Author Details
Vinay Mehendi
Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.
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Choosing the Right Intent Data Provider
Table of Contents
Why is Intent Data Important?
Intent data has always been in the market in some form or another. The ways to identify intent data or the sources of intent data have been changing over the years. Collecting intent data from various sources is getting easier as it becomes more prevalent. Intent data is valuable and helpful today. It is an excellent way to know your audience’s thoughts without talking to them.
Here’s why intent data is so sought after:
1. It allows you to identify the right customers and offers you the opportunity to know what your customers are doing.
2. It lets you notice if your offerings are relevant to what they are doing and if they are genuinely interested in reading about what you are selling.
However, intent data is useful when it is available for a reasonable market size!
Intent Data Sources: Primary and Secondary
1. Primary Data Source
When you call the parties and conduct an interview, it is a primary data source. An example of the primary data source is the search intent data. It refers to the material people are searching, reading, and downloading.
2. Secondary Data Source
The signals from other resources like job postings, conferences, or meetings are secondary data sources. Secondary resources have become powerful because of internet availability and several customers spending long hours online. Suppose you have data regarding a company’s job postings, which also tells you about the intent of those parties. For the sake of categorization and to avoid confusion, secondary intent can be called intelligence or signals.
These are the primary resources of secondary data sources:
a. Annual Reports
b. Whitepaper downloads
c. Job Postings
d. News
e. Conference attendee lists
f. Webinar attendee list
Levels of Intent Data: Company Level, and Team Level
Intent data is available at two levels. They are:
1. Company Level
This data is at the organizational level—for example, the digital transformation activity will take place at the company level and involve something like test automation and robotic classes.
2. Team Level
Let’s assume that a company is starting its office in India. It’s a company-level intent. When a company hires or invests in a Chief Innovation Officer, it’s with company-level intent. However, when a company buys new software for test automation, it is a team-level intent.
Use Cases of Intent Data
Similar to technographics, there are two use cases of intent data.
1. To identify target accounts that you should be targeting.
2. To decide what you should write in your communication with them.
The cases mentioned above are similar to technographics use cases or the use of technographics data.
How to Use Intent Data Carefully?
Intent data can also be at a personal level as you are tracking someone’s personal activities. For example, when you are tracking someone downloading a whitepaper, you are also tracking his email address, the topics he downloaded, the location he downloaded them to, and the time at which he downloaded them. Some of these activities may violate personal privacy data laws and compliance. Hence, even if you have all the data, you must never mention in your emails or conversations that you are tracking that person and that you have all that data or information.
For example, if you write, “Hey, I observed that you had downloaded this particular whitepaper,” that will be the wrong way to approach it. Always reference such things indirectly. For example, you can say, “I see you are interested in digital transformation.” It is always better and safer to intent at the company or organizational level rather than personal or private level. Even if you are doing it at a personal level, always refer to it at the company level. That will keep you safe from privacy data laws and compliances. Also, be careful if you tell somebody you are tracking this, that person will not appreciate it or like it. You have to make the other person comfortable in sales and marketing conversations.
How can OceanFrogs help in better targeting customers?
Technology platforms that are buying intent data must apply good technographics data to identify the right customer segments. If technographics data is not good, the intent cannot be of much help because you are reaching out to the wrong audience.
It is essential to get the right firmographic and technographics data. That’s where OceanFrogs comes into the picture. Even after that, you should buy intent data only if your target market size is huge. If your technographics cut and slice your total addressable markets to a manageable number, you can save the cost on intent data. You can go for signals such as leadership movements and technology intent if your technographics give you a good customer segment and the size of the customers. OceanFrogs provides all of this.
References
– Read before you swap that credit card!
https://www.oceanfrogs.com/newsletter/b2b-buyer-intent-data/
– Noopur Choubey | Are intent and technographics data complimentary?
https://www.oceanfrogs.com/intent-and-technographics-in-marketing/
– Taylor hamilton | Feb 2022 | 7 best intent data providers.
https://blog.visitorqueue.com/7-best-b2b-intent-data-providers/
– Intent data: Contact the right people at the right time.
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