the priority order.
• Personalise effectively: Intent insight should play a role in any personalisation campaign. Understanding where your customer or target account is in their buying journey will allow you to deliver a more accurate experience of your brand, helping them through the process.

Knowing the companies, accounts and contacts who are actively seeking out your products and services is the holy grail of B2B marketing, and by using a combination of first and third party intent data as part of an ABM strategy, you can get closer to it than ever before.

Bern & Gray is a boutique agency specialising in designing, implementing and deploying digital marketing and martech strategies for clients in B2B and professional services. If you need help gathering or understanding your intent data, contact us at hello@bernandgray.com