Marketers: Intent Data Is No Longer Optional 

Buyers don’t want to engage with your traditional marketing tactics. 

Time wasted on cold outreach with unqualified leads is costly and could be weighing your teams down.

That’s why, when intent data emerged on the B2B scene, marketers rejoiced!

The idea of reducing the noise and narrowing marketing and sales’ collective focus on targeting high-converting accounts was highly appealing.

But then, an abundance of unreliable misinformation about intent data, how it works, and where to buy it thwarted the wide adoption of it. Of the few marketing/sales/ABM managers who first invested in intent data, very few saw success and remain jaded towards its benefits. As a result, only the savviest of marketers at high-growth companies are accelerating their pipelines by leveraging reliable intent data. 

Fast-forward to present day, faced with an unpredictable recession, the looming death of third-party cookies, and new data that suggests 100% of tech buyers want to self-serve the buying journey, marketers everywhere are ecstatic to get their hands on in-market prospect lists through intent data. But for most, the process to get started can feel overwhelming.

Lead lists are out. Intent data is in.

Similar to leads, to succeed with intent data you need to balance quality with quantity. But, what is intent data?

Generally speaking, intent data is a behavioral data set that indicates when a buyer is in the market for a specific product or service. This data can be obtained through multiple sources, including first-party intent data collected directly by a publisher from their website. 

In TrustRadius’ recent playbook, WTF is Intent Data? The Ultimate B2B Playbook, deep-dive into what intent data is, how it works, the different types, who can benefit from it, and why it’s not a trend that is going away. From novice to expert, sales and marketing teams are educated and empowered with the different types of intent data, use cases, advertising campaign tactics, and customer retention and expansion strategies—that all go beyond sales calls and cold outreach. 

B2B marketers will quickly learn—intent data is no longer optional if you want to defy the odds with the death of third-party cookies and recession-proof your GTM strategy. And, with so many (new) intent data sources, marketers are finding that intent data is only as good as the activation of it, and that means having a reliable intent data source that represents your prospective audience.

Intent data for prospecting in-market buyers

Age of the self-serve buyer

Reaching in-market buyers in today’s saturated SaaS landscape is getting harder to do. The most successful B2B marketers are protecting their budgets by focusing their time and effort on 1) the TOFU “always on” awareness-level campaigns, and 2) the BOFU activities that get in-market buyers to convert. But TOFU campaigns are a marathon, not a sprint, and you need pipeline today.

From TrustRadius’ annual research report, the 2022 B2B Disconnect: The Age of the Self-Serve Buyer, we know the following stats about today’s elusive tech buyer:

• 100% want to self-serve their buying journey—up 13% from 2021
• 41% of Gen Z and 29% of millennials named “check review sites” as their first step in the buying journey
• Buyers named cold-calling (64%) as the number one reason they are less likely to buy a product from a vendor

From this report, we learned that tech buying doesn’t happen in a linear fashion and that buyers are looking for information about your products from as many third-party sources as they can. This means marketers are challenged with being in more channels than just their own website while also providing a variety of sources for buyers to consume their content. Intent data of this buyer behavior helps take the guesswork out of targeting, reaching, and engaging with in-market buyers.

TrustRadius’ downstream intent data

When you partner with a reliable downstream intent data source like TrustRadius, you’re only receiving data on accounts that are researching your product or comparing you to your competitors. 

This raw, unfiltered, and unequivocal data isn’t muddied with third-party sources or modeled in with blog data. It’s a true representation of enterprise in-market buyers who are self-serving information about your products, reading your reviews, evaluating your features/pricing, and watching user-generated demos. 

TrustRadius downstream intent data is unique in the fact that it’s considered second-party intent data, or someone else’s first-party data that is monetized. There are very few sites that offer this, and for review sites like TrustRadius, it yields high-intent prospects closer to a purchase. It also helps prevent churn by understanding the account activity of existing customers.

TrustRadius buyers on average spend almost 11 minutes researching and comparing products. They look at product pricing, alternatives, feature scorecards, FAQs, and customer reviews. The time spent on these content-rich pages provides vendors with high-fidelity downstream intent signals about which of their products or competitors’ products in-market buyers are engaging with. The intent data can be product-specific, meaning which accounts are researching your product; or category-specific, meaning which accounts are researching your competitors.

This downstream intent data can also be seamlessly integrated into ABM platforms like Triblio, giving users the ability to segment, target, and direct sales efforts to the accounts that will most likely convert to pipeline and ultimately become valuable customers. 

Activation of intent data hinges on your ABM strategy

Reaching in-market buyers in today’s saturated SaaS landscape is getting harder to do. The most successful B2B marketers are protecting their budgets by focusing their time and effort on 1) the TOFU “always on” awareness-level campaigns, and 2) the BOFU activities that get in-market buyers to convert. But, TOFU campaigns are a marathon, not a sprint, and you need pipeline today. That’s where intent data comes in.

Downstream intent data can play a vital role in developing a demand gen and ABM strategy, as it provides insights for prospective customers throughout the buying funnel. But the wrong intent data can clutter your GTM strategies, putting you right back where you started—spending thousands of dollars on prospects that never convert. This is where having an ABM platform that can help you segment and target buyers based on quality, trustworthy intent signals makes the biggest impact. Data from HubSpot shows that 70% of marketers are using an ABM strategy—15% more than in 2020. And according to ITSMA and ABM Leadership Alliance data, 76% of B2B marketers say that ABM’s ROI outperforms other marketing activities.

TrustRadius and Triblio, an account-based marketing platform, have partnered together to reduce the noise and serve up research-driven and reliable information about activating the right intent data in an all-in-one ABM solution. In today’s saturated SaaS landscape, B2B marketers need intent data they can trust and a solid ABM/ABX strategy to activate it.

[WEBINAR] Demystify Intent Data: Navigating the B2B Marketplace

In summary, the easiest way to identify in-market buyers is intent data, but not all intent data is created equal, and it’s only as good as the activation of it. 

Getting started can feel daunting, especially with the mixed information available of what intent data is, how it works, who should use it, and at what stage of the funnel. 

In this webinar, led by a live panel of experts and ABM practitioners, we’ll demystify the intent data marketplace by answering the most commonly asked questions with practical strategies for getting started. 

Agenda:

• Intent data intro with TrustRadius and Triblio
• Demystifying intent data panel session
• Answers to FAQs and practical strategies for getting started
• Live Q&A 
• Get tailor-made answers to your burning questions

Speakers:

Moderator:

• Grace Wells, Senior Manager, Customer Success at TrustRadius

Panel:

• Andrew Mahr, Chief Customer Officer at Triblio
• Tukan Das, Founder at LeadSift
• Allyson Havener, VP, Marketing at TrustRadius

Register Now

Additional resources:

• WTF is Intent Data? The Ultimate B2B Playbook by TrustRadius
• ABM Buyer’s Guide by Triblio
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM) for Beginners by Triblio