A Quick Guide to Intent-Based Marketing

Hey there,

All marketing and demand generation strategies take time and effort. But if your operations aren’t aligned with customer needs then it’s all just wasted work.

Thanks to big data, knowing customer requirement isn’t a mystery anymore.

Analytics can help you understand the intent of the customer when she visits a website, researches a solution, or takes an action online.

In this newsletter, we’ll understand how this intent-based marketing can help you sell your services to the right audience at the right time.

What is Intent vs Triggers ?

Intent is the motive of the customer behind his online behavior. While, the trigger sets off the need for that intent.

For eg- An HR tech company got funded and decided to improve their sales through ABM strategy. Here, the funding will act as a trigger, while the intent of the company is to look for an ABM insight platform.

Spend money on intent or not, use triggers for sure. Use it to build relationships, identify new accounts, increase the lead score of accounts. It gives you an icebreaker to talk as well. Triggers are non-intrusive because information is publicly available. Intent is perceived as spying by some if not all.

If you do see triggers, intent from an account, it fits your ICP, go for it with the marketing budget.

The Role of Emerging Technologies in Intent-Based Marketing

In 2017, when an HR tech company was looking to add new prospects to their sales funnel, they decided to filter out relevant leads with the help of intents. They needed clients who wished to ride the new wave of transformation by replacing their current manual processes with easy automation.

So, the company focused on the popular search intent/triggers on ‘digital transformation’ and OceanFrog’s AI engine presented the list of those accounts to them.

The company’s sales team pursued the leads and got successful results.

That’s what happens when you stay updated and realize which emerging technologies are your potential customers looking to implement.

Refer to industry news, press releases, and hiring trends to keep yourself updated with the emerging technologies.

Move to 2021. Everyone in the world is investing in digital transformation. It is not a specific intent topic anymore but a high-level intent.

Do Intents Help in Identifying the Ideal Customer Persona?

Don’t waste your money on intent-based marketing if you’re experimenting with your ideal customer persona.

The intent is a part of our ICP, not the whole.

You might have a fancy product, a great GTM team, but if your intent topics are high level, it means you don’t know your ICP well. High-level intent topics need to be broken down to specifics for targeting the ideal customer database.

Can Intents be a GTM Strategy?

At a given time, intent data will be available for 5-15% of the accounts. It does not make sense to target that small percentage.

Why?

The intent is not the only driver and the buying cycles are long. Hence, it is important to keep educating potential accounts, build relationships, and then depending on their intents, sell the right product to them.

Is Intent a Filter Or an Alarm to Call the Prospect?

In most of the cases, it would end up being a filter.

Since an intent is an initial stage in the buying journey, the client would still be wary of a cold call.

A client with intent will want to know you better to make an informed decision.

It can also be a false alarm as the client is learning and exploring the possible solution to finally decide what he actually wants. Don’t push the prospect here but look out to educate and inform them about your brand.

The Conclusion

Data is power. Focus on this to identify and know your prospects better.

Intent, Signals, or Triggers are all equally important. Intent and triggers are mutually exclusive. These are additional data fields that help you strengthen your database.

It’s important to maintain real expectations with these and use it as a filter for a more personalized communication with your prospects.

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