Picture this: What if you could see what your target audience is looking to purchase at this precise moment and it matches what you have to offer?
Wouldnt this make everyone’s life a cakewalk?
Buyer intent data is the icing on the cake that enables you to do exactly this.
Rather than betting on a bunch of ‘maybes’, you can directly approach companies or individuals that are more than ready to invest in what you have to offer.
In this blog post, we are going to reveal the enigma of buyer intent data and how it can be molded to your marketing advantage.
Why Is Customer-Centered Marketing Important?
At the dawn of marketing, the aim was about promoting your business and highlighting how amazing your product is.
Today, it is centered around the customer and how to address and target the wants and needs of the customer.
At the core of modern-day marketing, delivering the right product to the right audience at the precise time through the right channels is what makes marketing efficient today.
Understanding the buyer’s journey right from user behavior to sales action is crucial to customer-centered marketing.
Buyer intent is one such concept in the customer-centered marketing branch of modern-day marketing that is transforming the way brands and customers interact, notably with the B2B sector.
With the extensive amount of data available today across all sectors, B2B customers today are well-informed and are influenced by the information.
Fact: Almost 57% of B2B buyers have already made a decision about a product before approaching a sales rep.
Now that we’ve discussed the importance of buyer intent data, let us take a closer look at how a holistic approach to buyer intent can effectively grow your sales while enhancing the process for both buyer and the company.
Read also: The Customer-Centric Model: Your Definitive Guide
The Buyer Intent Playground
Buyer intent at the basic level is understanding what components make a great lead and backtracking from there.
Revolving your marketing campaign around your customer’s needs and interest is what buyer intent is all about at its crux.
To approach the buyer-intent journey, the most crucial component is the data.
So, what is buyer intent data?
Buyer intent data is information on the behavior of a user, which is a set of key indicators that help companies identify qualified leads.
With this aggregated data you get a clear outline of where your target audience stands in their purchase journey and understand how best to approach them and keep them hooked.
This data also gives insight into how to convert these highly qualified leads into valuable customers.
It might seem a little complex, but candidly, you are probably already implementing this in your marketing campaign.
Buyer intent data can vary and is a vast network of factors, but here are a few key indicators of what typical buyer intent data looks like:
- Frequency of visits on your webpage or website
- A user spending longer time on a specific section of your page
- Level of engagement with different content types, like sales promotions on social media, or marketing emails.
- Purchasing patterns
- Overall browsing activity as part of the buyer’s journey
If you are familiar with a buyer’s journey, you would know how important knowing your customer is, and that the best way to approach a customer head-on is by collecting maximum data on the client profile.
If you are here, you want to grow your sales and effectively acquire qualified leads through buyer intent data, you are in the right place.
How Buyer Intent Is Categorized
This blog post is aimed towards understanding the consumer’s mind, i.e., the buyer intent and how to better use it to your sales advantage. Today, consumer behavior positively means online consumer behavior.
There are three major types of intent-oriented variation that you as a marketer need to be aware of before diving deep into buyer intent data:
- Active buying intent: This potential prospect is actively researching a particular product and is in immediate need of the product or service and will likely purchase on an immediate basis.
- Passive buying intent: This category of people is mostly unsatisfied or wants to change to an alternative product they are already consuming. If made aware of the options available they will most likely make the switch, often faster than a consumer with active buyer intent.
- Awareness-based intent: People under this segregation are still in the stage of doubt about whether to buy a product or not. They are in the process of making themselves well aware of a product and may engage in extensive research to make an informed decision. They are open to new brands and services and are welcoming of new alternatives. They are essentially in information collection mode.
So, now that you are aware of the key types of buyer intents, you will be able to understand buyer intent data better.
Moving on, let’s see how buyer intent data helps businesses.
Also read: Buyer Enablement — Make Your Customers Start Believing & Buying
How Buyer Intent Data Is Profitable for Businesses
What is all the buzz about having accurately projected data about buyer insights in comparison to say something generic like a demographic or interest-based segmentation of customer profiles?
The answer is simple – getting your hands on buyer intent data will help you as a marketer to essentially ‘push‘ the right customer to buy the product willingly.
What’s more, with buyer intent data, artificial intelligence can impact the decision for both parties.
AI-based behavioral predictions have proven to be quite accurate. AI tools can help generate buyer intent data that makes the lives of salespeople easier.
When equipped with such high-quality, predictable data, you will be able to accurately project the right information to highly qualified leads, thus proactively ensuring the customer dives right in and buys the product.
Armed with valuable buyer intent data, you as a marketer or a business are one league ahead when it comes to selling your product.
To make the benefits of using buyer intent data clearer, here is a rundown of its major perks:
#1. Improved Outbound Sales
Cold outreach may not work always.
According to stats, only about 18% of marketers have proven records of cold outbound marketing providing qualified leads.
Combine it with useful buyer intent data and voila, you have cracked to code to gain qualified leads.
Buyer intent data gives you valuable insight into the buyer’s mind. It not only shows who is interested in your product but also demonstrates what they are interested in.
This type of powerful information actively improves your outbound sales strategy thus enabling you to procure highly-qualified leads with cold outreach.
