What is Intent Data?
Intent data is a powerful marketing tool you can’t afford to ignore. Your customers are getting harder to find and you’re wasting marketing dollars buying cold leads instead of targeting in-market buyers. From beginner to expert, your burning questions are answered in What is Intent Data? The Ultimate B2B Playbook.
Table of Contents
Where intent data
begins—buying behavior
With virtually 100% of buyers wanting to self-serve all or part of their buying journey, a looming recession, and a cookieless future, challenges lie ahead for B2B marketers and sellers. The most successful companies will recession-proof their go-to-market strategy by adapting to the self-serve buyer.
Our 2022 B2B Buying Disconnect report found that today’s tech buyers are searching for a variety of self-serve resources, including transparent pricing, free versions of software, and interactive elements such as product information and self-guided demos.
The desire for these types of self-serve channels is ultimately an opportunity for vendors to serve better-tailored resources and outreach. It means that in order for vendors to succeed, they need to give these buyers strong, funnel-aware messaging that aligns with their self-education and researching habits at just the right times.
technology buyers across TrustRadius' global network in February 2022.
But, how do you
accomplish this?
It turns out that intent data is one of the best ways to find and target in-market buyers who match your ideal customer profile (ICP). Intent data shows who’s actively interested in your product and gives you a way to reach out to them, right where they are in their journey.
What is intent data and how
do marketers use it?
intent data?
Here’s a good intent data definition:
B2B buyer intent data is a collected set of data points that indicate that someone may be interested in buying your product. Websites collect intent signals from users—including the pages they visit, the links they click, and the resources they download—and synthesize that data to share with marketers and salespeople.
A review site like TrustRadius, for example, might provide you with a list of companies who have researched your products this month, a list of companies who checked out your competitors’ products, or even people who are researching your category as a whole.
All of these buyer intent signals indicate which companies are likely to make a technology purchase in the near future. Important note: the strength of intent data collected depends on whether the information comes from a first-, second-, or third-party source.
collected?
Websites collect intent data either at the IP level or via user registration and cookies. They gather a wide range of signals from user behavior, including their searches, downloads, pages visited, clicks, etc. B2B intent data providers synthesize that information into an actionable list of companies for you to target.
data work?
On a technical level, intent data is pretty simple. Websites measure a host of intent signals every day and B2B intent data providers do the hard work of sifting through that data and figuring out which people and companies have the strongest intent signals. Then they send that data to people like you via a list, a spreadsheet, or a direct API connection with a tool like Salesforce. This typically happens on a monthly or weekly basis. After that, it’s up to the marketing and sales teams to use that intent data to their best advantage. Most people use it for prospecting, but we’ll get into a few other use cases below.
intent data—debunked!
We’ve all seen our share of B2B marketing trends that came and went quickly. But one trend that’s undeniably here to stay is using buyer intent data for more effective and efficient marketing.
Which type of intent data is the most relevant?
That depends on what you’re looking for. As we mentioned above, there are three different types of intent data. They each reveal a different part of your “dark funnel,” and depending on what you use intent data for, some sources may be more relevant than others. Here’s a quick breakdown of the types of data:
First-party intent data
First-party intent data comes directly from your own web properties—your product websites, your blog, your subscription activity, etc. This data comes from users who interact with content that comes directly from you. You can measure first-party data through tools like Google Analytics or your CRM software.
First-party intent signals can be very strong, particularly when you measure people who navigate directly to your site (direct traffic). These are people who already know about your brand and are actively looking to learn more about what you have to offer.
Surprisingly, most companies don’t squeeze enough value from their first-party intent data—either because they don’t know how to measure it or because they haven’t figured out how to arm their sales and marketing teams with a comprehensible stream of insights.
Those who do utilize their first-party data typically find that it’s lacking in scale. This is especially true for midsize businesses that don’t attract thousands of web users per month. Those who want to scale up their ABM efforts will likely need to invest in additional intent data sources.
“Tools like 6sense and TrustRadius really indicate to us that these intent data accounts are people who are ready to have that conversation with us.”
Second-party intent data
Second-party intent data is first-party intent data that comes from another company. As a marketer, you’re able to purchase this data directly from the source through an intent data partnership.
Second-party intent data is fairly new, with relatively few companies offering intent data in the market. Right now, the main second-party intent offerings in the B2B world come from review platforms like TrustRadius and G2.
When second-party intent data comes from sources like review sites (which collect lower-funnel signals from an audience of actual buyers), we refer to this type of data as downstream intent. This data is highly valuable and is often the next best thing (after your own data) in terms of quality and impact.
