Timing is everything in sales and B2B marketing.
To get high-quality leads, you must reach them before your competitors do.
If you dissect your sales process, you will find two key factors: connection and action.
Here’s the catch—one creates the need for the other. If you don’t make the right connection, you reduce the chances of achieving the desired action.
It’s a domino effect: the more targeted your approach, the higher the chances they’ll take action, leading to greater sales.
But what’s the best way to find high-quality leads? And what makes them high quality?
That’s exactly what we’ll explore in this article.
What is Intent-Based Marketing?
Table of Contents
- 1 What is Intent-Based Marketing?
- 2 Conclusion
Intent-based marketing is a strategy that uses customer signals to identify and target prospects who show intent to purchase or engage with a product or service.
It analyzes digital footprints like search queries, content interactions, and social media activity. This helps marketers understand where a prospect is in their buyer journey.
This means you can deliver highly personalized, timely messaging.
Why Data Driven Marketing is Important?
71% of customers expect personalized offers and user experiences when they visit a website. Intent-based marketing delivers this level of personalization.
However, the benefits of intent data go beyond user experience. Let’s dive into the key advantages.
What are Benefits of Intent-Based Marketing
1. Precise Targeting
Intent-based marketing improves targeting by enabling marketers to reach the right customer at the right time with the right message.
Customers demand a personalized approach. They are more likely to respond when they feel the content is tailored to them, naturally increasing the likelihood of conversion.
By doing this, you’ll stay ahead, as customers are likely to ignore brands that don’t deliver personalized experiences.
2. Improved Customer Engagement
Intent data allows you to create highly personalized experiences. With insights into customer needs and interests, you can craft more engaging and relevant interactions.
Improving customer experience not only boosts engagement but also helps grow your audience.
3. Cost Efficiency
An intent-driven approach focuses sharply on high-value clients, making your marketing efforts more efficient.
Since you only target customers interested in your offers, you eliminate wasted time and money on ineffective campaigns.
Key Components of an Intent-Based Marketing Strategy
1. Understanding Buyer Intent Signals
Buyer intent signals help you identify and analyze purchase intent based on data from online activities. When gathered from multiple sources, these signals provide insights into your target prospects’ interests, behaviors, and intent.
Where is the Challenge?
These signals can be unclear. Behaviors often overlap, making it hard to distinguish ready-to-buy prospects from those in the early research phase.
The solution is to combine multiple data points, such as website activity, content downloads, and email engagement.
Use AI tools like 6sense or Bombora to analyze overlapping behaviors. This ensures you target genuinely ready-to-buy prospects and avoid wasting efforts on premature leads.
Must Read: The Power of Intent Data in Lead Generation
Let’s See How Buyer Intent Signals Look:
Search Behavior:
Keywords or phrases that relate to your product or service, such as “best CRM tools” or “pricing for [specific product],” often indicate active research and a higher likelihood of purchase intent.
Engagement with Content:
Actions like downloading whitepapers, reading blog articles, signing up for webinars, or watching videos show a prospect’s interest in specific topics or solutions, signaling where they are in their buyer journey.
Social Media Activity:
Liking, sharing, or commenting on industry-related posts demonstrates engagement and interest in your niche or solutions, providing opportunities for targeted outreach.
2. Segmentation
Segmenting leads is essential to maximize the outcome of intent-based marketing.
Proper segmentation allows personalized communication that directly addresses your audience’s pain points and readiness to engage.
Prospects respond to messages only if they find value in them. Otherwise, they won’t engage.
How to Segment Leads:
High-Intent Leads:
- Prospects actively considering a purchase.
- Focus on sales-driven messaging, such as showcasing product value, offering limited-time discounts, or providing immediate follow-ups.
Low-Intent Leads:
- Prospects in the awareness or early research stage.
- Nurture them with educational content, like eBooks, guides, and thought leadership pieces. Build trust and gradually move them down the funnel.
Industry-Specific Segmentation:
- Different industries have unique needs, challenges, and segmentation patterns.
- For example, a SaaS provider might segment leads into healthcare, retail, or finance and tailor case studies, testimonials, and features accordingly.
Position in the Buyer Journey:
- Early-Stage Leads: Focus on brand awareness and problem identification.
- Mid-Stage Leads: Highlight solutions with case studies, comparison guides, or interactive tools.
- Late-Stage Leads: Offer tailored pricing, ROI calculators, or direct sales consultations.
3. Leveraging Intent Data
Data is complex and scattered, so it’s crucial to collect and analyze intent data from multiple sources.
93% of B2B marketers say they need more than two sources for their intent data. (Mixology Digital)
Use tools like 6sense or Bombora to identify intent signals from external sources, such as industry research or competitor content engagement.
4. Integration with Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
When it comes to Account-Based Marketing (ABM), intent data reigns supreme.
79% of marketers using five or more data sources say more than 50% of their leads become sales-accepted. (Foundry)
Intent data makes ABM more effective by:
- Identifying high-potential accounts actively searching for in-market solutions.
- Providing valuable prospect information to personalize outreach.
- Aligning sales messaging with the pain points prospects engage with.
All in all, intent data serves the necessary personalization within the ABM pipeline.
Conclusion
Intent data doesn’t just help identify the right prospects; it drives them through every stage of the funnel.
With lengthy buying cycles and shifting market conditions, marketers fear losing out. The primary advantage of using intent data is that you will always stay ahead in the numbers game.
With a data-driven approach instead of relying on a heuristic approach, you can significantly increase sales and revenue for your organization.
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.
