5 Ways Intent Data Improves Content Marketing

There are several ways that B2B purchase intent data can improve your content marketing efforts. However, to have the desired impact, the intent data you are using must give you two things:

1. Visibility into traffic to as many web pages as possible
2. Visibility down to the URL level for that traffic

If you rely on data collected solely from a “walled garden” collection of sites owned by a single publisher, you miss everything else happening on the web.

If, on the other hand, you rely on data collected from a co-op of sites, you will be limited to content insights at the topic level, but not down to the URL level. In other words, you will only know that buyers were conducting research on this or that topic, not where they actually went.

Which brings us to our first lesson:

Lesson 1: Start with the right intent data

Once you have your intent data sorted, you need to connect it to another critical data set: Your site data.

Everyone uses Google Analytics. And many use additional web tools that can not only help track site visits, but also link those visits back to specific domains. After all, while I may care in general about traffic volume, in the era of account-based marketing, I care more about traffic volume from the specific accounts I’m pursuing.

It’s all about context. If you want to improve your content marketing performance, you need to know two things: What content (actual content, not just “types” of content) potential buyers consume, and what, if anything, they consume on your site.

For example, when tracking topic consumption for one of our clients, here’s what we found:

You can click on that image for a closer look, but the short story is this: Over the preceding four weeks, consumption of content related to orientation, onboarding, and learning management systems was on the uptick.

If you compare that to content consumption trends on our client’s site, you get a somewhat different picture:

The good news was that a general uptick in interest in learning management systems was reflected in a similar uptick on the client’s site.

The bad news was that consumption of content related to orientation and onboarding actually went down on the client’s site while going up in general.

Thus, we have our second lesson:

Lesson 2: Intent data and site data need each other

Discovering gaps between what buyers are researching off your site and what they are finding/looking at on your site automatically reveals gaps in your content marketing strategy.

That being said, knowing what topics you need to be covering is only half the battle. The other half involves what specifically to write about. As it turns out, the right kind of buyer intent data can help you with that as well. That is, when you know what buyers are reading down to the URL they visited, you can see, at a granular level, the types of information that buyers are seeking out.

For example, consider this snapshot of intent data related to product lifecycle management (PLM):

Even this sample from the thousands of URLs buyers visited while researching PLM solutions is a powerful reminder of the types of content that attract the most researchers. As you can see here, in addition to posts providing an overview of methodologies in the space, you also see interest in implementation, metrics, and the difference between PDM and PLM.

And that, in a nutshell, is our third lesson:

Lesson 3: Intent data tells you precisely what to write about

When you use intent data to do a look-back analysis of the opportunities that you have won or lost, you can begin to recognize patterns. These patterns reveal two things: Who has been writing the most influential articles in your space, and where those articles are being published.

Knowing “who” allows you to recognize influencers, especially those who may be flying under the radar. There are several ways that you can go about engaging such influencers. First of all, you can request an interview to generate content on your own properties (blogs, podcasts, etc.) Second, you could invite such an influencer to appear on a webinar with you, or present at a user event. Finally, you could actually commission that influencer to write premium content for your site.

Knowing “where” influential articles tend to show up shows you where you need to be showing up. This is critical information when it comes to your content distribution strategy. First of all, it provides you with targets for article submission. Publishers are always looking for new content. If you can produce balanced, non-promotional content that will appeal to their readers, publishers will be interested in sharing it on their platform.

And if they are not entirely open to publishing your submissions on their own merits, they may be willing to publish it as a sponsored piece.

Either way, we have a fourth lesson:

Lesson 4: Intent data helps you identify influential writers and publishers

Speaking of sponsored content, there is a final way that intent data helps content marketing, and digital marketing more generally: It can power your advertising spend.

Clickthrough rates on digital advertising are notoriously small, to the tune of a fraction of a percentage point. Still, the scale at which ads can be served makes it a numbers game, meaning that anything you can do to improve clickthrough rates can make a big difference. Anecdotal evidence suggests that basing your ad targeting on intent data can actually double clickthrough rates.

The value of digital display advertising, however, does not lie solely in clicks. Indeed, it can have a measurable impact on brand awareness. And putting a display ad in front of a buyer who is conducting research means that you are driving up brand awareness at exactly the right moment. Furthermore, by connecting intent data, ad data, and site data, you can more effectively measure the impact of your ad spend.

Even if your ads are not attracting clicks, if they are driving traffic from in-market buyers to your site, that is a win.

Accordingly, our fifth and final lesson is:

Lesson 5: Intent data tells you where to advertise

Intent data has myriad applications. Content marketing is one area where many of these applications bear significant fruit. As a matter of fact, the impact of intent data on content marketing is such that, in the not-too-distant future, doing content marketing without relying on intent data will be unthinkable.

What do you think?