“The TrustRadius audience shows a higher engagement rate than any other ABM segment—accelerating accounts through the buying journey.”
Third-party intent data
Third-party intent data comes from large data conglomerates (like Bombora or Demandbase) that purchase intent signals from a variety of websites and package all of their data as a single product for sale. This results in a huge volume of top-funnel intent signals that can be quite helpful.
B2B marketers sometimes complain that intent data “doesn’t work” or is too “low quality.” That’s because only a small percentage of the data signals they receive from third-party sellers are actually users looking to buy their product. The rest is noise.
Third party intent data is also publicly available to anyone who pays for it—which means you lose the exclusivity benefits that come with first-party and second-party intent. It’s likely that your competitors have access to the same account information and are targeting those accounts in a similar way.
If you’re looking to expand your reach to a large volume of top-funnel users, third-party intent data is a good fit for your needs. Otherwise, you’ll want to consider more distilled options with higher data quality.
“Building custom reports of intent signals for the sales team using the [Salesforce] Connector is really powerful and intuitive. This is critical in getting data into the hands of sales so they can take action.”
Reviews are very important to today’s buyers. According to our 2022 B2B Buying Disconnect report, all segments (by generation, purchase price, and company size) increased their use of user reviews as they researched products.
technology buyers across TrustRadius' global network in February 2022.
In other words, buyers are hanging out on review sites A LOT. They’re browsing reviews, leaving their own thoughts on a product they’ve used, and comparing different products within the same category. Because of this, customer reviews are unbelievably powerful in the hands of marketing and sales teams. This is especially true when you use review platforms to generate downstream intent data, which is high-fidelity intent data from prospects who are ready to buy your product.
Downstream intent data from review sites can be your secret weapon for sourcing leads, increasing conversion, and
influencing active, lower-funnel buyers.
At a basic level, here’s how to get the most out of your partnership with a review site:
- Use downstream intent data from review sites to target high-intent accounts.
- Place CTAs on review sites to attract buyers with high purchase intent to your site.
- Target ads toward buyers who read reviews in your category or for your competitors.
- Publish review snippets on your landing pages to increase conversion and improve SEO.
- Use rich review content in your sales outreach to accelerate the sales cycle.
“TrustRadius has enabled us to take a targeted approach in finding enterprise customers. We can display relevant reviews in marketing material that we show them. We have seen success using TrustRadius reviews in ABM ads, email campaigns, and retargeting.”
Zach Diamond Demand Generation Manager Social Solutions
The ultimate comparison chart of B2B intent
data providers
In a 2021 TrustRadius survey of 200+ software vendors, the following intent data providers were listed as most used. We updated this information to reflect 2022 trScores. For more details on what each company offers, click their name.
- Intent data provider
- trScore
- Free to try
- Intent data source
- Buying journey stage
- trScore - 9.2
- Free to try - Y
- Intent data source - 2nd-party
- Buying journey stage - Bottom-funnel
First and foremost, TrustRadius is a review site that helps technology buyers make educated purchase decisions. We do this by providing quality, in-depth reviews and recognizing stand-out vendors with authentic awards that are earned, never bought.
Because we have so much buyer activity happening on our site, we also collect metrics on buyer behavior and transform it into intent signals for vendors to use. This data is highly valuable, since it’s derived from real buyers who are reading reviews, running comparisons, and checking pricing of your product and your competitors’. Activating this data in digital campaigns will increase your return on ad spend (ROAS). Some marketers saw a 30% boost in ad performance when using second-party intent data in their campaigns.
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- trScore - 8.5
- Free to try - Y
- Intent data source - 3rd-party
- Buying journey stage - Top-funnel
Bombora is primarily an intent data provider whose three main products can be used as sales intelligence and sales acceleration tools. What’s unique about Bombora is that its data consists of a cooperative of B2B media companies around the world. Members contribute content consumption and behavioral data about their audiences and Bombora funnels that data to paying customers. Bombora is best for getting a large volume of very high-level data, as it typically doesn’t have robust filtering options like some other intent data providers do. If you require a more nuanced data set, Bombora may not be a great fit.
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- trScore - 8.3
- Free to try - N
- Intent data source - 3rd-party
- Buying journey stage - Top-funnel
ZoomInfo competes as a leader in both the Marketing Intelligence and Sales Intelligence categories. ZoomInfo WebSights is a website visitor tracking tool that is designed to turn anonymous users on your own website into identifiable leads. While ZoomInfo has a broad reach, users frequently complain that their data may not always be accurate. Successful marketers who use ZoomInfo typically have some kind of verification routine built into their data process.
