B2B marketing has been one of the most powerful types of business models for many years, and in recent years it has become even more important.
The number of companies and organizations that sell services and products is increasing since the market has been global for quite some time now. The world is open for collaboration, which is excellent, but on the other hand, this also means there are a large number of competitors trying to be the best and better than everyone else.
Of course, because of the numerous businesses and the enormous number of competitors everywhere, it is more than helpful to hire a professional B2B demand generation agency that can help your business expand.
And one of the many parts of having a successful B2B business or being a quality B2B marketer is knowing how to use buyer intent data. It is one thing to decide if a sales lead is good, and this is important as well, but it is also the knowledge of how to use buyer intent data that has a significant impact on whether a potential customer becomes a buyer.
That is why we will see here how professional B2B marketers can use buyer intent data to their advantage. But first, before we get into all the details, let’s see what buyer intent data is and what benefits it offers your company’s business.
Definition of Buyer Intent Data
Put in the simplest terms, buyer intent data is a set of behavioral signals that give companies and organizations the advantage of identifying buyers during the buying process, or as it is called, the buying cycle.
What is interesting is that a lot of companies already do this without having any clue what it is called or what it actually is, but it is vital to understand it better and use it to its full potential. This means that some of these signals come naturally because they are logical in the world of marketing, but if you don’t use them the right way, the results will decrease over time.
So, some of the behavioral signals and indicators of buyer behavior can be the following actions:
- The frequency of visits on your site
- A visitor reading a specific type of articles or blog posts on the site
- Visiting certain parts of your site multiple times
- Length of time a visitor spends on your site
- Higher engagement with any content you provide
As you can see, intent data can be literally anything that shows that a lead is in their buying cycle and is preparing to buy some of the services and products you offer. Logically, this is the perfect time to “strike” and help them make the decision to purchase something your brand offers.
Why One Should Use Buyer Intent Data to Find Buyers
Understanding the behavior of potential buyers and understanding their intent, no matter if it comes from first-party intent data that you yourself gathered or from a third-party source, is essential if a marketer wants to achieve significant success and improve how they engage with prospective buyers.
So, understanding all the behaviors and things that trigger buying is more than crucial in every business, and it helps marketing and sales teams understand what gives the company the highest sales. Once they know this, they can target specific prospective customers with a personalized approach instead of a cold outreach. The goal is simple: marketers have to find people who are ready to buy and “push them over the edge.”
Also, the best part about intent data is that it can be used later for campaigns, creating content, and other marketing strategies since now you know what type of people are ready to become loyal customers or buyers in general. It is essential to let everyone know about your business, especially if it is a new one, but after a while, it is more important to target the right people who can become actual buyers.
Another reason why you should start using buyer intent data to find the best potential buyers is that more and more companies and organizations are beginning to use this strategy, and you must not let your competitors get a step ahead of you and your business. Therefore, let’s see how B2B marketers use this impressive aspect of marketing.
How B2B Marketers Use Buyer Intent Data
Since we know that every aspect of marketing is vital in order to find new buyers, from creating great content, using CRM practices, running email campaigns, or everything else, we will see here how marketers use buyer intent data to their advantage in order to accomplish the necessary goals for the company.
As mentioned above, in such a global market as it is today, one has to remain competitive all the time, and the usage of buyer intent data is more than valuable.
Furthermore, there are a number of areas where intent data can be beneficial and make a significant impact on your company’s business. So, let’s see how the pros use it to their advantage:
They Use It to Improve the Content
As we all know, SEO optimization services are extremely important and provide a lot of benefits since SEO tools can help you find the best keywords or topics that are trending right now. Still, one thing that people often forget is that potential customers and buyers are not robots, so you are writing for people, and your content has to be at the highest level all the time.
Buyer intent data can help you significantly in creating an ideal content strategy that fits customers’ needs and what they find engaging or exciting. You will also get a whole new level of valuable information that you can use to your advantage and strengthen your content marketing strategy. Since intent data tells you what customers really want, you can use that information to create much better content for your site and all other online platforms you use to raise brand awareness.
Intent Data Allows You to React in Time
One of the more obvious benefits, but still as necessary for your business, is that B2B marketers use intent data to identify a buyer at the right time. Since the competition is enormous, it is highly valuable to detect a potential customer earlier in the buying journey.
You have to be faster and better than everyone else, so you have to sense the intent signals as quickly as possible and engage with the prospective buyer before anyone else does and “steals” them from your services and products.
Many studies have shown that prospective customers prefer it when a company or a salesperson communicates with them first, and that is the business they will choose in most cases. But since almost all visitors to your website are anonymous, it is highly beneficial to use a tool that will determine intent and evaluate and score every visitor according to their buying intentions. This way, you will have the opportunity to see if the intent is low, medium, or high, and you will be able to engage the right prospects.
B2B Marketers Create the Right Advertising Using Intent Data
Another extremely important and even more beneficial aspect of using buyer intent data is that you can create more successful advertising campaigns by making the most of leads that show you the most important signals. By doing this, you won’t waste time and money advertising to people who are not really interested in your business and have no intention of buying your services and products.
