Getting the Most Out of Your Intent Data- 3 Things to do Right Now!

If you're a marketer, it's essential to have your finger on the pulse of intent data and its role in the future of marketing. Think of intent data as information on what people search for before they buy something. Having a solid grasp on the value of intent data and how to get the most out of it can help you target your business in a more focused way.

Looking to understand the basics of Intent Data? Please also read our last piece, Understanding Intent Data’s Impact on Business

This article will discuss three critical things you can do right now with intent data to help benefit your organization: targeted lead follow up, predictive lead scoring, and prioritizing your data with an Enterprise Search solution.

To lend further insight into the importance of intent data, marketers are just now beginning to understand that search behavior is being influenced by factors outside of the search query itself. For example, if you're searching for 'dresses', a certain ad next to it may show you a dress from a specific designer.

The collection of this data enables both targeted lead follow up, and predictive lead scoring. To help sort through the data, you’ll need an AI system to assist you, and if you don’t already use an Insight Engine or Enterprise Search system, you’ll be making a huge upgrade in that area as well.

Targeted Lead Follow Up

There are many ways you can use intent data to predict what visitors or customers will do next. You can use intent data to retarget users on Facebook and Instagram. If you're running a promotion, and someone comes to your site but doesn't complete a purchase, you can target them with ads on social media. Interest-based targeting is a more advanced form of retargeting, which is when you serve ads to people who've already visited your website. With interest-based targeting, your ads are specifically targeted to people based on their interests and behaviors.

To make sure your marketing and lead follow up efforts are hitting the right prospects, you’ll need to track the keywords people are using when they search for solutions and services like yours. Intent data lets you target audiences based on their current interests and desires, versus just looking at past behavior.

Predictive Lead Scoring

Predictive lead scoring is a data-driven approach that predicts the likelihood a prospect will become a lead and ultimately a customer. With predictive lead scoring, you can prioritize leads, identify which marketing sources are the most cost-efficient, and improve your overall marketing efforts. With so much data available, companies are struggling to find the tools and strategies that allow them to make the best use of it. Some industries spend $45 or more for each lead they acquire, spending billions every year. Even with all this money being spent, lead quality has stagnated.

Traditional lead scoring can be broken down into three classifications or stages: acquisition, qualification, and conversion. To improve lead generation efforts, you must first know who’s interested in your product before speaking with them. That means you need to tell ahead of time which leads are best to target with specific messaging. Predictive lead scoring is a great way for companies of all sizes to improve their marketing efforts because it scores leads based on their predicted likelihood to churn, buy, or become an advocate. This data can then be used in your marketing decisions by guiding you when and where you target leads.

Using an AI to Prioritize your Data

Yes, it’s critical to collect intent data for the many reasons we’ve discussed so far, but too much data can cause a real headache without a tool to sort through it like an AI system. Enterprise Search and Insight Engine solutions can take the data you already have, sort through it, cut out the noise and the irrelevant activities, find meaningful patterns, and predict when to follow up and what communication is most appropriate per each step in the buying cycle. If you don’t already have an AI system in place for search, you will see a significant improvement in many areas such as customer service, contract management, and more.

Conclusion

In today’s competitive landscape, marketers need to dig into what their audience wants and get ahead of industry trends before they happen and impact buying decisions before they are made. And not only marketing but various functional areas use intent data as well such as R&D and support.