Zoominfo can be integrated with TrustRadius, bringing both third-party and second-party intent data together. This powerful combo of data creates a winning resource for finding and reaching out to your in-market buyers at every stage of the buying journey.
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- trScore - 8.7
- Free to try - Y
- Intent data source - 3rd-party
- Buying journey stage - Top-funnel
6sense is a leading account engagement platform that excels at enabling account-based marketing (ABM) by coupling intent data with customer data. This software is powerful, and also tends to be a bit complex. Users mention a learning curve on navigating its features and user interface. 6sense may be somewhat of a challenge for those new to intent data or with fewer resources (and time) to get set up.
TrustRadius’ high-fidelity intent signals are available in both the timeline view and Salesforce iframe within 6sense. This makes us the only second-party intent source fully integrated into the 6sense platform. Current 6sense customers can access complimentary product comparison intent data from TrustRadius (you can ask your 6sense contact for more details on this).
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- trScore - 8.2
- Free to try - N
- Intent data source - 3rd-party
- Buying journey stage - Top-mid funnel
Similar to 6sense, Demandbase is designed to facilitate the account-based marketing process for B2B companies. Demandbase’s Real-time Intent offering provides intent data gathered from users’ activities across the internet. Some users report that uploading account lists into Demandbase can be tedious, as the software doesn’t yet have a supportive system for dealing with data that hasn’t been precleaned.
TrustRadius also offers an integration with Demandbase, combining its powerful account-based marketing tools with TrustRadius’ second-party intent data. As with 6sense, Demandbase customers can also receive a complimentary sample of TrustRadius’ downstream intent data—if this applies to you, be sure to reach out to your Demandbase contact to find out more.
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- trScore - 8.2
- Free to try - N
- Intent data source - 2nd-party
- Buying journey stage - Mid-funnel
TechTarget’s Priority Engine is TechTarget’s primary intent data offering. TechTarget leverages its large internet footprint as a key selling point of its intent data, as many prospective buyers turn to them when researching software. TechTarget also provides users with data on their current prospects and buyers who have self-identified as being interested in meeting with vendors. However, TechTarget may be limiting for teams looking for more targeted contact list-building and more granular information.
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- trScore - 6.5
- Free to try - N
- Intent data source - 2nd-party
- Buying journey stage - Mid-funnel
G2 is closer to TrustRadius than others as an intent data provider. As a review site provider, buyers on G2 are also signaling their intent to buy by seeking out testimonials directly from existing customers themselves. G2 provides vendors with information on companies researching their product(s) and their competitors, as well as analytics into the state of software categories in which they compete. One of the observed downsides to G2 is that its review-vetting processes are not as robust as alternatives, leading to inaccurate data. G2’s traffic is also driven by their blog content vs. review content, which tends to skew the efficacy of the resulting intent data.
According to one of our users, “We’ve had a long-standing partnership with G2, and while we’ve been happy with them, too, their audience is different than TrustRadius, so it benefits us to be prominent in both places. G2 we use more for our smaller target accounts, as the audience there tends to be more SMB and mid-market, whereas our larger enterprise target accounts are more often on TrustRadius.”
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- trScore - N/A
- Free to try - N
- Intent data source - 3rd-party
- Buying journey stage - Top-funnel
Aberdeen is a dedicated intent data provider for B2B marketers. Aberdeen is a platform that sources data from across the internet and digests that information for its users to identify the most ideal buyers. In addition to providing this level of insight, Aberdeen also offers prioritized call-center services and advertising analytics. Given its complexity, it may not be as plug-and-play as alternatives.
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- trScore - 8.2
- Free to try - N
- Intent data source - 3rd-party
- Buying journey stage - Top-funnel
Clearbit is a sales intelligence platform focused on B2B marketing and sales. They help users “unmask” anonymous web traffic and also help with targeted advertisements. Clearbit seems to shine at providing users with easily accessible data, but may be better suited for larger organizations versus small businesses. Other intent data providers may actually use underlying Clearbit software, so ask vendors about this, as going with Clearbit might just be the “clearer” option.
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- trScore - 9.0
- Free to try - Y
- Intent data source - 3rd-party
- Buying journey stage - Top-funnel
KickFire is primarily an intent data provider focusing on enabling businesses to use intent data in a variety of ways by using proprietary APIs and built-in integrations with Google Marketing Platform and Adobe Launch. KickFire has great reporting features, but may struggle with providing accuracy with its data.
