The Power Of Intent Data For B2B Marketing
B2B Marketing is by far data-driven today, and the future of B2B marketing will be more of intent data working in tandem with AI. Today AI is being used to process data generated in high volumes and velocity, typically as a result of humongous consumption of digital content.
Intent data is the future of B2B Marketing which will help you understand who is entering your sphere of influence and the kind of intent they are exhibiting while they are there.
1. Intent Data for Bespoke Customer Engagements
Intent data brings a paradigm shift in the way data is utilized. It not only helps you identify who you should be targeting but also lets you know when you must activate your customer-specific campaigns.
This is why intent data and intent-based marketing with AI enablement will play a pivotal role for B2B Marketing. At present, we have the right set of technology that can be provisioned to identify how a business user or individual has engaged with your website and target only those individuals that have shown traits of true purchase intent.
In essence, intent data is all about capturing these unique traits of buyers, which is by far a giant leap from the past where we blanket targeted all who visited your website with generic content and ads. Targeting only those who show buying intent can drastically reduce your cost per lead, too.
2. Intent Data to Reveal What is Going On in the Dark Funnel
Intent data, when used appropriately, can be effectively utilized to reveal the activities and actions of your prospects in the hidden or the dark funnel. Intent data help you come to grips with all the activities that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Source: Martech Zone
This will be possible with AI working in cohesion with intent data helping you unravel hidden signals. Ideally, AI will be able to suggest actions that we couldn’t think about in the past by maximizing the potential of intent data.
Intent Data will be able to suggest the next best step in your marketing and sales funnel by predicting and forecasting the future by diving deep into hidden patterns in intent data.
AI coupled with intent data will result in
- Real-time intelligence on how prospects are likely to behave
- Uncover new signals that were otherwise overlooked
- Keep pace with new and changing buyer behaviours.
- Suggest the next best step to guide your prospects down the sales funnel
3. Intent Data to Gain Deeper Insights into Buyer Journeys
A typical buyer journey would involve someone thinking of buying your products or services to the point they become your customer by making the purchase. We can say that their buyer journey included watching a video in your product category, downloaded a whitepaper or an industry survey from another website, and researching competitors. Eventually, they narrow down on your products and services.
Ideally, they could reach you because you have been smart enough to leverage intent data to your advantage. However, you might later observe that they are researching a competitor, which might be a cause worry.
In this case, you have ample information, but you might not have the complete picture. So Intent data help you discover new behaviours and new signals that will give you a clear picture of the buyer’s journey.
In the buyer journey, you might not have information such as – a hiring decision, some people added to their Linkedin, key events, or a related technology installed. Intent data will be able to unravel and demystify all this hidden information.
For instance, when you have information that your prospects have installed something profound, it depicts clear intent that they are about to make a decision. Also, when you learn that they are researching a competitor as part of due diligence before buying from you – your cause of worry why they are researching competitors will be over.
This way, intent data help you with information and move away from ambiguity by filling in the gaps of missing information and giving you a clear picture of the entire sales and intent marketing funnel.
In Conclusion: The Future of Intent Data
In the future, intent data is going to work in tandem with AI and Machine Learning. So here, instead of telling what to go and find for you, it will understand your business based on the opportunity data and surface and predict the right action plan that will be great for your business to close.
AI and ML will work in tandem with intent data to give you deeper insights into what your prospects are doing that would have been otherwise impossible to track.
The future with intent data is going to be all about orchestration. Here prospects and accounts will be moved automatically to the different sales funnel stages based on the intent exhibited. This enables marketers to focus on program strategy, thinking of new creative campaigns and finding new channels they can reach – instead of spending their time working with data and project management.
The future B2B marketing is all about running automated playbooks, and intent data will play a pivotal role.