Understanding B2B Intent Data: Definition, Types, and Collection Methods

Using intent data in B2B marketing provides revenue operations teams with crucial insights into their target audience's needs, preferences, and behaviors. This data helps businesses understand what topics interest their prospects, the questions they have, and the challenges they wish to address, enabling more effective marketing strategies.

What is B2B Intent Data?

B2B intent data refers to information gathered from web users’ behavior, such as their content consumption patterns, to predict when and what they might be ready to purchase. By incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their marketing technology stack, businesses can obtain these insights, which form the foundation of account intelligence. This data helps sales and pre-sales teams better understand prospects, ensuring more informed and targeted outreach.

Without accurate intent data, marketing efforts may fall short. While some teams may create well-planned strategies, they often fail to meet expectations due to a lack of actionable insights. Therefore, collecting relevant and precise B2B intent data is critical for improving marketing effectiveness and boosting sales.

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Types of B2B Intent Data

There are three main types of B2B intent data that businesses can gather:

1. Explicit Intent Data Explicit intent data is collected when prospects directly share their information, typically through forms on websites. This type of data is highly accurate but limited, as not all visitors will fill out forms.

2. Implicit Intent Data Implicit intent data is gathered indirectly through a prospect's online behavior, such as the websites they visit. While this data can provide valuable insights, it may be less precise due to its reliance on indirect signals. However, it still offers marketers a broad view of a potential client's engagement.

3. Derived Intent Data Derived intent data combines both explicit and implicit data to provide a more comprehensive view of a prospect's behavior. This type of data is considered one of the most reliable sources of information.

How to Collect B2B Buyer Intent Data

In today’s highly competitive market, intent data is a key factor for success. Marketers use a variety of strategies to gather insights into buyers' purchasing intentions, including web analytics, website traffic, social media interactions, search engine data, and surveys. Additionally, leveraging advanced technologies like natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and data mining can enhance the value of the data collected.

Real-time collection of B2B intent data is essential for gaining actionable insights into buyers’ purchasing power and behaviors. By analyzing this data, businesses can determine which prospects are likely to buy, which products they are interested in, and through which channels they prefer to engage. This information enables pre-sales teams to tailor their messaging and engage prospects at the right time and through the right medium.