CloseTop 4 ways B2B sales and marketing pros use intent data
Successful marketing and sales teams use intent data for a variety of activities, starting with prospecting. Companies also use it for sales enablement, ABM, and to support digital marketing. Here are four of the top ways that businesses leverage intent data and drive significant results:
1. Surface new accounts
Intent data enables sales/marketing teams to uncover new target accounts that fit their company’s ideal customer profile (ICP). Intent data is a more efficient and accurate way to find in-market buyers than traditional cold leads lists because it identifies buyers who are product-aware or have already expressed interest in your product or its category.
Alex grew $1.1 million in pipeline using downstream intent data in these three easy steps:
- Discover buyers using intent data
- Engage and target key accounts
- Enable sales with what you find
“Tools like 6sense and TrustRadius really indicate to us that these intent data accounts are people who are ready to have that conversation with us.”
2. Integrate intent data into your ABM platform
By integrating intent data into their ABM platforms, sales and marketing pros make their campaigns more efficient and effective. Rather than guessing which marketing initiatives are the best fit for each lead, they can use the in-depth metrics from intent data to decide which campaigns to serve to which prospects. When you light up your dark funnel and proactively target your ideal customer profile (ICP), it’s much easier to fill your pipeline with quality prospects.
When the teams at LogicMonitor used TrustRadius’ downstream intent data for their ABM campaigns, they saw impressive results:
- 81% increase in engaged accounts
- 2x lift in display ad performance across top-, mid-, and bottom-funnel campaigns
“The TrustRadius audience shows a higher engagement rate than any other ABM segment—accelerating accounts through the buying journey.”
3. Improve paid ad performance
Once they’ve pulled a list from a B2B intent data provider, sales and marketing experts use the information about each buyer’s stage of the buying journey and interest level to deliver relevant content. Rather than taking a shot in the dark, these tailored efforts put the right content in front of the right people at just the right time.
- ScienceLogic used TrustRadius intent data to orchestrate strategic competitor takeout campaigns
- Leveraged the Salesforce Connector and Terminus to channel intent data and serve up ads to the right audience
- Saw a 30% boost in ad performance
“Building custom reports of intent signals for the sales team using the [Salesforce] Connector is really powerful and intuitive. This is critical in getting data into the hands of sales so they can take action.”
4. Decrease churn rates
Intent data shows who’s interested in both a company’s product and its competitors. Because of this, salespeople and marketers can use intent data to get a view into who’s looking at their competitors’ pages and catch retention risks early. Plus, this same data can be used for upselling and expansion opportunities. Many of our customers have integrated our intent data with their Salesforce instance and found that on average, over 30% of the accounts researching them on our site were already known accounts in their Salesforce.
- Increased customer case studies by 22%
- Salvaged three renewals by contacting customers who were ready to churn and helping them to resolve their issues
- Able to gather customer quotes quickly and use them on website and other areas
“TrustRadius is well suited as a customer reviews platform that not only offers customer feedback but also provides vendors with actionable information and intelligence on the back end. For example, we were able to not only gather good customer reviews but also be able to contact reviewers who were not happy and understand the issues and challenges they faced.”
Intent data at TrustRadius vs. G2
| TrustRadius | G2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Software Categories | 789, purely B2B | 4,150, includes B2B and B2C |
| Buyers | 60% Enterprise (less than 20% overlap with G2) | 47% Small Business |
| Review length on average | 400 words, 4x the length produces richer intent signals |
90 words |
| Traffic yield per category page (per month) | 263, 17% more | 225 |
| Traffic yield per product page (per month) | 103, 45% more | 71 |
| Competitive Intel | Category intent includes buyers researching you and your competitors regardless of their customer status |
If your competitors are customers of G2, you will NOT see their product level intent signals |
| Data Integrity | TrustRadius’ intent data includes:
|
G2’s intent data includes:
|
The B2B Ultimate
Playbook
Become an intent data expert and start targeting, reaching, and engaging with in-market buyers like a pro. TrustRadius compiled all of the research for you, so you can skip the sales pitches and get started on your own terms.
Learn the who, what, where, why, and how of intent data, plus, gain actionable tips on leveraging intent data to:
- Drive revenue
- Retain and expand existing customer bases
- Accelerate growth within your ABM platform
- Improve Linkedin ad performance