Information concerning your customers’ plans to acquire is critical to improved advertising.
Knowing the desires and intentions of your potential customers can improve the individualized experience they have with your enterprise.
Having access to this information can assist you in expanding your sales and reinforcing customer devotion and approval of your brand as you tailor your advertising and communication.
Do you want to discover how you can obtain and employ intent data? We’ve got the answers for you in this guide. We also conversed with 52 professionals who are already making use of intent data to give you genuine illustrations of how other companies use this data for advertising purposes.
What Is Intent Data
Behavioral data that helps businesses identify what their potential audience has an interest in is referred to as intent data.
Investigating it can assist you in determining whether your potential companies or individuals are ready to buy, almost prepared to buy (but need a small incentive), or are in the process of figuring out their issues and what they need.
This data provides you with the opportunity to refine your marketing tactics by more accurately targeting your audience and customizing your content and communications.
Experts mainly leverage intent data to increase sales. According to nearly 80% of our contributors.
Approximately three-quarters of people use Big Data to provide exact, specialized, and tailored communications, and almost 60 percent use it to perfect ad targeting. Just over 57 percent of people use it to keep track of and enhance account-based marketing.
Lastly, 53.06% use intent data to drive revenue.
How Is Intent Data Collected?
Intent data can be collected both internally and externally.
When you analyze data that originates from within your company, you compile and review the internal information received from sources such as your website, mobile app, conversations with customers, and other marketing and sales platforms that you use.
Sources that help collect data internally include:
- Google Analytics. This tool assists you in tracking website visitors — who they are, where they are coming from, and how long they’re spending time on your site.
- Hotjar. Helps you see the way website and mobile app visitors’ interact with your website and app by providing you with recordings of their sessions on your site. It also helps you host on-site surveys asking visitors questions about their intent.
- Native social media analytics tools. These tools help you dive into customer insights from social media marketing channels that you use.
- Customer conversations. This is the data gathered from the chats your customer-facing teams have with your customers.
In a similar manner, you can obtain information from outside sources – whether it is through yourself, using another individual or company, or collaborating with a third party for the purpose of examining intent data.
A practical approach to collecting outside data is to employ a social monitoring tool. It helps you get a grasp on the talks that your chosen group of people are having with each other.
You could acquire behavioral details from reliable companies such as HubSpot, Salesforce, and Adobe.
Finally, you can obtain intent data from outside vendors who are not the same organizations (such as Adobe) that accumulate and assemble data from their own customers, but rather compile information from different external sources.
You don’t have to depend solely on a single source of intent information. You can choose any of these options or a mix of two of them.
According to Michael Taylor from Shifting Shares, utilizing both internal and external data from other sources is the way to go. I mainly utilize the intent information that we gathered through customer and audience interactions and our email newsletter registration list.
We use our landing pages to feature several pop-ups that request email addresses from people in order to provide them with investing advice. Taylor states that using social media platforms like email, Twitter, and YouTube has been highly beneficial to them, as it allows them to provide additional information in support of their primary product, which is an online investing education course.
Once I gather information from our offers, I can modify the marketing emails I send to target only those people who indicated they were interested by submitting their email. At times, when I have an ad campaign with a broad reach, I will make use of third-party intent data, like the background of investors, to develop my intended audience.
Types of Intent Data
According to the source, there are three different kinds of intent data. These are:
- First-party intent data. Data that you gather straight from your target audience.
- Second-party intent data. Data that another organization collects from its audience and sells to others.
- Third-party intent data. Data gathered from data aggregators or companies that collect and sell data from other companies.
The majority of experts, 60%, lean on internal data. About one-third of those surveyed depend on all the possible types of intent data, including aspects from inside the business and from another and third companies outside. Only one respondent shared they don’t use intent data.
Intent Data as Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy
Yes, intent data works. Often, the potential for utilizing intent data for content marketing is overlooked. The following are some valid reasons why utilizing intent data shouldn’t be overlooked when creating a content marketing plan.
The “what” factor
Intent data has two main values for B2B marketers. The first is well understood; the second is less known but hugely beneficial to content marketers:
- Intent data shows you which accounts are researching relevant products/services, and are more likely to be to become a customer so you can increase efficiency by allocating resources to engage those accounts. Marketers understand this value, and this is typically the first motivation to use intent data.
- Intent data shows you what those accounts are researching, which in turn can inform you of their challenges, interests, needs, and even buyer’s journey stage. You can use this information to hone your account-based messaging and content strategy. The “what” is a powerful value, and when used, unlocks many possibilities for marketers.
Not knowing how intent data helps with messaging
The diagram underneath displays the distinction between the two beliefs (which and what) that B2B marketers find most influential. The five most prominent applications all rely heavily on the application of targeted accounts that can be recognized with contextual indicators, especially the first three which further capitalize on the recognition of which accounts are inquiring about a product.
