What Is Intent Data and How Does It Transform B2B Sales?

Intent Data is something you hear a lot about, but what is it actually and how can it help enhance your sales process? Intent Data is simply about understanding a prospective buyer's interest in a product, service, or topic. Captured from a range of sources such as online searches, content engagement, and social media activities these signals serve as a guide to when a prospect might be ready to engage in the buying process for a specific product or service. 

Intent data is typically classified into two main categories:

1. First-Party Intent Data: This refers to insights gathered directly from a prospect’s interactions with your company's digital assets, such as website interactions, email marketing responses, and direct inquiries from potential customers.
2. Third-Party Intent Data: This data originates from sources outside your own digital assets and is collected by intent data companies. For instance, information from industry publications, online communities, and other websites can identify prospects showing buying signals related to your product or service.

How Revium Harnesses Intent Data to Drive Client Success

The market is rife with high-end sales products boasting their unique interpretations of intent data.  Think LinkedIn Sales Navigator Buyer Intent Data, G2 Power Plus, ZoomInfo, and Bombora, all with functionality that can provide their clients with information regarding the activities of target companies and their staff, helping sales teams uncover the ideal prospect faster.

Let's take Bombora’s Company Surge® as an example. It aggregates data from various online sources to pinpoint which businesses are researching specific products or services. Techniques like natural language processing, machine learning, and data analytics come into play, analyzing billions of monthly content consumption events for actionable insights.

At Revium, we tap into a vast network of B2B publishers, marketers, agencies, technology providers, and more, who share anonymous, aggregated content consumption and behavior data. With access to aggregated data from thousands of B2B websites, we can discern the specific topics being researched by companies.

Intent Data in Action: A Case Study

Recently, we collaborated with a global technology company seeking to promote its solutions to other businesses. Our client offered a wide array of products, including a suite of custom application services. However, the challenge was identifying which companies were actively interested in their solutions amidst a broad target market and fierce competition.

By leveraging our intent data sources, we were able to identify specific companies that were searching for solutions that our client could offer and target key people at these organizations, highlighting how our client’s product could help them with their specific needs. 

Intent data enabled our sales team to strategically hone in on these 'in-market' companies, personalizing sales pitches and marketing materials to ensure our client’s offering resonated with the specific topics each prospect was researching.

The outcome? Revium was able to engage prospects showing a demonstrable interest in our client's offerings, boosting the efficiency of our sales process,  increasing engagement, delivering a higher conversion rate of meetings booked, and ultimately, the successful closure of multiple deals.

The Transformative Power of Intent Data in B2B Sales:

1. Prioritization of Prospects: Intent data empowers sales teams to focus on leads that display a higher level of interest or need for their product or service. This allows them to concentrate their efforts on the most promising leads, enhancing their chances of closing deals. It's as if Revium's sales teams deliver the exact solution needed by the decision-makers in these companies — a serendipitous alignment of the right people, the right solution, and the right time.
2. Personalization: Understanding a prospect's interest or intent enables sales teams to tailor their approach and messaging, thereby increasing engagement and conversion rates.
3. Timing: Intent data sheds light on when a prospect might be ready to make a purchasing decision. By identifying these buying signals, sales teams can reach out at the most opportune moment, thus increasing their chances of sealing the deal
4. Account-Based Marketing (ABM): In an ABM strategy, marketing and sales teams work closely together to target specific accounts. Intent data can provide insights into which accounts are showing interest in your product or service, helping to inform this targeting process.
5. Sales and Marketing Alignment: Both sales and marketing can use intent data to coordinate their efforts. For instance, marketing can generate targeted content based on intent data, nurturing leads until they're ready for the sales team to take over.

Overall, intent data, when used effectively, can be a powerful tool for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of B2B sales efforts. However, it requires careful management and analysis, and must be used responsibly with respect to privacy regulations.