The world may have closed in 2020, but that wasn’t the case for B2B sales teams. Businesses still had to keep moving, close deals and meet their quotas. In 2021, as organizations get ready to recover from the pandemic, focus on what really matters, and this is where intent data comes into the picture. 

Intent data is the secret weapon marketers were missing, and leveraging it will help them create personalized marketing campaigns. Content marketing with intent data in 2021 willmake a big difference, and this is what we would be talking about in this blog. 

Make Better Content. Get Better Leads.

The focus of B2B organizations should be on creating the most useful content for their customers in their buyer journeys. Content assets should act as the decision support your  prospects crave, which in turn will help them trust you. Building better relationships with your buyers helps you get permission from them to share more with them in the future and to collect data about them that helps you do that. 

Content Marketing Fueled by Intent. Buyers Say Wow!

Intent signals are born from the kind of content that people consume on the internet as per their interests. That’s why creating relevant content assets is important, to leverage the intent of your prospects.

There’s a plethora of content on the internet. With so much clutter, it’s difficult to reach your audience with relevant content. Intent data helps B2B marketers clear this clutter, develop personalized campaigns, and target the right prospects at the right time. 

4 Ways to Enhance Content Marketing with Buyer Intent

Turn your content marketing into something that attracts in-market buyers. These four tips will get you started.

1 – Find what interests your prospects

Understand the needs of your audience. It’s that simple. Intent signals help you by uncovering topics that interest your target accounts. For example, your organization sells financial services, and you find out a lot of your target accounts are downloading the latest reports on investment portfolios. Your marketing team can use this insight to create customized content assets, like a blog on how to make a balanced investment portfolio.

Create something your prospects are actually looking for!

2 – Close gaps in your content strategy

When you don’t have content for queries your audience make, it’s called a content gap. Using intent data, you can do regular content gap analysis, and find out what’s missing in your content library. Doing so will ensure that your content marketing is up to the mark, and you never run out of ideas. 

3 – Sequence content to the buyer’s journey

You should have content pieces that cover the whole buyer’s journey. Done properly, they act as guideposts for the prospect to move to the next step. Use these ideas to activate intent and inspire content.

• When a potential buyer is in the awareness stage, help them with content like whitepapers, e-books, and blog posts that give high level views of a solution category or approaches.

• As the prospect moves towards the consideration stage, help them with “how to” content that looks into various solutions and ways they can approach a solution. Use case studies to help them visualize the outcomes of different approaches.

• Using intent data, you can check deflections in the research activity of your prospects, which in turn could be leveraged to guide prospects to the right nurture path. 

• When the prospects are in the decision stage, use intent data to create personalized landing pages for potential buyers. Customize with interactive tools such as configurators. Use bottom-of-funnel converters like check lists and business case guides. 

Intent data doesn’t just help you get new customers, but also helps keep your existing customers happy. If a customer is looking at your competitors, you can detect that and use such insights to create relevant content that makes them stick with you. 

4 – More targeted content syndication efforts

“It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best promoted content that wins.”

Creating content is one part of the strategy. For better results, you need to promote and syndicate it. With so many platforms available, it’s important to know which one can give you the best results. Use intent data to find organizations searching for content similar to the blog posts and whitepapers you publish. Reach out to these organizations. Syndicate content via email marketing, telemarketing, ad campaigns and account-based marketing. 

Keep Content Marketing Fresh: Use Intent Signals for Ideas

Organizations are investing a lot in content marketing, and they want to get the maximum ROI out of it. Intent data makes your content marketing efforts sharper and therefore more effective. When you create relevant content taking cues from intent data, you reduce your bounce rate and increase engagement across marketing campaigns. Be it email, social media or account-based marketing, that’s what we need in 2021. Better engagement and more leads to accomplish a successful recovery post-pandemic. 

Accelerate Revenue with Content and Intent Intelligence

Need more ideas for activating intent data? You’re invited to the Anteriad Spring Summit: “Accelerating Revenue with Intent Intelligence.” Have a look at the agenda. Spoiler alert: Jay Leno is a special guest!