To reach the part of “message selection or optimization,” which solely depends on the second main value, you must analyze the provided list to get to item number six. Marketers are underestimating the power of intent data to assist them with picking and optimizing their marketing messages. It is essential for content marketing to be effective that the proper communication reaches the correct individual.
How to set up and analyze intent data for content marketing
In order to take advantage of intent data for content marketing, it is necessary to have an understanding of how to identify and keep track of your relevant topics and/or keywords.
The Fundamental Differences between Monitoring Topics and Keywords
Monitoring keywords
When monitoring keywords, you are looking out for the precise words or expressions included in a piece of writing, URL, or both. If a B2B marketer is observing certain keywords in an article and a business consumer reads the mentioned article, this action will be taken into account to know if that corporation is revealing its intents.
Monitoring topics
You can analyze all of the data to decide how relevant it is to certain predetermined topics. Using machine learning tools like natural language processing (NLP), it is usually possible to ascertain the relevance of information.
The discipline of NLP combines elements of computer science and linguistics to study the way in which computing and human language interact. Specifically, NLP is how we instruct computers to work with and interpret huge quantities of verbal communication.
Boost conversions with personalized content and messaging
Generally, the more tailored your material and communication is, the more likely it will draw in, involve, and persuade potential customers.
Thankfully, intent data helps with this. At Resolute Technology Solutions, Colton De Vos states that they make use of intent data in order to boost transformation rates via personalized messaging and material offers.
This is what they do: They have examined carefully Google Analytics and Search Console to determine what search terms bring visitors to their website. Whenever feasible, we have put together new material which fits those searches.
Visitors to the website were looking up ‘patterns’ and ‘guides’ in a particular section of the website. De Vos states that they put a PDF that could be downloaded on the page, and they also configured the website’s live chat with particular prompts related to that service.
This way, we can lead the dialogue by providing website visitors exactly what they need, and with the likelihood that they will interact with us more as they have queries and can pursue further.
Connection with the buyer’s journey
The choices you make regarding subjects and/or search terms should be determined by the normal process that customers go through when purchasing. Tracking key words and topics based on journeys can provide more advantages than simply organizing accounts in order of priority.
This is what enables your group to detect what stage in buying something a possible customer is in, which issues are the most critical to them, what sort of messaging and material should be used to draw them in, as well as how to assess and direct leads from those organizations.
Here are the stages to consider:
Stage 1: Identifying the Problem
For initial attempts, the subjects and words you choose should be related to the distress felt by your potential buyers and the difficulties your products and services can solve. Presume your potential customers do not understand your answer, nor know anything about your company. Right now, they probably are attempting to get a clearer idea of whatever difficulties they are facing.
Let’s take it as a given that right now you are endeavoring to create interest in your business’s recruiting product. Human Resources administrators will probably be examining material regarding how they can acquire quality staff in a much more efficient and expedient manner.
You’ll want to select topics relevant to the challenges or pain points of acquiring quality talent, like:
- “Guide to recruiting”
- “Recruiting strategy”
- “Recruiting talent”
At this stage, keywords will likely be fairly general, so it’s a good idea to use the opportunity to create keywords that aren’t available as topics, such as:
- “Talent acquisition strategy”
- “Talent recruiting tactics”
- “Recruiting better applicants”
Stage 2: Discovering Solutions
At this point, it is likely that your intended recipients have realized the source of their difficulties. The main emphasis now is on discovering resolutions, so the themes and search terms utilized should, in general, match the answers your company provides.
Continuing with our HR director example, you may want to select topics similar to:
- “Applicant tracking system”
- “Recruiting automation”
- “Recruiting technology”
If your solutions are more niche than what is available under the topic taxonomy—e.g., if they fall under an unavailable sub-category—use those terms for your keywords, such as:
- “Talent acquisition software”
- “Recruiting analytics”
Stage 3: Researching Products/Services
Now that they comprehend the available resolutions, the people your message is intended for are about to decide what to do. They are assessing whether the investment in a particular answer is beneficial and if it is, which provider should they go for.
Now is the perfect moment to be detailed about your subjects and key phrases, choosing those that are related to your business’s products as well as the name of your organization. Likewise, it is wise to monitor the names of your opponents’ business and products.
For bigger businesses, brand and product identifications can be utilized as subjects. If not, select those names as keywords to track.
Stage 4: Deciding to Renew, Churn, or Increase Investment
When it comes to maintaining an account, the words and phrases chosen normally match those in Phase 3, though for quite distinct objectives. You should keep an eye on what current customers are looking for in regards to your competitors’ brand and product names.
It might be a sign that they could soon cease being a customer if they start looking into other current accounts or competitors’ products. Your customer success team needs to know about this so they can take the necessary steps to resolve any problems.
Keep an eye on what research existing customers are doing regarding the products/services you offer, even if they haven’t yet purchased them. This signals an opportunity to upsell.
As an illustration, suppose that one of your top clients has bought your recruitment app, and you would like to add your worker education service to their account. Keep an eye on Stage 1 and 2 themes/keywords related to that product, such as “Employee training” and “Increase efficiency.”
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