[New intent data content update 10-15-20]

What Research Shows about “Intent Data’s Expanding Impact”

Original applications for intent data focused on spotting in-market buyers based on their online behaviors. It’s safe to say that while all B2B marketers may not yet be full-on into intent data, we’re all interested. 

Here’s why intent data has the attention of Marketing and Sales. Typically long B2B sales cycles and elusive WFH researchers make it hard to spot potential buyers until they’re deep into their journeys. By then you’ve lost the advantage. 

So intent caught on with sellers who want to capture in-market intent signals without having to wait on hand-raising from buyers.

Got Intent Data? Do This Next

While it starts with spotting in-market buyers poking around keywords relevant to a category, the story doesn’t end there. From this promising foundation, we’ve seen many smart organizations take their next step with intent, and even steps beyond that. B2B revenue teams have rallied around intent and quickly moved into the realms of intent intelligence and then intent activation.

Marketing Cloud Drives More Uses of Intent Data

Intent applications have spread quickly across B2B revenue operations and continue to win fans. As this happens, organizations typically run into similar challenges, many of which marketing cloud technology now overcomes. Marketing cloud technology and services have kept up with the shifting landscape. 

Data is rightly an area of concern and demands solutions designed to accommodate the flow of data from source to activation. This can involve data handling across multiple departments. A holistic marketing cloud brings closure to this challenge.

Get Ideas to Grow Your Intent Reach

Because intent data is a relatively new tool for many in B2B selling, this DemandGen Report — “Intent Data’s Expanding Impact” — can be your go-to resource for ideas and validation. It’s must-reading for marketers who are ready to up their revenue game. 

Get the report for topics like these to grow your intent marketing reach:

• Impact of intent data on B2B revenue operations
• Expanding use cases for integrating intent data across strategic areas
• Challenges when managing and integrating intent data
• Maintaining incremental efficiency 
• How to increase data impact moving forward

More than 70% of respondents in this report credit intent data with a positive impact on their business. As for metrics, responses went well beyond short-term pipeline returns. Many cited increases in conversions, productivity and revenue operations efficiency.

The point of this blog update is to offer “students” of intent data marketing this additional resource, “Intent Data’s Expanding Impact”, which was sponsored by True influence. 

[Original content starts below]

Intent Data Use Cases: Try These 10 Popular Applications for Intent

Many B2B marketers have turned to different uses for intent data solutions to fuel more precise, cost-effective demand gen programs. Who wouldn’t want to know in near real-time when B2B buyers search for your category of products and services online, along with the information to contact them? That’s the magic of B2B behavioral intent data, and almost any sales or marketing strategy can benefit from it.

“Being able to accurately identify the intent of your target customers is the key to being successful as a marketing and sales organization,” said Kerry Cunningham, senior research director at SiriusDecisions. “Any tool that streamlines this process can save the organization time and quickly increase a company’s revenue.”

But when the power of intent data is combined with an integrated marketing platform, you can do much more than spot in-market buyer signals. Whether you’re already using an intent data source or just exploring the idea, consider some of the ways intent data can bring more value and ROI to your organization. These popular intent data use cases will get you started.

#1 – Use segmentation to identify active prospects

If you’re at all familiar with intent data, you know it helps B2B marketers discover companies in-market for a particular product or service. Some intent solutions offer segmentation tools to prioritize markets or segments that are good fits for your products or services. Leading intent solutions allow robust audience segmentation and filtering using an unlimited combination of topic, company, contact, location, and installed technology criteria. InsightBase employs cookie-tracking technologies to map intent signals directly to individuals in its expansive B2B contact database. Audiences can be as broad or targeted as you require, and you’re not limited to the number of audiences or segments you monitor at any time. In fact, B2B marketers are encouraged to segment audiences for more precise targeting.

#2 – Intent for better sales prospecting

Improve sales prospecting by giving sales a list of companies and contacts actively researching your product category. Advanced intent solutions leverage big data analytics for better B2B prospects. InsightBase 4.2’s exclusive multi-variant Relevance Engine™ uses natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to gather and analyze billions of intent signals each day to identify organizations researching topics relevant to companies and their products. Anteriad’s proprietary Identity Graph Technology™ identifies contact-level intent from B2B decision-makers across all departments in an account. This contributes to sales and marketing alignment, as the leads passed to sales come with more credibility and quality than those from other sources. Over time, this will lead to greater trust in marketing contribution and more effective sales engagement.

