Staying ahead in B2B sales needs more than your conventional strategies.
This is where intent data comes into play – a revolutionary concept that has the potential to reshape the way businesses approach their growth strategies.
This comprehensive guide delves into intent data, its significance, and how to use it to effectively power your sales and marketing teams.
Let’s start 👇
What is intent data?
Intent data provides insights into the online behaviours of a target audience. It’s also known as buyer intent data or purchase intent data. It predicts whether a buyer intends to make a purchasing decision in your industry.
Sales and marketing teams can use intent signals to make more efficient decisions, but it’s not often used to its full potential.
Think of B2B intent data as the behavioural breadcrumbs that users leave behind as they navigate the digital realm. These breadcrumbs provide invaluable insights into what users are seeking, what problems they need to solve, and what solutions they are exploring.
Discover the meaning of intent data and how it helps B2B sales! Press ▶️ to watch Cognism’s explainer video.
What are the different types of intent data?
To effectively leverage customer intent, you must understand the different types of intent data and where it comes from. There are two main areas: first-party and third-party intent data.
- First-party intent data is any data collected from your site. This could include forms filled in for gated content or IP addresses collected from visitors.
- Third-party intent data is any data collected from another website. This also includes filled-in forms and collected IP addresses. Intent data providers, such as Cognism’s partner Bombora, gather it and provide it to buyers.
We’ve broken this down in a handy cheat sheet for you to steal 👇
There are four types of intent data sources:
1. Search intent data
This data is collected when a potential customer searches for a keyword or phrase on a search engine like Google. You can use search intent data to identify the topics your target audience is searching for, allowing you to provide the most relevant answers to their questions.
For instance, if you sell sales intelligence software, you can find companies searching for “How can I make prospecting easier?”.
This shows customer intent; you can reach out with your solution before your competitors.
2. Engagement data
This data refers to prospective buyers’ engagement with specific content, including reading, sharing, or commenting activities. Engagement data is collected from lead source channels such as your blog, website, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
An example of this is dark social. A prospect will share a valuable piece of content from your company on social media, including sources you can’t easily track, such as Facebook Messenger. You can use this information to share more of their favourite content or attempt a sales conversion.
3. Firmographic data
This is data about a prospective company. Firmographic information includes company size, location, industry and revenue. The data is usually obtained from business directories, website forms, and B2B data providers.
A good idea is to combine firmographics and ABM to strategically target companies with a higher likelihood of conversion.
For example, firmographics can help you find and target your ideal customer based on industry and company size.
4. Technographic data
Technographic data includes a company’s software, hardware, and networks. It’s often collected via surveys, questionnaires, and polls. These help you to better understand a target company’s technical capabilities and needs.
For instance, if you sell B2B data, it’s important to know if potential customers have an outdated CRM system or are using a competing tool. If you know this, they likely have outdated data, too, and you can offer them data enrichment or sell your tool as a better option.
Here’s an example of intent data being used to target the right customers at the right time:
“Cognism identifies the leads, allows us to target them based on the prospect’s intent and then follow-up with the sales action. Using intent data has massively reduced our Time to Engagement (TTE). Our sales cycle is typically 6-8 months long. At Cognism, we saw ROI in 8 weeks from intent data and direct dials. One deal pays for a year’s Cognism subscription.”
What are the benefits of intent data?
The traditional “spray and pray” approach to B2B sales and marketing is ineffective and costly. This is where intent data emerges as a game-changer.
By knowing what your potential customers are searching for, you can tailor your strategies to meet their needs exactly.
Intent data bridges the gap between marketing and sales teams, aligning them with customer behaviour. This alignment streamlines processes, leading to higher conversion rates and shorter sales cycles.
Here are the benefits of B2B intent data:
- Prioritise companies based on their buyer intent. Knowing which prospects are most interested in your solution will revolutionise your sales and marketing efforts.
- Identify companies and markets that have shown interest but might not have been on your radar.
- Prioritise existing customers based on intent topics.
- Identify the low-hanging fruit opportunities for higher conversions.
