It is estimated that an average buyer spends around 67% of the buyer’s journey digitally. However, the problem arises when the prospect finds a competitive solution. Utilizing intent data is a possible solution to this problem. The behavior of B2B buyers has undergone a significant transformation, and now they mostly rely on self-directed research on the internet.

With so much content and resources available across every industry, most members of your buying committees can conduct their own investigations at a convenient time for them and are likely to finalize their choice before engaging in dialogue with your sales team. In this blog, you will learn more about B2B intent data and how it helps generate quality leads. 

Understanding B2B intent data – How it works? 

The main concept of B2B intent data revolves around recognizing potential buyers searching for products or services similar to your company’s offering. Communicating with individuals actively looking for solutions your company provides is a great advantage. With intent data, you can focus on these specific individuals almost instantaneously.

When users (prospects) navigate through the internet, they unintentionally leave traces of signals indicating their intentions. It includes pages they click, their time on each page, and other related data. B2B intent data is a collection of such signals later used to identify potential clients. By analyzing the type and intensity of these signals, companies can determine a user’s level of interest in their product or service. Thus, it is an effective option for creating a targeted marketing campaign or strong sales pitches. 

How is intent data for B2B different? 

B2B intent data is considered a little different because business organizations invest more time and conduct extensive research before purchasing. Moreover, they follow a complex sales funnel through the business journey. Sometimes, they may check your company’s products or services a year before buying something. They might also ask for demos a few months before purchasing. Therefore, a salesperson needs to understand the significance of purchasing intent data and what it conveys about the prospect’s current priorities. By analyzing the prospect’s interests, the sales team should modify their strategies to nurture the leads. 

What are the three categories of intent data in B2B? 

First party intent data

The first-party intent information allows you to get data from individuals who visit your website and interact with your digital content. Thus, you gather the information directly through your marketing technology stack. If your team utilizes CRM, allows website cookies, monitors email activities, integrates with marketing automation software or engages with social listening tools, then you have first-party intent data. 

Second party intent data

As the name suggests, this data is received from another company’s first-party information. It is a new marketing technique that involves collecting intent data about a company from another company (or using the help of another firm). You can purchase first-party intent data from another company, like a review site or others. 

Third party intent data

Data aggregators and platform providers obtain data from various sources, creating a network that supplies B2B intent data. The key benefit of this approach is that it enables your team to expand their horizons and connect to more potential prospects. You will be able to receive a massive amount of information through third-party intent data providers. Thus, it will help create a big list of highly potent clients who can be easily converted. 

How to generate quality leads using B2B intent data? 

Identifying the optimal timing for connecting with your ideal customers is essential in today’s market. To generate high-quality leads, waiting for potential customers to come to you isn’t always the most effective strategy. Instead, it’s crucial to understand when potential customers are actively researching and, more importantly, when they are ready to make a purchasing decision. 

Setting goals for prospects in terms of score

When a visitor lands on your website, you can collect valuable information directly from them. To best manage this data, it’s crucial to implement an effective lead-scoring system that can evaluate each visitor’s likelihood of making a purchase decision. You may want to consider assigning additional points to visitors who view any of your service pages. Additionally, award them another five points if they obtain your company’s overview copy. Moreover, if they browse a pricing page, add ten points to their score (since it shows purchase interest). 

Locate potential prospects

The B2B intent data can assist you in evaluating the relevance of the content you produce for your intended buyers. If you are unsure how to determine your B2B audience’s needs, observe how they interact with the information on your website and the channels they utilize. For example, you could implement a headless commerce approach to enhance the scalability and accessibility of your website to meet the increasing demands of your users. As a result, you can easily launch your website on diverse platforms such as smartphones, tablets, and voice assistants. 

Offering hyper-personalized data

According to a recent survey, most marketing professionals (62%) are focused on hyper-personalization. This method entails a comprehension of the intended customer base’s interests, requirements, behaviors, and demographics. Utilizing intent data can unveil the targeted customers’ ongoing research and interests. It can help companies in their hyper-personalization efforts by identifying their pain points and issues that their products or services can solve. 

Enhance customer service

Examining and evaluating various aspects through the use of intent data can be a helpful tool for your B2B marketing team. It helps in understanding the significance of effective customer service in lead generation. These aspects can include:

• Behavior patterns: patterns of conduct or actions
• Modifications made in online activity
• How potential customers search and gather information.

It allows you to interact with customers more effectively across various platforms like social media, email, etc. You can use intent data in B2B to predict churn, strengthen the relationship between your company and client, etc. If your client starts looking for alternatives, intent data will notify you. So you will have time to intervene and improve the prospect’s experience with your company’s products and services. 

 Predict buying patterns of the prospects

Intent data gives marketers an in-depth understanding of the customer’s purchasing patterns. It will aid you in identifying potential clients and allows you to engage with them when they are considering purchasing. You can predict their moves even before they have expressed an interest in doing so. The software allows you to upload your customer list and identify potential customer’s interested in your business’s products or services. With the help of B2B intent data, you can trigger pre-programmed actions such as automated lead nurturing emails based on the prospect’s level of interest or intent. 

Why intent data is necessary for your business? 

Marketing technique with intent data is a useful strategy that can be applied to most sales cycles. However, its strongest value is observed when dealing with intricate and prolonged buying journeys. Building trust and creating value becomes more challenging when a high price point acts as an obstacle in the buying decision. Intent data plays an important role in identifying when and how to tackle these hurdles to achieve success. 

Many B2B companies leveraging Intent data to their advantage typically have a CRM and marketing automation tool in place. It helps them keep tab on their top prospects and analyze and act on the data related to those buyers.

Intent data providers can aid in the creation and continuous refinement of tailored prospect lists for outbound efforts that are delivered with appropriate timing. Implementing this technology can expedite the sales cycle and prevent teams from spending valuable resources pursuing accounts unprepared to engage. Through intent marketing, businesses can resell to competitors’ prospects using their known unfulfilled needs.

For quite some time, marketing analytics has been the primary tool for companies to make crucial sales decisions and take action. With the advent of Intent data, however, new opportunities for increasing demand generation through account prioritization have emerged. Purchasing decisions and investment choices are complex customer processes and require a specialized Intent data set that can help address potential pain points and increase conversions. 

How can it help increase your sales? 

• Intent data helps identify opportunities at the right time. With this data, you will be able to reach the clients before your competitors do. 
• It helps you to direct your efforts toward high-potential customers. 
•  Intent data helps you understand what a client is looking for. Thus, you can share quality content relevant to their search to increase sales. 

Conclusion 

B2B intent data has quickly become necessary for B2B marketers who want to stay competitive. Intent data is important for most businesses as it helps them better understand their clients. Thus, it can help with improving client experiences and increasing sales. B2B intent data is the key to understanding buyers’ journeys and interests. It will save your time finding potent clients; you can quickly find a list of the targeted audience likely to purchase.