#3 – Intent for sales account prioritization

Sales bandwidth is not infinite, but even with ample coverage, it doesn’t make sense to spend time on accounts that aren’t showing any interest. Intent solutions overcome this by delivering contacts that are worth a followup. Some intent-monitoring platforms automatically alert sales when accounts in their territories or prospect lists are currently in-market and require immediate attention.

#4 – Intent for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) support

More B2B marketers now leverage account intent to identify and drive their ABM product or offer strategy. Intent solutions are a natural fit with account-based marketing. The shared account-level focus delivers results through timely information about a specific account’s interest and readiness for engagement. It also makes it possible to scale ABM programs by automating the investigation into account behavior across multiple organizations.

#5 – Intent for programmatic / campaign audience selection

With intent data, B2B marketers can improve display advertising and marketing campaign ROI by focusing spend based on account intent. You can invest programmatic dollars in accounts showing intent and deprioritize accounts that aren’t ready, or shift programmatic ad strategy based on topical intent.

#6 – Intent for marketing program optimization

Integrated marketing can be enhanced by the data and insights from an intent-monitoring platform to enable intent-driven sales and marketing decisions. Powerful intent analysis, segmentation, and research tools can go beyond lookalike modeling to identify your Total Active Market. Integration with CRM and MAP systems you already use brings a holistic approach to B2B demand generation. For example, the InsightBase platform integrates with Salesforce, Eloqua, Marketo, and HubSpot for immediate qualification and outreach. Once configured, users can designate which campaign or list within the MAP or CRM to deliver company and contact intent data to. This capability can trigger intelligent workflows and target engagement at all stages of a customer’s journey. You can also use regional intent insights to inform event and direct mail strategies.

#7 – Intent for engagement optimization

Integrated marketing benefits an intent platform because B2B marketers can pump useful data insights into CRM and MAP systems to drive more effective, relevant demand generation. Company and contact topical interest can optimize nurture streams and increase

engagement. Sales teams go into buyer conversations with more information about who they’re dealing with and what those buyers and buying groups are looking for.

#8 – Buying Group / Demand Unit identification and selection

Sirius Decisions defines Demand Units as “Buying Groups that are activated to find solutions to business needs that match the selling organization’s solutions.” Demand Units have become a powerful tool to visualize the Buying Committee inside a targeted company. Opportunities to use Demand Units include:

• Identify contacts from named accounts in order to pursue and surround the buying committee.
• Show companies that have complete Demand Units and target them for initial outreach.
• Strategize content syndication to target buyer personas involved in the decision-making process.

With the right intent-monitoring solution, it’s possible to quickly and automatically identify buying group members and track their engagement performance, saving marketing and sales teams hundreds of work hours. Users can compare this intent intelligence to buying group models for deeper understanding of new opportunities and influencers within an account. You can also uncover and close database gaps in your buying groups to drive more focused lead acquisition activities.

#9 – Intent for content strategy optimization

Intent signals emanate from buyers’ interactions with content. For B2B marketers, this is a goldmine of information. You can learn where buyers seek content, what topics interest them, and what formats are popular. Intent data helps you discover differences in topical interest by account, segment, or location to drive your content strategy and improved SEO/SEM. For many marketers, this knowledge informs their content syndication strategies. Content syndication is a method of republishing content on other sites in order to reach a broader audience. Syndicated content not only increases your reach and brand awareness, it builds links and drives more traffic to your original article. Syndicating your content gets it in front of a different audience who otherwise would have never known it existed. Content syndication stands out because it’s cost-effective, boosts brand awareness, and improves SEO performance. Publications big and small like to syndicate content because it gives fresh information to their readers. The original authors also benefit since it gets their brand in front of a new audience. There are lots of possibilities to filter through for syndication, and intent data can tell you where ideal prospects are seeking content like yours.

#10 – Intent for competitive and sales intelligence

An intent-monitoring solution can be set up to alert the correct salesperson when accounts exhibit interest in competitors, and guide sales outreach strategies accordingly. Sales intelligence can be delivered as automated alerts that signal when an existing account is researching a solution you offer. You can use that insight to proactively approach your accounts and stem a defection. When you select accounts to follow via intent signals, consider adding your competitors to the list. You’ll gain insights into the kinds of content and topics they’re aligning with.

When you can discover intent trends at the company, location, and contact level, you have valuable information to build a comprehensive, intent-driven revenue strategy. Contact us at 1-888-301-4758 to talk about how to put these intent data use cases to work for your business.