#2. Definitive Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing is largely based on the user data collected.
Buyer intent data takes the process of data collection for effective targeting one step further by analyzing important information such as the number of visits on your page, what pages were read and what are the main interest areas.
This information can help marketers understand and outline the buyer’s journey and create targeted and personalized account-based marketing campaigns.
Intent data lets you as a marketer effectively drive the prospect in the right direction in their buying journey.
Read also: The 101 of Account-Based Marketing – An Exhaustive Guide
#3. Reduction in Churn Rate
Buyer intent data can be effectively leveraged in converting possible prospects into assured clients.
The information by that approach will give you insight on how to better reach potential prospects and also gives you a certain edge over your competitors.
Based on web activity, when a potential prospect searches for particular additional solutions on the same product, it is an indicator of the product not being delivered in the right way or that it did not address their exact needs.
With buyer intent data, you will be able to identify these pain points and bridge the gap with additional information and hence reducing the churn rate.
#4. Reliable Data and Increased Efficiency
Buyer intent data when gained and used across reliable resources can be invaluable across the various levels of a company.
Often high-value and high-volume resources form the backbone of a constructive marketing scheme, and with buyer intent data this information offers more than just information on potential prospects and how to approach them.
The process of buyer intent data collection duly increases efficiency while promoting factual, data-driven decisions which in turn creates a robust sales strategy, creating a synergistic situation for all.
Read also: The Marketing Funnel and Everything You Need to Know
Using BID for Your BIG Sales Advantage
Using buyer intent data to strengthen your marketing campaign involves collecting reliable, high-volume data from various resources such as website activity, off-site data, CRM-based data, social media, and content consumption, to name a few.
In an ideal scenario, you have the BID collected ready for analysis and processing, the marketing team is ready to use this data for your marketing campaigns, and yes, no more sweet talking to skeptical clients!
Even so, finding the right resources to gain buyer intent data can be tricky.
Here is a broad classification of segregating data that comes in from different resources:
First-Party Data or Internal Intent Data
This is the information or data collected that is essentially collected internally.
This could mean the data that is collected ‘in-house’ through various marketing automation platforms or applications and other resources that you gain first-hand and fresh.
The data that is collected first-hand is beneficial in a way as you have the command over what to collect and how to use it. This enables you to put it to work immediately and tailor it to your preferences and needs.
Third-Party Data or External Intent Data
As the name indicates, this is the type of data collected from thor-party or external resources outside of your company.
External data can be utilized as well as internal data when gained from the right resources. Sometimes it can even be more efficient to use third-party data due to the arduous task and complexity of collecting data internally.
Third-party data can be sourced from certain websites and IP lookups and cookies as such.
Using a trusted and licensed external data provider, especially with behavioral data collection can be advantageous and a valuable asset to your company.
Read also: Holiday Promotions: 5 Ideas To Outsmart Your Competition
What Next: Processing the Collected Data
You have the data collected, and you’re ready to win over customers. Just one little hiccup — what is the right way to process all this buyer intent data?
Here are three ways to map out buyer intent data:
#1. Fresh Engagement
One of the tell-tale approaches to processing intent data and approaching a potential customer is by analyzing how recently the customer engaged with your content.
The more recent the engagement, the faster you will need to approach the client. The longer you wait, the chances are the client would have already made the purchase or made a buying decision.
The initial rush matters in sales. A study has shown that almost 35-50% of deals go to marketers who reach out first.
The best time to reach out with the buyer intent data in hand is when the consumer is looking to make a decision during the initial stages of research. This time frame is when you will be closing the most deals.
#2. Frequency of Engagement
The frequency of engagement is another key indicator and is an essential step in approaching a potential client.
The more frequently potential lead accesses your page or view your webpage, the more likely to be interested in the product you have to offer.
It also provides insight into what stage of the buying cycle they are in.
This would be a great time to initiate dialogue with the customer as this is the time frame where they are most interested in your product. If you miss this window, you might lose out on an important lead.
#3. Level of Engagement
Lastly, the level of engagement gives you valuable insight acumen into the potential customer’s mind and their immediate interest in your product.
Engagement is a leading indicator n most marketing campaign processes and it s the same with buyer intent data.
The more a customer engages with your site (this could be through frequent web visits, engaging with a chatbot, or approaching you directly through an email/call) the more they want to make the purchase or at least get to know more information about your product.
It would be advisable to approach a potential client with a high level of engagement with more additional information concerning a product to strengthen their decision to make the purchase.
Read also: 15 Eye-Catching Exit Intent Popup Examples for More Conversions
The Bottom Line
This blog post is geared towards leveraging buyer intent to bolster your marketing efforts and gain highly qualified leads on a whim.
While we have covered everything about buyer intent data, and its (many) advantages it is important to note that it can be a rigorous task in itself while beneficial in the long run.
There’s plenty of fish in the sea, and buyer intent data is the hook to narrow down your search and catch the big fish at the right time, lower your churn rate, and improve your ROI.
Need help getting started? You are in the right place! EngageBay is loved by more than 46,000 businesses for powering their marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM needs.
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