How to use intent data to identify sales qualified leads
Intent data, which provides insight into future customers’ interests and actions, has changed the landscape of lead generation by enabling businesses to engage with prospects actively seeking solutions. Behavioural indicators such as content consumption and search activity reveal intent, contrasting with traditional marketing’s broad demographic targeting. Using intent data for lead generation or a lead intelligence tool allows companies to nurture relationships, enhance engagement, and boost conversion rates.
For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the benefits of intent data include improved lead quality, higher engagement rates, shortened sales cycles, and optimal resource allocation. By focusing on high-intent prospects, SME’s can tailor outreach programs more effectively and enhance ROI. We will explore the evolution from broad demographic targeting to specific intent-driven marketing strategies for identifying sales-qualified leads. Imagine leveraging real-time behavioural analytics to better convert prospects, improve marketing effectiveness, and identify and rank the most valuable clients.
Introduction to intent data
What Is Intent Data?
Imagine being a fisherman standing on the shore and casting a net into the ocean. Traditional marketing is much like that – an endeavour to catch as many fish as possible without knowing where the schools of fish are. Sure, you’ll pick up some, but most of what you bring in won’t be what you’re looking for. That’s the inefficiency with which broad-spectrum marketing suffers. Enter intent data, the game-changing tool that turns this fishing expedition into precision spearfishing. Instead of hoping to catch a lucky haul, you are targeting specific fish that are already swimming close to the bait.
In the lead generation process, there is a significant difference between blindly spending money and getting a steady supply of profitable conversions. Intent data allows organisations to focus their resources on areas where the chances of success are higher. In other words, it is a process of finding prospective clients who are actively searching for solutions like yours. This includes digital engagement data showing a prospect’s interest in a specific product or service.
Types of Intent Data
At its core, intent data represents the digital footprints people leave behind while researching solutions to their challenges. These signals, which include search queries, interactions with websites, and content purchases, tell a story of intent. The intent data is primarily classified into three types as follows:
First-Party Intent Data: It’s the treasure hidden in plain sight within your own digital assets. Think about it: a visitor comes to your site, spends some time on your pricing page, downloads a white paper, or fills out a contact form, none of these actions happen by accident; they are conscious indicator of interest and intent. This ‘goldmine’ of data provides businesses with first-person insight into the intentions of their audience.
Example: A SaaS company notices an uptick in traffic to its blog article on workflow automation. When combined with downloads of related eBooks, this activity indicates the buying journey of your prospects, and they could be in serious considerations for a solution in this space.
Second-Party Intent Data: This data is obtained through trusted partners or vendors who make first-party data available to your organisation. Such an arrangement allows for accessing intent signals from other platforms that are directly relevant to the targeted audience of a company. This interaction resembles a strategic collaboration, with the partner providing complementary insights to enhance your existing data sets.
Example: A marketing company partnered with a B2B publishing platform to get access to data of businesses reading articles on digital transformation. The partnership helped them identify prospects interested in their automation services.
Third-Party Intent Data: This data captures the marketplace buzz, including search queries, social interactions, and visits to industry websites, aggregated from external platforms. It’s like whispered messages from across the Internet, guiding you to prospects actively seeking your solutions.
Example: A B2B cybersecurity company can gain third-party insights that show healthcare organisations are consuming vast amounts of literature around data protection. This insight would enable the company to intelligently focus its marketing efforts on healthcare organisations
How Intent Data Captures Buyer Intent
The magic of intent data is how it weaves what looks like random actions into a clear narrative. Signals such as search terms, frequency of engagement, and consumption of content provide a lens into the intent of the prospect.
- Search Behaviour: A prospect searching for “best CRM for small businesses” is signalling his interest in customer relationship management software tailored for smaller operations.
- Web Engagement: A repeated visitation to a comparison page on one’s website typically indicates that the person is refining their selection.
- Content Consumption: Potential buyers that download several resources about how to calculate ROI for software investments are likely in the budgeting or approval step of their purchasing process.
Piecing these signals together, businesses get actionable insights that says, “This prospect is not just browsing; they’re getting ready to buy.”
This new methodology helps marketing and sales teams go beyond guessing and connect with their audience at the right moments with the right messaging. Intent data is not just about identifying the audience any longer- it’s now been made possible to relate to them and effectively answer the needs of the targeted user at the right time.
Intent Data for Lead Generation
Currently, B2B marketing has experienced a huge shift that is encouraging personalised data-oriented marketing strategies instead of old-school approaches such as demographic segmentation. Intent data is propelling this shift and allows firms to not merely rely on mass-market tactics but engage prospects in a manner best suited to their real interests and behaviours.
