Good intent data is proving to be the bedrock of modern, enterprise-scale B2B marketing. It enables powerful conversion outcomes, improves demand generation process, and strengthens long-term customer relationships. Like any investment, the right place to start finding a solution is not with vendor offerings, but identifying your own high-priority business use case(s). Intent data has come a long way from lists and basic information that’s difficult to act on. Today, the best vendors offer insight-driven, behavioral intent data that can impact use cases throughout the funnel.
In this blog, we discuss key questions to ask potential vendors for each major intent data use case. The seven use cases are:
- Expand access to market
- Enrich account-level data
- Prioritize accounts
- Engage accounts effectively
- Conquest
- Retain accounts
- Simplify operations
1. Expand access to market
Intent data is used to expand the total addressable market (TAM) and leverage lookalike modeling to identify net new in-market accounts. The wider the base of trusted data sources, the better.
Key questions to ask the vendor:
- Where do you collect your first and third-party data from and how? Are you able to provide a combination of first, second, and third-party data from credible owned, operated, or partner platforms? Is the data sourced in a privacy-compliant way?
- What specific behavioral signals can you collect from these sources? What is the comprehensive list of intent-data signals you are able to track? How deep are these signals at the account and individual level?
- What capabilities do you have to optimize match rates and deliver net new in-market accounts? Can you help me find new accounts and prospects that are in-market to buy or resemble my best existing accounts?
2. Enrich account-level data
The more you know about an account, the better the chances of designing efficient and effective engagement campaigns. Intent data can help create a 360-degree comprehensive view of in-market accounts.
Key questions to ask the vendor:
- How comprehensive a view of the buying journey can you offer at the account level? Are the data points you offer fragmented, isolated, or stand-alone actions, or are they connected and contextual actions that offer some meaning?
- How does your intent data help fill the gaps and enrich my existing data? Can you help me complete existing data views on my accounts by filling in critical missing insights?
- What complementary data can you offer in addition to behavioral intent signals at the account level, to help with targeting efforts? For example, do you offer technographic, firmographic, tech installs, or IT budget data?
3. Prioritize accounts
Intent data is used to help rank and prioritize in-market accounts for the most efficient, timely use of limited sales and marketing resources.
Key questions to ask the vendor:
- What data verification methods do you use to ensure the intent signals are accurate? Accurate and timely signals indicate more than general interest, enabling higher confidence in the data.
- How can I use your data to score, rank, and target accounts to go after? Is your scoring methodology based on strength of intent signals — volume, frequency, depth, and width of intent signals — at the account and persona level?
- Are you able to help make more informed decisions based on historical and current account-wide context? A historical context eliminates false positives, identifies behavioral trends, and gives a sense of engagement over time (through buying journey stages). What technology do you use to connect and layer different data points to drive insight and context?
4. Engage accounts effectively
Intent data can enable engagement of in-market accounts earlier in their buying cycle and expand the brand’s sphere of influence with a data-driven, timely, and responsive GTM strategy.
Key questions to ask the vendor:
- Are you able to track and collect signals when buyers are in a work mindset? What “work-mindset” data sources can you access, and are they owned, public, or licensed sources?
- What data flexibility and customization capabilities do you offer in terms of refining prospect lists, adjusting campaign targeting tactics, and personalizing outreach?
- Do you have the predictive analytics capabilities to suggest actions with accuracy? Are you able to map the connections between members of the buying collective?
5. Conquest
Intent data that offers specialized insights and context helps data science teams improve their propensity, AMO, and RAD models; Sales to make more customized and timely pitches based on real visibility into the buying collective; and the business to drive better ROI with MQL-to-conversion ratio.
Key questions to ask the vendor:
- How relevant are your sources of data for our target personas? What additional insights can your data provide our data and sales teams to make more informed decisions?
- What level of customization can you offer for my particular needs? For example, are you able to access industry-specific platforms, channels, or geographies that impact our business? What additional industry or vertical specific data sets do you offer?
- What context do you offer behind the intent signals to arrive at actionable insights about their intent and purchase journey? How can you aid my ability to use insights to inform reach, nurture, and engagement campaigns?
6. Retain
Beyond acquisition, intent data is valuable to track and monitor intent signals at existing accounts; offer an early warning system when existing customers are in-market; identify at-risk accounts; and highlight upsell, cross sell, and expansion opportunities proactively.
Key questions to ask the vendor:
- Do you know who is researching and using my competitors’ products? Can you help me monitor current clients and opportunities that are researching competitive solutions?
- What stakeholders-specific analytics and reporting do you offer?
- What are your customer success protocols? Tell me about the speed and complexity of onboarding and areas of ongoing accountability and support you offer.
7. Simplify
An overwhelming volume and velocity of data from diverse sources can burden the system and cause confusion. Authentic intent data can act as a single unified data source, reduce process complexity, improve operational efficiency, and align sales and marketing around one tool and/or data hub.
Key questions to ask the vendor:
- What are your data management protocols, including for data coverage, gathering, acquisition, and processing (cleaning and quality assurance)? What measures are in place to ensure data privacy, security, and compliance?
- Can you offer customized data delivery file formats? For example, CSV files for direct integration into ABM platforms?
- How smoothly can the data and insights be used in existing workflows? Are you able to integrate your solutions with my existing martech stack to minimize process complexity and accelerate the time to market for campaigns?
Finding the right enterprise-scale intent data vendor can be challenging. Invest in vendors that serve you based on your objectives while giving you the competitive advantage that comes with awareness of your opportunities and challenges – before your competitors.