Assessing the Role of Intent Data in ABM Marketing

Unless you can read minds, there is no way to know when a customer is ready to buy. Or is there?

The thing is, you can use intent data to make predictions about user behavior. That’s surely helpful, right?

Of course, it is. It can be extremely effective in leveraging your sales. But you need to use it smartly. Let’s learn all about it.

What Is Intent Data?

Intent data, a.k.a., buyer intent data or purchase intent data, provides insights into the online behavior of your target audience. More specifically, you can forecast whether they are going to buy a product from you or go to another company.

Unfortunately, this information is not used to its full potential. We’ll talk more about using it effectively, but first, let’s review the different types of intent data.

Types of Intent Data

In terms of sources, data is divided into:

1. First-party data. Collected from your website. This includes forms that have been filled out for gated content or IP addresses collected from visitors. You can gather this from your CRM and Google Analytics.
2. Third-party data. Collected from other websites. You can get this data from intent data providers or third-party data providers.

There are four types of intent data sources:

1. Search intent data. When potential customers search using specific keywords, this data can identify topics people are interested in and try to provide the most relevant answers to their questions.
2. Engagement data. This data gathers insights on how potential buyers engage with content. This includes comments, shares, and likes. Such data is collected from channels like your blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
3. Firmographic data. This provides information about a prospective company – its size, industry, location, and revenue. More often than not, this data comes from business directories, and website forms.
4. Technographic data. Info related to the technical capabilities of a company: hardware, software, and networks. This data is gathered from surveys, polls, and questionnaires.

How to Use B2B Intent Data Effectively: 7 Ways

1. Build Lists of Prospects
2. Convert High-Quality Leads
3. Investigate Your Competitors
4. Prevent Customer Churn
5. Identify Opportunities to Upsell
6. Craft Personalized ABM Marketing Campaigns
7. Use Dynamic Retargeting Ads

1. Build Lists of Prospects

ABM marketing is all about targeting the right people. With the help of ABM marketing intent data, you can build lists of potential customers that match your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Furthermore, you can try to find new buyers/ and/or companies, based on the contacts that are most likely to be interested in your products, thus expanding your coverage.

2. Convert High-Quality Leads

You can find potential conversation starters with your prospects by analyzing behavioral data. For example, a white paper they’ve downloaded or a webinar they’ve attended can indicate a strong interest in learning more about a particular product.

Use this information to tailor your outreach and find the best way to engage in a meaningful discussion.

3. Investigate Your Competitors

Every business has a few major competitors. It’s always a good idea to understand what they are doing and try to gain a competitive advantage. Using intent signals, you can target customers that actively researching the products or services of your competitors.

Track the online activity of your competitors to determine their popular content, and the topics they are interested in. This way, you will be able to figure out what is working well for them.

4. Prevent Customer Churn

Keeping your existing customers is just as important as acquiring new ones. Being able to identify customers who are about to leave your company is essential.

Some red flags to be on the lookout for are low interest in relevant content consumption, and decreased website traffic from the client account. Once you identify customers at risk of churn, don’t hesitate to take the appropriate action.

The best way to retain customers is to communicate with them, and address the issue. They might be struggling to use your product, or thinking of switching to another service.

5. Identify Opportunities to Upsell

Acquiring customers is not the end of the buying cycle. You should always be thinking about relevant ways to upsell and cross-sell.

Thankfully, by leveraging intent data, you can gain insights into which customers are likely to be interested in purchasing additional products/services.

Some signs that might indicate this include an increased website traffic from their account and their interaction with your content. Following you on social media is also a good indicator of interest.

6. Craft Personalized ABM Marketing Campaigns

Once you know the interests and preferences of your ideal customers, it will be a lot easier to personalize your marketing campaigns accordingly.

Focus on their specific needs and pain points. Offer a solution. Make it sound like the offer is specially tailored just for them. Your conversion rates should definitely be much higher than before.

7. Use Dynamic Retargeting Ads

Even the best website and campaign will not be able to convert every single lead into a customer. Hence, you need to think of ways to recapture visitors. One of the best options is to use dynamic retargeting ads.

Integrate intent data into your Google Ads to run such campaigns to potential high-value target accounts. This will ensure that only companies interested will see your ads. Just be careful with your bids, since things can very quickly become really expensive.

Benefits of Buyer Intent Data

1. Understanding all the phases of the buying journey. The buying journey has three main stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Each of them has its unique challenges that can discourage customers from purchasing. Still, by obtaining the right information, you will be able to better understand your potential clients and overcome objections.
2. Identifying and targeting interested B2B buyers. Knowing when a lead is ready to buy can save you a lot of time. This way, your marketing and sales teams can respond quickly, and close more deals.
3. Learning more about your audience and optimizing your ICP. The more you know about your audience. Eventually, you will be able to optimize your ideal customer profile so that every action your business takes has a huge impact on your prospects.
4. Concentrating on your most engaged leads. Your sales and marketing teams can focus on your most passionate potential buyers to maximize your sales marketing campaigns. You can set a lead scoring target to set apart MQL and SQL from accounts that have visited your site accidentally and are not really interested in your products.

Summary

Intent data can be very useful for account-based marketing. It allows you to convert high-quality leads into customers, prevents customer churn, and increases your revenue.

What is more, by better understanding your ideal customer profiles, you can tailor your ABM marketing.