How To Use Intent Data to Target Real Buyers

Ellie Preyer

What’s true today is not necessarily going to be true tomorrow or six months from now when it comes to your buyers. It’s a fact; your prospects and their priorities change over time. So how do you anticipate your customers’ demands and be the first to address them?

Mike Burton, co-founder and SVP of data sales, at Bombora recently wrote about how B2B marketers can Use Intent Data to Anticipate Customer’s Needs. Providing your marketing and sales team with static, demographic data about buyers won’t get them any closer to finding prospects early in the buying cycle.

“In B2B, when identifying companies that are most likely to become buyers, it’s now critical to include new intent data signals — like those from content consumption data — next to things like your search, social, and CRM data…Intent data lets us better decide when and where to create new content to meet demand, and when and where to align advertising against existing content — all based on recent audience actions as opposed to static demographics or assumed personas.” – DWA President of the Americas, Bob Ray

6sense’s industry first and exclusive partnership with Bombora highlights how companies use predictive intelligence to operationalize account-based marketing and contact profile targeting for digital display campaigns. With this solution, 6sense and Bombora customers are able to dynamically customize segments based on predictively scored companies and then operationalize account-based marketing and enable programmatic targeting of companies and contacts that are showing intent in the same buying stage.

This first-of-its-kind platform integration targets, with unprecedented accuracy, the right company and the right contact. And as more buyers interact with campaigns or exhibit further buying behavior, those intent-driven inputs are going back into the predictive intelligence platform where scores are updated in real time. For example, when sales reps call on prospects at the purchase stage, those prospects would automatically be served ads with messaging and offers relevant to the purchase buying stage. To be blunt, B2B businesses have to make a move into intent now or risk being overshadowed by their competitors who do.

“Knowing what a prospect or customer needs and values before engaging with them is far more valuable to a marketer than simple job title and demographic data.” – Mike Burton

At the end of the day, winning and retaining business is contingent on reaching the right people, with the right message at the right time. Intent data is the differentiator that will help companies stand out from the pack by anticipating prospect and customer needs, building trust and delivering value.

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