3 Ways Intent Data Helps Lower Customer Acquisition Costs

It’s far from revolutionary to say that retaining customers is valuable to your business. You’ve probably heard this now-classic marketing statistic — it costs 5x more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. While that’s the go-to stat about customer retention, other studies go as far as to say that a 5% increase in customer retention will increase profits anywhere from 25% to 95%.

These stats are sending marketers in every industry on a mission to improve customer service, implement more innovative loyalty programs, and maintain stronger relationships with accounts following a purchase.

There’s no denying the value of these customer retention initiatives. However, just because you improve customer retention doesn’t mean that you’re actively lowering acquisition costs.

Focusing on lowering your acquisition costs while also improving retention will help improve your bottom line. While it may seem easier said than done, intent data gives you 3 key advantages that will lower acquisition costs and improve marketing performance.

1. Target the Right People at the Right Time

One marketing problem that leads to high customer acquisition costs is improper targeting. When you’re relying on lead generation to fuel your B2B sales funnel, you have to cast a wide net in the market to get results. It’s possible to optimize conversion rates to the point that this model works, but it’s far from the most efficient way to lower customer acquisition costs.

Intent data helps you go from addressing a broad total addressable market to understanding total active demand. Instead of just having generic buyer personas, intent data shows you specific accounts that are active in your market. That way, instead of wasting money pursuing prospects that either just bought from a competitor or haven’t started actively researching potential products, you can focus your acquisition efforts on the right people at the right time.

2. Deliver Messaging that Converts

Content marketing gives you a chance to lower customer acquisition costs by focusing less on ad spend and more on building relationships that facilitate your sales funnel. However, simply publishing content won’t replace ad spend and suddenly reduce your customer acquisition costs — especially if you’re not matching your messaging to the needs of your customers.

All too often, marketing messages are crafted based on what internal team members think will resonate with customers. It leads to a lot of trial and error and higher acquisition costs. But with intent data, you can eliminate much of that trial and error by gaining deep insight into the types of content that ideal prospects engage with most.

Intent data can give you a better idea of what you should publish, help you identify the most impactful influencer opportunities, and increase the ROI of your ad spend. All of these messaging benefits will, in turn, drive acquisition costs down.

3. Create Alignment Between Sales and Marketing

The gap between sales and marketing is real. When your two departments aren’t speaking the same language, you risk having solid prospects fall through the cracks. And worse, you risk funneling low-value leads to sales, wasting valuable resources across your business.

When sales and marketing aren’t unified in pursuing business results, customer acquisition costs skyrocket. Even if you feel you’re pursuing worthwhile metrics for content marketing, lead generation, or email marketing, you can’t lose sight of the fact that your efforts must lead to sales.

Intent data gives you and sales a common language to work with. Having so many insights into how prospects interact with competitors and where they are in the buyer’s journey ensures that you always pass qualified leads on to sales. Improving lead qualification makes it easier for sales to close deals and ultimately lowers your overall customer acquisition costs.

All three of these benefits depend on your ability to invest in the right intent data. First-party data is great but shows its limitations when it comes to insights that go beyond your own website. A great third-party intent data provider will fill in the gaps and give you the information necessary to lower acquisition costs even as you focus on maximizing retention.