3 Ways Intent Data Gives Brands a Prospecting Edge

It’s no secret many people turn to search engines when they have a question or want to learn more about something—you can learn almost anything on the internet.

So when your prospective customers are researching a new product or service that your company offers, chances are they’ll take their search online. With intent data, marketers can zero in on the prospects conducting these searches, gaining a smarter, faster way to uncover warm leads and decision-makers who are ready to buy now.

According to Statista Research, 70% of surveyed B2B technology vendors use intent data to identify potential customers, 53% use it to support sales enablement and 52% use it for targeting high-intent accounts.

In February 2021, Ascend2’s “Using Intent Data” report noted that just 28% of marketers indicated they had an intent data strategy in place. But by May 2021, additional Ascend2 research showed that 46% of survey participants had executed and measured an intent data strategy. Clearly, adoption is on the rise.

As my team and I talk with new clients, we’ve found that the value of intent data is widely understood, but many marketers are still warming up to how it works and determining where it best fits into their existing sales and digital marketing programs. Before investing in it, they want to understand the best approaches to take and the best data sources (vendors) to leverage.

OMI has been evangelizing the advantages of intent data and educating our customers about it for at least a few years. We believe it can be a game changer for marketers. Here are a few fundamental tips that we often share with clients who ask how to get the most out of it:

1. Timing is everything. Timing is everything when it comes to leveraging the power of intent data. OMI and our partners monitor content views and visits across more than 10,000 websites including search queries on Google, Yahoo and Bing. But before this process even begins, we start by asking clients to choose the custom or pre-selected keywords that will shape our monitoring activity. Multiple keywords can be monitored simultaneously, allowing us to apply the findings across all of their prospecting offers (or products) at one time.

When website visitors view digital content related to the keywords, the prospect’s online activity is considered a “signal” of their interest or intent to buy. Signals that map to the keywords are logged and aggregated for clients. From there, OMI can automate the delivery of an timeframe is key – you want to engage with these prospects while they’re still in market. With OMI, your triggered, intent-based digital marketing can be executed using display, social, mobile, and digital TV – all with the Demand Side Platform (DSP) of your choice. As another option, you can also choose to receive our intent records for your own use across your digital marketing programs.

2. Keep it going. OMI mines 14 billion signals each week together with our intent data partners. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP). We monitor signals continuously, and if a user doesn’t register a new signal within a two-week time period, they are dropped from the intent feed, as it is presumed they are no longer actively “in-market.”

We recommend establishing an ongoing intent data feed, which delivers intent signals on a regular basis over an extended period of time. This continuous flow of fresh leads can be a boon to lead-gen, ABM and other marketing and sales programs, providing a consistent advantage for getting in front of top prospects first.

3. Add depth to it. As good as intent data is, as we’ve said before -- it has its limitations: it primarily uncovers company data (through captured IP addresses and cookies) and lacks the in-depth information marketers need to reach individual executives within those companies with accuracy and in a timely way.

OMI has addressed this challenge by mapping intent data to our extensive database of over 78MM+ business contacts (with email addresses). This allows us to drill down and identify the individual executives behind the digital behavior -- individuals who hold high promise of becoming customers. In this way, intent data enables sales and ABM teams to engage more intelligently and effectively with prospects, and ultimately, expedite sales processes.

The bottom line is this: intent data is a fast track to identifying relevant, down-funnel digital prospects. And what many marketers have already learned is that it puts them in position to get in front of prospects before others have the chance.

Now more than ever, in today’s competitive landscape, sales and marketing teams need a competitive edge. Intent data is that edge! Reach out to me or my team today to learn more about intent monitoring and reaching prospective customers at the right time. 

Did you know? Over 75 million of OMI’s 80 million manager- and professional-level and above contacts are matched to the LiveRamp RampID graph, including 65 million records from our SMB and medical market databases. Contact us today to learn more about building a custom audience.