Intent data marketing: how to reach buyers before they find your competitors

Most businesses spend their money pursuing prospects that have already made their minds up. The prospect is too far along in his journey when he fills up your competitor’s lead generation form, clicks on your competitor’s ads, or signs up for the demo from another company. Intent Data Marketing was built for precisely this reason.

This guide explains what intent data is, why it has become one of the most powerful tools in a digital marketing agency for lead generation, and how to build a strategy around it that delivers real pipeline, not just impressions.

Intent data is the term used for data points that indicate an individual or a business entity is looking into making a purchase. Intent data can be collected by analyzing the online behavior displayed by individuals during their purchasing phase – content consumed, keyword searched, product page visited, and even websites checked out from competing brands. When analyzed effectively, intent data gives insight into who’s currently ready to buy and what’s ready to be bought.

Traditional targeting relies on demographics and interest categories. Intent-based digital marketing goes a step further: instead of showing your ad to someone who fits a profile, you show it to someone who is actively raising their hand. The difference in conversion rate between the two approaches is significant.

But not all intent signals are the same. Being aware of their distinctions will help you develop a more effective digital marketing intent strategy.

First-party intent signals are gathered through your marketing channels – website visits, time spent browsing the price page, repeated visits to the product page, email opens. This type is considered the best quality since it is both direct and proprietary. Real-time visitor tracking technology transforms unknown website visitors into known leads for you.

Second-party intent data represents first-party data from a partner – a publisher, review platform, or data co-op. Second-party intent data gives you access to users outside your existing audience, while maintaining signal quality.

Third-party intent data is gathered from all kinds of user engagement online – consumption of millions of pieces of content. Leading intent data providers can provide third-party intent data at scale, supplemented with information about names, emails, phone numbers, and social IDs, enabling you to follow up immediately.

 What makes a good intent data provider? Look for fully opted-in, GDPR and CCPA compliant data, real-time delivery (not week-old batch files), and the ability to match intent signals to your specific audience categories — not just broad industry buckets.

Intent-driven digital marketing requires integration between consumer data offerings and multi-channel execution. This is how the entire process would look like.

The first step is identifying your target market segment. Instead of developing a persona, you start by looking at intent signals – people who are actively searching for your product, visiting similar web pages, or checking out competitor sites. This is where DataLogic from AimLogic comes in: it delivers up to 25,000 high-intent prospects every week, drawn from real-time in-market behaviour and matched to your ideal customer profile across 250+ audience categories.

Second, you engage that audience via multiple channels. Intent data is only valuable in terms of driving action. This would involve sending customized emails to potential customers who have shown interest in your type of products/services, social media advertising to people who visited your competitor’s website recently, and retargeting through display advertisements to those within the buying window period. For businesses targeting specific geographies, such as those using website URL targeting services in Texas

Third, you measure success based on the pipeline, not clicks alone. Intent-based campaigns must have stricter measurement than conventional awareness efforts. Since you are marketing to consumers who are currently in-market, cost-per-qualified lead and cost-per-acquisition become your key performance indicators.

Perhaps one of the best uses of intent data is in finding people who are currently researching your competitors. If a potential client is looking at your competitor’s pricing page or is reading their case studies, it means that he/she is seriously considering making a purchase. And there is no need for you to wait anymore – you can start acting right now!

This technique will allow you to position your product or service next to that of your competitor while he/she is considering buying something. This is not about being aggressive but being smart about marketing!

The companies that are getting the best performance out of intent data are not simply using the data as a source of leads. Intent data is being applied throughout the digital marketing strategy stack.

At the top of the funnel, intent triggers content strategy — what topics your target market consumes, the questions your target market asks, and the objections raised before a decision is made. At the middle of the funnel, intent data triggers personalized nurturing and retargeting efforts, which address the specific needs of your buyers at each step in the journey. And at the bottom of the funnel, intent data alerts sales when high-value prospects enter a buying window so that outreach can occur before the competition reaches out.

In this way, an integrated use of consumer data services, channel-based activations, and real-time marketing responses makes the difference between performance marketing and campaigns.

The intent data space is highly competitive, and not all vendors offer the same level of excellence in service. To find the best intent data vendor for your company, consider the following criteria: real-time data delivery (and not bulk), full GDPR/CCPA compliance, integration of intent signals with contact-level data, and customizability of audiences according to the needs of your specific industry.

The DataLogic platform is precisely this solution – providing prospects that are live and in the market, coming with names, email addresses, phone numbers, and social identifiers, updated weekly. DataLogic is part of the larger ecosystem of solutions offered by AimLogic for performance measurement, competitive targeting, paid media, and lead generation.

Ready to reach buyers before your competitors do? See how AimLogic’s DataLogic and intent-based targeting tools can build pipeline from in-market prospects right now.