Do you think it would be wise to spend $13.7 billion on buying a business just so you could get your hands on their data? Well, Amazon seemed to have thought so when they acquired Whole Foods in 2017.
There’s a clear correlation between data and growth in the modern world. But not just any data, you want relevant actionable data that can propel your business towards a downpour of revenue.
So what makes data relevant and actionable? Two simple words — buyer intent.
What is Buyer Intent Data?
Just as simple as the two words connote, buyer intent is nothing but the intention to buy. Behind any interaction, there exists a certain intention, however small or big, that is transactional in nature. These are not necessarily monetary transactions but also informational and exploratory ones.
In the business world, buyer intent data simply stands for the data that helps you identify a buyer’s readiness to purchase your product at any given instant of time.
Now intent data providers tend to often portray buyer intent as a bubble. However, buyer intent data generally constitutes multiple intent signals. Some more actionable and valuable than others — we at Slintel call it a spectrum.
In this post, we’ll run you through the different types of buyer intent data signals on the basis of how well they perform in the real world. All this through an interactive simulation. So lo and behold:
What Are the Different Types of Buyer Intent Data Signals?
Now that we’ve gone through the different types of buyer intent data signals, it may come as a surprise, but buyer intent data can be further segregated.
How Do We Segment Prospects Using Buyer Intent Data
All the prospects in your pipe can be categorized into two kinds on the basis of their appetite to make a purchase.
Active Buyer Intent
When a user emits active buyer intent signals, they’re outwardly searching for a product or service. They are on the journey to becoming a customer of the product. This could either happen immediately or take place sometime in the near future. This depends on the type of signal they emit.
Active buyer intent can further be divided into three types based on this level of immediacy.
Informational Buyer Intent
The earliest stage of active buyer intent is when a buyer is trying to familiarize themselves with your product. In the process, they may consume content that helps educate themselves about the product and its uses.
For example, a user exhibits informational buyer intent when they go through your or your competitors’ blog, or any other content that may help them learn more about your product. Here, these informational interactions will help propel the user towards a more transactional one.
Navigational Intent
Once a user has familiarized themselves with the product, they need help navigating toward a particular brand to make their choice.
When users consume product collateral such as competitor comparison pages or take a trial to finalize their choice, this can be considered navigational intent.
Transactional Intent
Once a choice has been made, the user now becomes a buyer. At this stage they are ready to buy your product provided they are nurtured accordingly.
When a buyer visits pricing pages or gets on a demo, they are said to be in the final stages of making their decision and parting with their monies.
But what happens to those people that clearly have a use or need for your product but have little to no knowledge about it? For that we must turn our attention to passive intent.
Passive Buyer Intent
Passive buyer intent indicators help you identify prospects that clearly have a use for your product, but have little to no idea about it. These prospects need to be educated and nurtured before they can turn into buyers.
For example, someone that uses a go-to-market solution like Slintel to find high-intent active and passive buyers will also inherently have a need for an outreach tool to use Slintel’s data to automate custom personalized messages to them.
Prospects with expiring contracts or those that use integrating/complementary tools can be great places to start looking out for passive B2B buyers.
Third party intent data tools like Slintel are the only known means of tracking passive intent leads. Adding passive intent leads helps you fill up each stage of your pipeline, making it a lot more consistent. In turn, this enables you to close more deals in shorter intervals.
How Do You Use B2B Buyer Intent?
In the B2B world, you’re better off targeting only the people who are most likely to buy from you. Targeting without aim wastes your valuable time and energy, which is better spent targeting just the few who actually have a use for your product and the means to purchase it.
Intent data can improve your go-to-market strategies and customer segmentation. This, in turn, helps you market and sell to the right people the right way. B2B intent data helps:
- identify early buyer interest
- create hyper relevant content and marketing campaigns for maximum ROI
- leverage account-based targeting
- improve personalization by equipping sales and marketing teams with the right data
- appropriately nurture good fit accounts at every stage of the buying journey
- reduce churn
Integrating real time purchase intent data into your GTM processes can be as simple as downloading our free Chrome Extension. Here’s how you can do it!
How Intent Data Streamlines Buyer Journeys
Intent data is the data that determines your prospect’s likelihood to purchase a product/service from you. When your prospect is faced with a business obstacle/pain point, they search online and consume various forms of content to find the right solution.
Intent data detects their digital footprints and analyzes their needs and interests. This data is then used by BDRs to find them, target them, and sell them the solution they need. Intent data connects the buyer to the seller and thus, streamlines the buyer journey.
And that, as they say, is that
Having seen what different buyer intent data types have to offer, we hope it has helped you gain a better understanding of your buyer intent needs, and where you stand currently.
The human mind can only go so far in a world that’s drowning in an infinite ocean of data. So why try to be a superhero when there’s a proven buyer intent framework that can help propel you into the hypergrowth stratosphere.
