Correct databases can help you see an improved demand generation performance while also helping you in understanding your buyers and shortening the sales cycle. But there is a need to understand this emerging data trend called intent data. This is because it is important to interact with the buyers in a more meaningful way by providing them relevant content. Intent data can help you to develop better content strategies. In this article, we will study how intent data can help you as a marketer to progress faster in 2019.What is the intent data?
A simple definition of intent data would be – a set of data that reveals what the buyers intend to do. People all over the world search for certain terms online and engage with specific content online. While they are doing an online search about the products, the details about their search queries are calculated, and this is called as Intent data. Intent data is either gathered from the buyer’s behavior or from the collected inputs from the buyer itself. Intent data will help you understand what the buyer is interested in and you will be able to sell them just at the time they are ready to buy. How can you separate the details you are interested in from among the billions of search queries? You need to know the details that describe your ideal buyer. You can use the following details to filter out your ideal buyers although you can customize the below list according to your preferences.
- Job titles of ideal buyers
- Company size and location
- Names and URLs of competitors
- Information about the existing customers
- Information about target accounts
You can filter the data by types and triggers meaning you can know what your prospects did and what triggered those actions. So, intent data is all about real people taking real actions. For example, if you are a software & tools providers, intent data provides you information on software, tools, technologies companies currently use and if they are actively looking for new technologies in the same area.Source of Gathering DataSource:
Must Read: Driving Growth with B2B Purchase Intent Data: Unlocking the Power of Buyer Insights
Machine language algorithm is used to observe relevant actions among the millions of searches that happen every day. This procedure makes it sure that you get real-time data that is not too old. You can observe actions such as
- General searches
- Engagement with the competitors sites
- Engagement with the industry influencers
- Inquiries related to major events
Why should the marketers use the intent database when they already have plenty of data. How is the intent data better than what they already have?
- The marketers gather data from many sources but they are not sure whether the data in their CRM is out of date. Once updated in the CRM it is not insightful and helpful for long whereas you retrieve intent data as and when required which makes it fresh and informative.
- Intent data gives you details like current contact info, information about company structure, engagements, budget, past contracts, etc. The data that is gathered correlates with demographic, geographic, firmographic data which makes it easy to understand specific behavior that matches certain buyer profile. With all such insights, your sales team will likely be in a position to be more effective in pitching a sales email.
- Intent data will help you with the insights on what the buyers want right now. Of course, this is not achieved through guesswork but using predictive analysis. This makes it easy for the sales team to know where to focus their efforts.
- Intent data is also used as a tool for sales and marketing alignment.
Usually, the sales team looks for more qualified leads whereas marketing team starts working on early leads. The two teams need to have generalized definitions of MQLs and SQLs, which if not done causes friction between them. Intent data removes the friction among the sales and marketing team by providing a common collaborative platform that gets the sales and marketing team together to better strategize. Using the same collaborative platform, you can help the teams to find more active quality leads, reduce churn rate and successful communication with your buyers. This, in turn, helps the marketers to better the brand identity and gain value for their products.
Must Read: MQL to SQL conversion rate
Secureworks is a leading data company which serves the mid-market and needed to narrow down their marketing approach only to 300,000 people who were likely to buy, as said by Nichole Austion, Field Marketing Manager. With the help of intent data which can otherwise be also called as real-time data, they could precisely target their buyers with more relevant content and they could achieve 500% ROI on their ABM campaign.
We all need intelligence that can better direct sales and marketing actions. If you want to put data to use and drive results from it, you need to go for predictive analysis and intent data. Intent data helps you be competitive by enabling you with insights to create more relevant content and helps you to remain competitive in such a huge market. Are you ready to leverage intent data as a part of your lead generation campaigns? If yes, stays connected and learn more about that in our blogs. Do you want to start using intent data? If yes, you need to decide who are going to be your buyers. Why not first create your buyers persona? Once done, you will be ready to have a positive impact on your bottom line. Are you ready to get started? If yes, contact us for intent data!
Must Read: B2B Intent Marketing: Capturing Business Leads
Vikas Bhatt is the Co-Founder of ONLY B2B, a premium B2B lead generation company that specializes in helping businesses achieve their growth objectives through targeted marketing & sales campaigns. With 10+ years of experience in the industry, Vikas has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by businesses today and has developed a unique approach to lead generation that has helped clients across a range of industries around the globe. As a thought leader in the B2B marketing community, ONLY B2B specializes in demand generation, content syndication, database services and more.