If you use this the right way, you will know what your B2B customers want or need and what their intent signals are for buying, so you will have the chance to start sharing specific content. This content will help them meet their objectives and create new opportunities for your marketing teams to engage and drive sales.
Make the Most of Your Lead Scoring
One of the best and most practical aspects of using buyer intent data is that it can help you greatly distinguish between potential customers who are researching your site to find something they really need and those who are just looking for a particular topic or want to read something but have no intention of making a purchase. This is valuable because it will tell you whether a lead is your ideal buyer or only someone who is just visiting. Once you know this, you will be able to prioritize your efforts.
In order to be effective and know for sure, you should use an AI solution that can give you the right level of accuracy about what the visitor’s behavior really is, and help you determine which visitors are low, medium, or high scores, so you can act accordingly.
Intent Data Helps Account-Based Marketing
ABM, which stands for account-based marketing, is an approach to B2B marketing where sales and marketing teams work together to find and target the most suitable accounts in order to turn them into buyers. So, account-based marketing is all about building the best possible relationships.
Therefore, buyer intent data can help contribute to better engagement and communication in order to build strong relationships with the right prospective buyers. This impressive data does two essential things for this process: one is helping marketers expand their reach, and the other is giving insights that marketers might not be able to see or collect directly by themselves.
Some of the most important benefits of buyer intent data in this process include scoring leads with better precision, providing more in-market buyers, and helping restructure the account-based marketing campaign with more personalized messaging. Also, this improvement from intent data can create a much better site experience with various tools, like a live chat, that can engage the right visitor at the best time possible.
Even though buyer intent data is highly beneficial, and there are many ways marketers use it to their advantage, it is also important to know how to determine whose buyer intent is most accurate.
How to Differentiate Realistic from Unrealistic Buyer Intent
We know that generating leads during a pandemic is not easy, but one can use many buyer intent data tools to achieve all the results written above and be highly successful. Still, before that happens, you have to decide which intent is realistic. Otherwise, you could be wasting precious time or money in the wrong direction, and the success rate won’t be impressive at all.
That is why here you will have the chance to see the three main aspects of how to differentiate which intent is the right one and will lead you to sell your services and products.
Frequency Is Vital
As mentioned in the definition of buyer intent data, the frequency of visits to your site can be one of the crucial factors and critical indicators of genuine buyer intent. If you have spotted a lead that frequently views your site or some of your pages, like the pricing page or any other, you can predict that they are in the buying cycle and are willing to buy something as soon as possible.
So, if this happens, a good marketer or sales team member will know that this is the perfect moment to “attack” and take the extra step. In essence, it is not so complicated; for example, think of yourself as a potential buyer. When you want to buy something but you are not 100% sure, you visit the page on the site multiple times, and this is the perfect time for someone to reach out to you and help you in your decision-making.
Recency Shows “Freshness”
Recency is also valuable since it shows how recently a prospective buyer has engaged with a piece of content on your site or anywhere else. That is why you must not wait too long to contact a potential buyer since, by the time you do, they may reach out to your competitors or buy the service or product from another company. For instance, if you wait for weeks or a month to contact a lead that visits your site, they will have forgotten they ever visited your website at all.
Many situations, past and present, have shown that sales often depend on speed, or more precisely, on how fast you reach out to a recent visitor. Sometimes, up to 50% of sales go to whoever reaches the visitor first, before they go somewhere else to look for a solution.
Another aspect that shows how relevant this is: a visitor who most recently visited your site and looks interested is more likely to buy something now than if you contact them weeks later.
Last But Not Least, Engagement
As you probably already know, the best systems used for lead scoring place engagement at the top.
So, the amount of engagement shown for specific pieces of content is important, and if a lead or prospective buyer is engaging with certain content on your website, it is the perfect time to reach out to them and help them in the decision-making process, in essence, to make them buy some of your services and products.
The rules of B2B sales change over time, and that is why it is also important to stay on track and informed all the time. Still, engagement is one thing that will probably always be important since it directly shows whether a prospective buyer is ready to buy something.
To Sum It All Up
We have come to an end, so here you have the most valuable aspects of how B2B marketers use buyer intent data to their advantage and increase sales by converting prospective buyers. Of course, this is the ultimate goal, and you have to be effective all the time since there are many competitors that can easily “take” your future loyal customers.
So, use the information, react as quickly as possible, make your content and your site continuously better, and help your business grow through proper targeting. Nothing will happen quickly, and potential buyers have the privilege to choose whatever service, product, or company they like, so your goal must be to convince them that you are the only right choice.
Learn from past mistakes, use intent data to its full potential, and grow your sales rates and customer numbers like never before. The opportunities are extremely beneficial and endless; your focus should be on becoming better and working hard every single day. Intent data is a dataset that indicates what an individual is interested in and what they are likely to buy. Buyer intent data can recognize whether a company is interested in investing in your services or products. Intent data is the next big step when it comes to marketing. Buyer intent shows the degree of the willingness and probability of a potential customer to buy something from your brand in a certain amount of time. First-party intent data is collected mainly through your own site, and third-party intent data is collected by monitoring which prospects actively search elsewhere online.