Interest, Intent, Spend: Intent Data Headline Roundup

In this week’s roundup of intent data news and features, we’ll assess marketing budgets, touch on LinkedIn, take a trip to an unfamiliar industry, and consider how to format a B2B content marketing strategy.

B2B Marketing Budget Boost

This Marketing Daily column explores B2B marketing spend projections for 2019. The column draws on Spiceworks’ 2019 State of IT Marketing report, and according to that report:

• 37% of B2B companies surveyed intend to increase their marketing budgets,
• 42% of B2B companies expect their marketing budgets to remain the same as in 2018, and
• 8% of surveyed B2B companies expect a decrease in their marketing budgets.

Of the budget increases, organizations reported directing 21% to martech spend, and 19% to assistance from brand partners or marketing agencies. And, according to the column, that 21% increase in technology spend is intended to fuel content, experience, engagement, and analytics efforts.

By 2020, 70% of respondents plan to use account-based marketing, which indicates that B2B marketing organizations are finding targeting programs informed by purchase intent data to be either invaluable or inevitable.

LinkedInterest-based Targeting

According to an article on AdExchanger, LinkedIn has launched an interest-based targeting program within its self-service ad platform. LinkedIn’s Director of Product Abhishek Shrivastava said the purpose of the interest-based targeting is to combine profile data with intent signals, therefore improving targeting efforts.

Marketers are always challenged to qualify intent data, and taking a step back, even to define what “qualified” means for intent data and contextual contact information. A consistent cause of muddiness of the “qualified” part of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) is that the definitions of job titles are becoming increasingly disparate. For example, the director of IT at a small shop could be their CIO, but the director of IT at a large enterprise could be a non-C-suite figure who oversees project management, application development, ERP systems, and IT operations.

By giving marketers on LinkedIn 200 professional interests from which to choose, they can increase the relevancy of their messaging. Interests include practices such as global economy, data centers, customer experience, or AI, for example.

Shrivastava said the interest-based targeting will also enable greater humanization of engagements with prospects.

Travel Industry’s Intent Data Itinerary is Lacking

Aberdeen’s blog focuses on B2B commerce, rather than B2C, but this article provides an interesting perspective from an industry that doesn’t appear to be as elbows-deep in the intent data jackpot as the B2B commerce space is.

This post on PhocusWire presents a conundrum: The travel industry uses intent data, but they don’t use it to its full potential.

As the article indicates, the use of intent data in the travel industry has offered little more than a limited perspective of the mindset of a near-term traveler. By layering intent data on top of prospect persona insights and customer profiles, the author writes, travel brands can develop more meaningful engagements.

According to this piece, travel marketers are challenged to align intent data with overall marketing and sales strategies, resulting in lost market share.

The author posits that brands can hone their competitive edge by integrating buyer intent data with deep consumer insights and context, such as purchase history, active online research, and buyer behavioral data.

This hypothesis has been tested; check out this video to learn more about the results of a comprehensive approach to unlocking the actionable insights of buyer intent data.

Format Content Marketing for B2B Conversion

This article on MarTech Advisor is a bit of a how-to; how to use buyer intent data to shape your content marketing strategies for B2B audiences.

The feature revolves around two key influences of content consumption: Stage of the buyer’s journey and actual purchase intent.

B2B audiences interact differently with content at various stages in the conversion funnel; awareness-stage prospects are generally seeking to learn and put out feelers for a trusted brand; middle-stage prospects are in the “consideration stage” and want to compare products and perceive value; bottom-stage prospects are weighing who and what is worthy of an investment.

As such, it is critical to determine where in the buyer’s journey a B2B buyer emitting intent signals is, or at what stage of the conversion funnel they are. Read on to learn how this author suggests you optimize your B2B content marketing to turn purchase intent signals into closed deals. Alternatively, explore Aberdeen’s methods of helping marketing organizations use buyer intent data to improve and inform content and account-based marketing.