Access to intent data allows organisations to gain in-depth behavioural insights to target potential customers with unprecedented accuracy and relevance. This shift from generalised marketing outreach toward account-specific targeting has revolutionised using intent data for B2B marketing. Rather than widely casting the net, firms now engage prospects in specific, contextual ways that address their needs with appropriate solutions.
Intent data has evolved into a true paradigm shift in marketing: one that gives businesses the ability to appropriately reach their prospect with the right message at the right time and through the right channels. It bolsters marketing activities as well as their efficiency with stronger customer interactions, in turn, growing their business.
The Value of Precision Targeting by Intent data
Precision targeting highlights the following benefits:
- Increased Conversion Rates: Leads generated from intent data have much higher of an impact than your typical sales or marketing lead. These leads close at a faster rate when a company is focusing on customers looking in the market for a similar service or solution to theirs. High-intent prospects are 80% more likely to respond positively to personalised outreach, making them more attractive profiles for the sales team. (Media Culture, 2024)
- Efficient Resource Allocation: Intent data helps organisations focus on valuable prospects through precision targeting, minimising wasted effort on unqualified leads and optimising the marketing budget alongside sales efforts.
- Building Trust and Engagement: Building trust for sustainable engagement in business involves understanding the challenges that a customer faces. Intent data enables companies to anticipate customer needs and deliver solutions at the right time and context, positioning themselves as partners rather than just vendors.
Using Intent Data for B2B Success
- Intent-driven Marketing: Intent-driven marketing gives teams the opportunity for personalised marketing strategies to finally be established. If an organisation knows what needs and challenges each potential client faces, they will be able to create a message that will truly resonate with the audience. Such a high level of personalisation is going to enhance relevance for outreach programs, thus escalating the chances for engagement.
- How to leverage Intent-data for Sales: Intent data helps align sales and marketing teams into a cohesive alliance. By understanding a unified view of prospects behaviour through intent data, teams can create synergies that enhance their strategies and ensure better coordination.
- Enhancing ABM Strategies: Intent data enhances the effectiveness of account-based marketing (ABM) by identifying accounts that are actively researching solutions relevant to your business. This data can be used for hyper-targeted outreach. For example, if an account is seen researching your product’s training and testing services, the sales and marketing teams can collaborate to create personalised content and outreach that directly addresses this interest. This increased precision not only improves the viability of the ABM strategy but also boosts likelihood of closing deals with these top accounts.
Challenges and Considerations
- Data Privacy and Compliance. While intent data offers many benefits, it also has some bottlenecks. Adhering to regulations like GDPR and CCPA is essential for acquiring and effectively using intent data. Greater transparency in data collection and ethical practices ensure better customer care and legal compliance. Misinformation or unreliable data can lead to inaccurate targeting, resulting in misjudged precision.
- Accuracy of Intent Data: Every business organisation must establish relationships with credible intent data providers and must regularly verify the data to make sure it is reliable.
- Over-reliance on Automation: While automation drastically helps in the processing of intent data, too much dependence on automation can make the interactions impersonal. Therefore, drawing out a proper balance between complete automation and personal engagement becomes an important factor to connect with the prospects meaningfully and authentically.
The Future of Intent Data in Lead Generation
Technological advancements continue to make intent data a significant factor in lead generation. These technologies will further enhance their accuracy and predictive power of intent data analysis, enabling businesses to uncover deeper insights and act with greater precision. Intent data is set to become more influential, not just in generating leads, but also in customer retention, upselling and cross-selling. 97% of B2Bs already believe that using intent data provides them a competitive edge in 2025. (Portejoie, 2024)
This comprehensive approach allows organisations to maximise the lifetime value of their customers. As markets evolve, intent data becomes a crucial tool for staying competitive. With agile, intent-driven strategies, firms can effectively respond to changing customer needs and industry trends.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that intent data is revolutionising lead generation in this modern world by enabling the transition from generic marketing to precision targeting. With better conversion rates of 93%, superior resource allocation of 78%, 2.5 times focused product marketing, and 85% improved engagement (Mixology Digital, 2024), intent data prepares an organisation for a path to success. This can be fully utilised by using intent data in combination with customer relationship management systems, collaboration among the sales and marketing departments, and an ingrained culture of continuous improvement from key performance indicators.
The future of intent data lies with businesses that make it a cornerstone of their marketing and sales strategies. It is not just a tool, but a key differentiator that drives meaningful growth in an increasingly data-driven world. Therefore, SMEs should embrace intent data to create a competitive edge, helping them achieve sustainable growth in their marketing and sales efforts.