- Learn more about your audience, and build a more detailed ideal customer profile.
These benefits aren’t only true for tech companies. Buyer intent data is highly valuable for any B2B company.
How to drive sales and marketing with intent data
Virtual prospecting intent data can give you the edge over your competitors, giving you better awareness of your market and more context heading into cold calls.
If you’re still unconvinced, here are a few use cases for intent data:
B2B sales teams
The ROI potential of sales intent data is staggering. With laser-focused sales strategies, sales leaders can reduce resource wastage and significantly enhance conversion rates.
Here are some tactics:
Get in early
Every sales rep knows it pays to be the first person in touch.
With intent data, you’ll be able to reach potential clients earlier in their buying journey. Your awareness of potential customers just starting to look around means you can target them sooner.
You’re also more likely to find potential buyers unaware of your company.
With sales intent data, you’ve got a chance to intercept buyers before they start investigating competitors.
Lead scoring
If sales teams are identifying many outbound sales leads, they might need more time to reach out to all of them.
This is where lead scoring comes in. It’s the process of prioritising leads so you know who to speak to first.
What’s the best way of scoring leads?
By their intent, of course! If they’re more likely to buy, you want to get on the phone and start pitching to them immediately.
One of the most valuable aspects of contact intent data is that you can rank prospects according to customer intent. This will give you a list of targets, ordered by who to contact first.
It’s a lead generation game-changer.
Cold calling context
If you know the types of companies a prospect is looking at and the type of company you are, you can have a more valuable call with them.
It will give you insights into why they’re considering your solution. It means you’re not looking for pain points at the start of your cold call; you already know them.
You’ll also better build rapport when you know the prospect’s intent to buy.
Reduce churn and upsell
This might be one for the Customer Success team, but it’s no secret that retaining customers is more cost-efficient than finding new ones.
Intent data allows companies to see the solutions their current client base is considering. They might include additional features you don’t yet offer or alternate solutions to your own.
You now have a chance to either work to save the client or add the feature they’re looking for. It’s a great indicator of the gaps in your product, so you can improve your offering over time - and stop your customers from moving elsewhere.
An example of how a sales team can use intent data to generate pipeline is Keboola. They used Cognism to book 60% of their overall demos:
“We use Bombora’s intent data in addition to Diamond Data®, and we’re winning clients as a result. We choose an intent topic and target 20 companies per week.” “Cognism is unique in providing the complete package of intent data and verified mobile numbers. It’s a game-changer.”
B2B marketing teams
Marketing intent data is mostly about prioritisation and market discovery. Here are the main use cases:
Build LinkedIn-matched audiences
With the help of ABM intent data, marketers can build effective account based marketing campaigns. Showing relevant ads to the right companies at the right time drastically reduces your cost per lead.
With a better idea of the companies interested in your product, you’ll be presenting ads to familiar faces. People will recognise your brand, and conversions will soar.
This also applies to content marketing.
Just created a handy whitepaper? Great!
Now, you can ensure you’re putting it in front of the right eyes. Which people need to see this content to get a deal over the line? Let’s get it in front of them - by targeting high-intent leads with relevant content at every stage of the B2B marketing funnel.
Improve your targeting
Once you’ve ordered your leads by intent, you’ll better understand your ICP. You’ll know which buyer groups are the most interested. These are the people you want to target.
This feeds into everything a marketer does.
Ensure your team is up to date with intent scoring so they can tailor campaigns to hit the right notes. Intent scoring gives you extra flexibility that isn’t always there with B2B marketing.
With it, your email marketers will be able to build highly relevant lead nurturing campaigns. Which prospects are ready for a more forward CTA? Which ones need a bit more time? It’s all invaluable information.
Optimise your website
This is another benefit of a more accurate ICP: adjusting your website to fit your audience and then hyper-targeting potential customers.
The ICP doesn’t always stay the same. Changes in specific industries might make them a better or worse match. Figuring out your ICP isn’t a one-time job. Intent data allows you to calculate it constantly and make minor adjustments to reflect the change.
