Intent Data in Sales

Intent data shows which leads or accounts are actively conducting research online. As they search, they’re scored on thousands of topics. This data is used to alert sales and marketing teams when their high-fit accounts are in buying mode for their particular solution. When used correctly, intent data dramatically boost conversions and sales. Intent data is a powerful predictor of which accounts are ready to buy.

Intent data is rarely used alone. Knowing that a lead is interested in a particular topic isn’t very useful unless that lead is also qualified to buy. That’s why intent data is often paired with firmographic, technographic, and other data that narrow the list of accounts to just those that are high-fit.

Different types of Intent Data:

There are two types of intent data, both of which use a combination of IP addresses and browser cookies to track visitors online.

• First-Party Intent Data: First-party intent data comes from tracking your website and is also known as ‘Internal Intent Data’.This data refers to leads that are garnered from your website or landing page. Many marketing automation platforms have produced first-party intent data for more than a decade now and most marketers have access to it. First-party intent data can be anonymous, meaning there’s no name associated with the record, or it can be known, meaning the individual has filled out a form and has provided their name and contact information.
• Third-Party Intent Data: Third-party intent data is a much newer category and is also referred to as ‘External Data’. While marketing automation tracks your own web properties, third-party intent data providers can track everyone else’s. Bombora, for example, operates a data co-op which collects data from thousands of high-value analyst sites like Gartner, review sites like G2Crowd, and publications like Forbes. When your prospects research on those sites, Bombora indicates that they are ‘surging’ on particular topics. The information is extremely valuable, as the data can be used to identify who is in-market.

Benefits of Intent Data:

Marketers frequently build a target market profile or develop a buyer persona with their sales partners to best determine the interests of their target audience. However, B2B external intent data allows you to go a step further. Providers of this type of data help their customers achieve this by identifying which accounts are spiking showing interest around a particular keyword or topic. By knowing the topics that are spiking at an account level, plus the identification of the specific person who is in-market, the sales team will be able to quickly target a prospect for their solution.

Few ways of how marketers leverage intent data:

• Develop a correlation between your target prospects’ buying motivations.
• Create a demand generation strategy that is reflective of the interests of your prospects.
• Correlate intent data with other demographic, firmographic and geographic data.

Few ways of how sales leverage intent data:

• Using intent data allows you to focus your sales efforts on a specific person at an account that is in-market.
• A sales rep assigned to a large territory can use intent data to spot the businesses actively in-market and select who to go after.
• Intent data can help prioritize sales efforts to uncover the solution of interest.