How to leverage intent data for business growth
Intent data has become an essential tool for any business that wants to enhance their marketing strategy and drive growth. This guide will demystify intent data, touching on key elements including the meaning of intent data, how intent data works, the different types of intent data and how to drive revenue with intent data.
What is intent data?
Intent data gets its name from the information that indicates a user’s “intent” based on their online behavior. Simply put, it is data that suggests, based on an analysis of a user’s internet activity, if they are interested in a certain product or service.
In our hyper-saturated media environment, it is becoming more and more difficult for businesses to cut through all the noise to reach the people who are actually interested in their product or services. Intent data helps solve the problem of reaching the high-quality leads that are vital for business growth. By knowing who is interested in similar solutions, companies can tailor their efforts to meet the specific needs and desires of their target audience.
How does intent data work?
Intent data looks at a collection of user behaviour, like search queries, number and duration of website visits, content consumption, or social media interactions to provide a fuller picture of what products or services they are interested in.
For example, gran searches “sewing needles,” “sewing club near me,” and “how to get back into sewing after grandchildren.” Mum, on the other hand, searched “sewing needle” and “how to remove splinter with sewing needle.” Obviously, gran would be a much stronger lead for your sewing company than mum. Intent data essentially sorts data like this on a large scale. It is not limited to B2C products, though.
The same idea applies to B2B businesses. For example, a C-Suite executive who reads several of your company’s blogs about resolving pain points is likely a quality lead for your business, so they would be marked as “high intent”.in intent data.
In short, intent data takes in the wider context of a user’s data and uses algorithms to identify high-quality leads based on that context. By understanding these behaviours, businesses can better infer what products or services a user might be interested in, enabling more targeted and effective marketing strategies.
However, this data on its own is not often enough to close a sale right away. It is best pared with a lead intelligence tool to quickly find both who is looking to buy from you and what the best way to contact them is.
Types of intent data
Let’s explore a few different types of intent data and how these are beneficial to your business.
Predictive intent data
Predictive intent utilizes historical data and machine learning algorithms to forecast future user behaviors and preferences. By identifying patterns and trends, businesses can anticipate customer needs, allowing for proactive marketing strategies and improved customer experiences. Predictive intent looks at the macro perspective of an entire industry to understand who is looking to buy and when they are looking to do it. To take a very simplistic example, predictive intent data might suggest to an ornament retailer that customers start buying more holiday decor in November than they do in June.
Customer intent data
Customer intent data focuses on understanding the specific intentions of existing or potential customers. By analysing behaviors such as product page visits, download histories, and engagement with marketing materials, businesses can gauge a customer’s readiness to purchase or their interest in particular offerings. For instance, if the first 50 people to buy a pair of shoes followed an affiliate link, then predictive intent data can infer that the 51st person to follow that affiliate link is likely interested in buying those shoes. This insight allows for personalised marketing approaches, enhancing the likelihood of conversion.
Real-time intent data
Real-time intent is exactly what it sounds like. This type of data captures user behaviors as they occur, providing immediate insights into consumers’ current interests and needs. This immediacy enables businesses to respond promptly with relevant content or offers, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.
Purchase intent data
This type of intent data refers to information that indicates the likelihood of your consumer buying a product or service. The data is gathered from a variety of sources, such as online searches, website visits, social media interactions, and engagement with marketing content. By analysing purchase intent data, businesses can gain insights into consumer behaviour, preferences and readiness to make a purchase. This helps companies to tailor their marketing strategies, personalize their outreach, and ultimately increase conversion rates.
Simply put, purchase data allows you to understand and predict what potential customers are interested in buying.
Diginius understands intent data can be hard for companies to grasp and manage. Intent data must be aggregated and analyzed from such a wide variety of sources, it has been very expensive in the past and inaccessible to smaller businesses. Partnerships, like the one we have with leading B2B intent data provider Bombora, allow us to support our customers with intent data for lead generation. in a more accessible way.
How to use intent data to drive revenue
Intent data is essential for understanding customer behaviors and preferences, enabling you to tailor your marketing and sales strategies effectively. By analysing and categorizing this data, you can target your audience based on their intent signals and their position in the sales funnel, whereas someone with low intent might benefit from a more general email campaign. Be sure to tailor content and offers that align with the identified intents of different audience segments.
How to drive business growth with intent data
Business growth is a long, and often painstaking, process. But intent data can help speed up this process by making sales and marketing interactions more productive or meaningful. When a company has a really in-depth understanding of who their buyers are and what their prospects are doing, they can create more personalised and efficient marketing strategies that use targeted advertising to sell, up-sell, cross-sell, and reduce churn, ultimately driving growth and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Businesses that integrate intent data into their marketing and sales efforts are truly future proofing their strategy. This data serves as a crucial differentiator, fostering significant growth in our data-centric world. Consequently, SMEs should adopt intent data to gain a competitive advantage, enabling them to achieve sustainable growth in their marketing and sales initiatives.
If you’re looking for a digital marketing platform with a holistic view of all your data, then why not consider Diginius Insight?
Whether you’re an agency or an in-house team, discover how the Diginius team can help you boost your ROI today!