This includes optimising your website. For example, you could create pages specifically for the most frequent visitors and those with the highest intent. You could also make relevant case studies easier to access and provide industry-specific information.
An example of how marketers can use intent data to generate conversions is Gradfuel. They used Cognism to triple their sales in just six months:
“Cognism leads the way for any company looking to grow their sales and increase the number of conversations they have with decision-makers. I’d recommend Cognism to any business that wants to expand within European and APAC markets.”
How to use intent data
Data should fuel every business move, and B2B intent data provides a goldmine of actionable insights. From fine-tuning your product offerings to crafting compelling content that addresses user needs, every decision becomes more informed and strategic.
Here are four ways to use B2B buyer intent data:
- Personalised marketing campaigns: Leverage intent data to craft personalised marketing campaigns that resonate with potential customers’ specific pain points.
- Content strategy enhancement: Develop content that addresses the queries and concerns expressed through intent data analysis.
- Sales prospecting precision: Equip your sales team with intent data for more meaningful conversations with potential clients.
- Product development alignment: Tailor your product development efforts based on your target audience’s prevalent demands and intentions.
You can use these strategies to leverage intent data. Other steps to use predictive intent data are:
- Data collection: Gather first-party and relevant third-party intent data from various touchpoints.
- Data analysis: Utilise cutting-edge AI-driven tools to analyse the collected data for meaningful patterns.
- Strategy formulation: Develop strategies that align with the identified intentions of your target audience.
- Content creation: Craft content that serves the specific needs expressed through intent data.
- Sales integration: Equip your sales team with intent topics and insights to personalise their approach.
Learn how to use a tool like Cognism’s intent data to target customers searching for a service like yours.
Where to get intent data
The trick to gathering accurate intent data is knowing where to look.
- Known first-party intent data - your CRM.
- Anonymous first-party intent data - Google Analytics.
- Known third-party intent data - Bombora intent data.
- Anonymous third-party intent data - a provider like Bombora or Cognism.
You can use many intent data tools to reach and understand potential customers searching for a solution like yours. Here are some examples:
1. Intent data providers
Cognism, Uplead and ZoomInfo are just a few tools you can use to buy intent data linked to a B2B contact database.
Access to compliant contact-level intent data helps businesses better understand their customers, tailor their offerings and legally meet customer needs.
2. Co-op intent data
Bombora is a source of co-op intent data. It collects intent data across sites and provides B2B buyers and sales intelligence tools like the above with accurate, GDPR-compliant intent data for lead generation.
Bombora sources its data via consent-based frameworks that respect and protect members’ privacy. 70% of websites in the co-op are exclusive to Bombora.
3. Bidstream intent data
Contact data providers like LeadIQ use bidstream data. Bidstream data is the information publishers collect about their users and the available ad inventory. They then share this data with advertisers who can bid on it.
Cognism and intent data
The benefit of having company intent data in a B2B prospecting tool like Cognism is twofold.
Intent data provides background information on a company, helping you target more precisely and qualify more quickly.
Cognism's intent data helps you identify and connect with companies actively researching solutions like yours.
It gives you the power to speak only to companies currently looking for a product like yours - and the ability to understand exactly what they’re looking for.
Once you’ve found the right companies, Cognism will show you the right people. You’ll be able to quickly find the key decision-makers at the company for your solution.
Here’s how:
- Target active buyers: Identify companies showing increased interest in your products or services, ensuring your outreach efforts are focused on high-potential prospects.
- Prioritise your outreach: Leverage 14,000+ intent topics and use intent data to focus on the most engaged accounts, reducing time-to-conversion and maximising revenue impact.
- Align sales and marketing: Bridge the gap between your sales and marketing teams by aligning efforts with up-to-date buyer behaviour insights, ensuring a collaborative approach to outreach.
- Reduce time to engagement: Connect with prospects when they’re most receptive, accelerating your sales cycle and improving overall efficiency.
You’ll speak to the perfect person at the perfect company in just a few clicks. It’s as easy as that!
Contact Cognism today
Take advantage of customer intent and intent data on the Cognism platform today!
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